If I told you I saw ghosts in my hometown, you’d probably think
A: I am schizophrenic.
or B: I want to know where she lives so I could come take a ghost tour.
Good thing I am hopefully not A, and you are not B, because I am not speaking about the kind of ghosts that stand at the edge of your bed and scare the shit out of you, or sling glasses off tables and open cabinet doors while you’re not watching. I’m talking about the softer kind, the ghosts made of memory. The ones that live in the cracks of sidewalks I used to ride my bike down, or the ghost labeled “mom” that was once named “Santa” placing presents under the tree bought from a yard sale. The ghost of my dad dancing to a vinyl in the living room before he would put me to bed. They show up in the faces of people I used to know. My hometown is full of them. Not spirits, but echoes of who I used to be, and that can be haunting.
Ever since I came to college, I found myself not wanting to return home. While this is probably normal for an 18 year old just wanting space, I think my fear of ghosts outweighs my longing for my childhood bedroom. And yet, even as I avoid it, my hometown lingers in my mind like the ghosts still haunt me everywhere I go. I remember the way the trees smelled in spring, the scar I still have from falling off my bike, the hum of cicadas in the evenings that seemed to signal that everything was both endless and fragile at the same time.
Sometimes I wonder if the ghosts are waiting for me to come back, if they exist only when I am absent. Maybe that’s why I hesitate, because returning home is like opening a photo album whose pages rearrange themselves when I’m not looking. The sidewalk where I scraped my knees now holds cars parked in neat rows. The tree in the yard is taller than my memory allows, and yet the shadow it casts feels familiar.
I catch glimpses of myself in these ghosts. The girl who raced her bike against the wind, the child who believed her father’s vinyl spinning in the living room was magic, the one who believed in Santa in the first place. They all live there, tucked between the cracks, waiting for a visitor who may never come.
So maybe that’s why I hesitate. Because nostalgia isn’t just longing, it’s a confrontation with the ways we have changed. I am not the girl who left; she is still there, haunting the streets and faces of a town I once called home. Ghosts aren’t always evil, but they do linger.