“Shame on you!”
Those are the last words my father said to me. Shouted across 3,600 miles, as the crow flees, a few months before Barbenheimer.
He's not dead, mind you, though he may be by the time you read this. Take that, r/LiminalSpace!
((And thanks, “Monster Talk,” for talking to Lana Hall, who name-dropped that subreddit recently.))
As soon as I ghosted him (r/ghosting), my old man started haunting me. This is tricky because I don't believe in ghosts, spirits, or even souls. And remember, he's still alive.
The temporal problem is no problem at all if you're familiar with East Asian folklore. Maybe you know through family. Maybe you know through predatory student loans and an unleverageable undergrad major. I'm in the latter camp. No, not those camps where they rounded up Japanese Americans—two-thirds of whom were, ahem, U.S. citizens—during World War II. I never visited Heart Mountain Relocation Center while working as a beat reporter in Wyoming. I did, however, see Ryan Park, where POWs were forced to work in the timber industry.
But I really learned about Japanese ghosts between racy late-night talk shows and “The X-files” as a foreign exchange student abroad. My host mom shared moody tales late at night between her umpteenth cigarette and half-bottles of Chivas Regal. Probably. I was shit at Japanese, usually drunk myself, and desperately trying to hide active bulimia—especially after the plumber cleared the bathroom shower drain. Twice.
Another twice-told tale: My host mom took care of her own mother, who suffered from dementia. She'd cook her mom's favorite food and reheat leftovers whenever the lady was having a bad day. “Oh, that's my favorite!” her mom would beam and calm right down. Quality quality-of-life hack.
My original, vaguely Orientalist understanding of East Asian ghosts comes from Viz and Tokyopop manga. I got 'em at the mall, from Waldenbooks, back when “The Jerry Springer Show” was king of trash pop culture.
Hey, I went to school with someone who ended up on that show as the proverbial “other guy.” Contradicting today's AI Overview, he confirmed he got a cash bonus, backstage in the early 00s, after throwing a punch on camera. “But I'm smart,” he insisted. “I put that shit in the bank.” He knew me as the guy with the horse who was his pen pal from a neighboring elementary school. I had no horse. Homie asked about the horse all through high school—before and after his local celebrity turn—despite my protests. The saga ended in the mall food court near a Wendy's within spitting distance of a Claire's. I admitted, through choked back tears, that the horse died and I didn't want to talk about it anymore.
Actually, I learned about Japanese ghosts from Maiko, a Japanese foreign exchange student at my high school. (She never appeared on “Jerry Springer.”) She was an atheist like me, but had had mystical, woo-woo experiences with spirits she sangsonged about with wide-eyed eye contact.
All that's to say this: Strong emotions create a shadow; energy has a life of its own, apparently.
Ever heard of Stone Tape theory? The idea that ghosts replay like movies on a loop? They project onto reality like that “Pokémon GO” feature everyone but kids turned off to save battery life. Emo energy ghosts, however, are interactive so they can't be the same thing.
If I had therapy money, I'd try EMDR. That's that trauma therapy with eye movements and bilateral tapping that Prince Harry does. Dr. Allan Botkin describes a further application in his book, “Induced After Death Communication.” Could that help me grieve a live relative? “Richard Hatem's Paranormal Bookshelf” podcast has a great memoir-nested take on family trauma in its season four premier of the same name.
He looks like me. He has the same beard I religiously shaved off my face until I had enough gray hair to distinguish myself. But his voice is different. After decades of getting harangued by my inner critic/inner child/self parent/parts about everything from getting bullied and popping boners in primary school to shitting my pants for no particular reason as an adult, there's finally another voice in the mix.
And I couldn't be happier.
At last someone's interested in me. Interested in what I think and have experienced. Sure, he's horrible, but so is/was my actual dad. And now that all that negative self-talk is externalized as a sad, abusive god-like father figure, I can finally put some of it to bed.
And maybe now I can get back to sleep.
Wait, what was that horse guy's name? Oh, there he is. Huh, Mike. Just like Dad. But—oh, shit—he died in 2023.
I just heard something in the other room.
No, wait, that's just the hirsute, dementia-riddled, violent, negligent elephant in the room.
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