“A ghost can be a lot of things. A memory, a daydream, a secret. Grief, anger, guilt. But, in my experience, most times they’re just what we want to see. Most times, a ghost is a wish.”
― The Haunting of Hill House (2018) dir. Mike Flanagan
“There are things that tie them to a place, very much like they do us. Some remain tethered to a patch of land. A time and date. The spilling of blood. A terrible crime. But there are others. Others that hold onto an emotion. A drive. Loss. Revenge. Or love. Those, they never go away.”
― Crimson Peak (2015) dir. Guillermo del Toro
“There are such things as ghosts. People everywhere have always known that. And we believe in them every bit as much as Homer did. Only now, we call them by different names. Memory. The unconscious.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History
“What is a ghost, after all, but a repressed memory, the past demanding to be heard in the present?”
―
Alfred Mac Adam, Introduction of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey
“If that staid old house near the Green at Richmond should ever come to be haunted when I am dead, it will be haunted, surely, by my ghost. O the many, many nights and days through which the unquiet spirit within me haunted that house when Estella lived there! Let my body be where it would, my spirit was always wandering, wandering, wandering, about that house.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
“May you not rest, as long as I am living! You said I killed you — haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe — I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always — take any form — drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
“Come back! Even as a shadow, even as a dream”
― Euripides, Herakles
“In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Wintergirls
“In real life it’s the living who haunt you.”
— Franz Wright, from section 1 of “Observations,” Earlier Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 2007)
“Perhaps I haunted her as she haunted me”
—
Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca
“They were nothing more than living ghosts, haunting each other with what could be. What can’t be.”
― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty
“And how odd it is to be haunted by someone who is still alive.”
― I Guess the Old You is a Ghost (#589: June 25, 2014)
Hey writers, friendly reminder! Every line and every story you write is NOT required to be earth-shattering, spellbinding, or groundbreaking! Sometimes, we seek out stories because they are familiar, because we know how it will end and we LIKE it that way!
So instead of convincing yourself that your story isn’t good enough, or original enough, or worthy enough, try convincing yourself that your story is a JOY to tell and see where it takes you! :)
there’s dozens of stories about some kid from our world falling into a different, magical one, being the chosen one or the close companion of the chosen one and saving the world, and then going home where they’re delighted to see their family again and have a new appreciation of their own life. but what about someone who didn’t miss it? what if you save the world and you’re given your medal and stripped of the magic you learned and put back in a world you never missed? and you’re furious.
maybe you gave up a few years of your life. you have callouses and muscles and a few scars and maybe a missing eye or something. you definitely have some blood on your hands. you might have PTSD you can’t talk to anyone about. and suddenly you’re fifteen again, in a body that’s too soft and too short and too complete. you’re always cold because there’s no magic burning in your veins anymore, and even as you grow up the feeling of not fitting doesn’t go away because when you look in the mirror at eighteen you look all wrong: this is not what you’re supposed to look like at eighteen. the sky clouds and you rub at the phantom ache of injuries this body never received. you wake up screaming sometimes remembering the sorcerer who burnt your hand to ashes, or the final battle you almost didn’t make it through, or the moment you felt the magic in you go out.
but here’s the thing: they took you and made you into a weapon that was determined enough and powerful enough to save a whole world. they can put you back where they found you but they can’t undo everything. and there’s this, too: the place between worlds clings to you. you can’t tease fire out of the air but you can feel the pull of the doorways all the time, although none of them so far go to your world.
but you try to make it work for a decade, anyway. you’re dutiful. but one night you leave work late and for the thousandth time you catch yourself searching the sky for firebirds. and you break. of the three portals within five hundred miles, one is a howling, frozen wasteland and one is a deep violet void, but one opens into a misty forest that you step into and don’t look back. it’s not your world, but if you keep going long enough, you’ll get there.
(and maybe much, much later, hundreds of worlds later, you climb through a window, or a door of woven branches int he middle a field, or push aside a curtain, and as you set foot on new land you feel the fire in your veins and sparks at your fingertips and finally, finally, you’re home)
This this this is it this is my favorite thing in the world
A lot of the substances we think of as protection against the supernatural (e.g. salt, silver, garlic) are actually antibacterial, and would have helped stave off infections and illnesses that people once attributed to supernatural influence.
Based on this, I want to see a story where vampires are repelled by hand sanitizer.
here’s your reminder to let yourself create. not create ‘well’, just create. draw badly. write shitty poems. sing stupid songs. make whatever you want & have a great time doing it. that’s what creation is for. it’s self expression, not perfection
Does the bullet stay in? Does it get taken out? What are the consequences? What are the after effects?
“Lead poisoning”
is a common ER and EMS term for someone getting shot. “What happened?”
“Lead poisoning.” is a conversation between a medic and a nurse that
would make 100% sense, even though the character is bleeding out on the
stretcher.
But does leaving a bullet in lead to lead poisoning? As in, actual elevated levels of lead in the blood?
It depends!
First, the myth that the bullet must come out! is a Hollywood trope, based off of Civil War medicine. So let’s look at where that comes from.
The
idea that the bullet has to come out typically comes from a mindset
that the bullet is, by itself, inherently dangerous. And back in the
Civil War, that was true, not because of the bullet but because of the
wadding that stuffed the bullet into the musket.
See, it was
infection, not lead poisoning, that made those gunshot wounds more
dangerous, because the wadding was typically covered in bacteria – and
injected directly into a wound. Removing the bullet would also allow the
physic to remove the piece of cotton, and remove the source of the
infection. (In the modern day we would call this source control.)
But
these days, our typical GSW patient doesn’t have a wadded-up piece of
cotton in the wound, and if they do, it’s something pulled in behind the
bullet. It’s superficial, and easily picked out with tweezers forceps. So the infective risk of leaving bullets in place is actually pretty low.
In fact, in the modern era, doctors actually tend to leave a lot of bullets in place.
The typical process looks like this:
The character gets shot (owies!) and goes to the hospital.
The doctors (read: trauma team) will examine the wound and get x-rays or, more likely, a CT scan (NOT an MRI!)
Actually, further research indicates that MRIs are safe with most bullet types, but docs tend to be conservative about this.
The
wound itself will be explored surgically, especially if it’s in the chest or the abdomen. If the docs happen to find the bullet
along the way, they’ll remove it, but removal isn’t the goal, it’s repairing significant bleeds and organ damage, finding other things that might have been in the wound and evaluating
the underlying tissue.
If the bullet is in a location that’s risky
to perform surgery to get to, such as the chest or the abdomen, the
bullet will likely actually get left in place. The theory is that the
risk of surgery outweighs the risk of leaving the bullet in place.
Similarly,
if the bullet is in an extremity where surgery would be easy, but the
bullet is close to a nerve or significant piece of vasculature, the
bullet is likely going to be left in.
Really, removing the bullet is a matter of convenience, not of necessity.
But what about lead poisoning?
Ahhh, yes, lead poisoning. Where we started. Where we’ll finish.
Lead poisoning is surprisingly rare with gunshot wounds, even if the bullet is left in place.
The reason is this: the tissue will actually grow a capsule around the bullet and prevent the lead from leeching out into the bloodstream.
The
only significant risk is if the bullet is lodged in the bone, and even
then, it can take years for symptoms of lead poisoning to develop.
And if that DOES happen? Here’s the symptom list:
●Abdominal pain (“lead colic”) ●Constipation. ●Joint pains. ●Muscle aches. ●Headache. ●Anorexia. (Decreased appetite) ●Decreased libido. ●Difficulty concentrating and deficits in short-term memory. ●Irritability. ●Excessive fatigue. ●Sleep disturbance. ●Anemia. ●A “lead line,” a bluish pigmentation seen at the gum-tooth line, is the result of a reaction of lead with dental plaque.
●Confusion, seizures, and encephalopathy (brain swelling) can be seen with extremely high levels of lead.
And that’s all she wrote!
Thanks UpToDate! And THANK YOU Dr. N for your generous support!
When she stood still in the middle of the room the pressing silence of Hill House came back all around her. I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, she thought, and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside.
The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
This haunting is architectural. It is not about you. It is about where you are. There are bones in the foundation. This house is a graveyard. This house is a corpse. You are inside the corpse. That makes you the maggot.
Some places are born, not built. Such a strange thought to have. And I don’t know what came next, but I was still muttering the words to myself when they stopped my car and broke the glass and dragged me out. Born, not built. Born, not built.
…for of all that “Être humain” the real human beings in these houses and cities become normalized termites, or within a “dwelling machine” they become foreign cells, still too organic.
“Buildings in Empty Spaces,” Ernst Bloch tr. Jack Zipes and Frank Mecklenburg
The house, heavy with history, is burying the bodies before they even know they are bodies.
There’s only so much that hate can build up in a place before it starts hating you back… I don’t know what’s in the attic, or if there’s anything up there at all, and I don’t think I want to.
Have you not been paying attention? Did it not occur to you that as an organism existing within a greater organism, your intrusion would be felt? And still you harass. And now, like the wayward spider who witlessly settled on a sleeper’s tongue, you will be swallowed. Because the truth is this: When a house is both hungry and awake, every room becomes a mouth.
Despite all their efforts to the contrary—their impossible architecture, their threats of betrayal, their lesions in the walls—we keep coming back. We keep exploring them and charting them and trying to bend their distinctively un-human design to our will. These houses are haunted—they’re haunted by us.
