These are designs two and three that will be available in the August 22 print drop. (11:00 AM MST—mark your calendars, because these prints always sell out!) Paid subscribers will have early access, so feel free to sig up in the next couple of weeks if you want first dibs. See last week’s post for design #1.
Lately I’ve been thinking about haunted places.
There are so many haunted places in this crooked old world—sites of tragedy and violence, unmarked graves, rooms where our dead loved ones used to walk, houses that have forgotten they’re empty, and sunken spots that have devoured their share of lost souls.
A few days after my friend died of cancer in 2020, her husband sent out a snapshot of this scrap of paper that she had scrawled on. I think about it almost daily—if I were the tattooing sort, I would probably get it permanently inked on my skin.
There are ghosts in this house. And I know their names.
The most haunted place in my house is my own bedroom. It’s painted purplish gray—a dark, corpse-like color that was chosen by the previous residents to induce feelings of calm and restfulness, I assume.
There are three windows in the room. At night, a drunken yellow light pours in from the streetlights, so we keep the curtains drawn both day and night. I sometimes imagine myself as the kind of person who would wake up each morning and throw the curtains back—like I was some guest of a manor house in a novel, a house where a murder had recently or would soon take place.
But I hardly remember to do the normal morning-time things—brush my teeth, take my vitamins, eat breakfast—much less make a new habit out of opening and closing window curtains each morning. So I live in a perpetually dark and brooding bedroom, possibly occupied by restless ghosts.
My youngest child told me that their earliest and scariest memory took place in my room. They insist that they saw a ghost—a shadowy figure bending over the railings of their crib when they were only a year or so old.
“A shadow? Like from the furniture or the curtains?” I asked.
“No, a ghost. A real one,” they said.
I have never seen this ghost, though I picture them melting in with the curtains, draping their appendages over the furniture, their head peeking around corners with dim eyes and a curious, mouthless face.
I wonder what they are looking for, if they can even remember.
I wouldn’t be surprised to find that some of the ghosts in my house are me, wandering the rooms in a grief-stricken stupor.
I am crying for my lost loves and lost chances, lost selves and lost stories. I am crying for myself and all the other lonely ghosts.
Perhaps some past or future version of myself is dipping between worlds, checking in on myself: Am I alright? Am I taking my vitamins and brushing my teeth and eating my breakfast? Am I forgetting things I ought to remember, or remembering things I ought to forget?
Am I drawing back the curtains wide, to let the sun splash into the graying corners of my bedroom, scaring out the wraiths of a thousand weeping, sleepless nighttimes?
I think I am the ghost that haunts my house, so I’m not afraid.
I hope you’re all well, all you haunted things. Mark your calendars for the print drop (August 22! 11:00am MST!) and stay cool.
Love you all lots,
👻Becca Lee, the Haunted Librarian👻