I Am In Love With A Ghost Or Two!

Confessions Of A Polyamorous Ghost Lover

In Honor of All Souls Day

According to recent polls, 41-61 percent of the US populace believe that ghosts exist, and 20 percent indicate they have personally encountered a ghost.

Psychologists tell us that some people are affected by factors that make them prone to being human-ghost lovers.

For instance, I am informed by such learned types that my basic personality type as well as my formative experiences as a child led me to such an amorous connection with extraordinary folk.

Actually, I don’t just have one other-worldly love affair. I have many of them and have had a parade of ghosts passing by me throughout my conscious life. And hope, some-day-not-soon, to be frolicking beyond the pale, i.e., dead, but ever-active with other dead but ever-active former human beings.

So, perhaps what I really am is a POLYAMOROUS GHOST LOVER. Eternally!

Now, what makes me and so many others (US Americans or otherwise) such believers? Here are some of the psychological factors that have brought me to this state of existence:

My personality type: mystical, open to new ideas, intuitive, creative, and adventurous. My formative experiences: intense Appalachian religious beliefs and rituals and an emotionally volatile upbringing caused me to seek nurture in solitary meditation, books, and piano playing.

Experts also say that in addition to religious beliefs and all that emotional upheaval some of us have experienced, there are other factors that have created our fancying a human-ghost relationship. These include a belief in, or at least a strong curiosity about:

Precognition, i.e., the ability to tell future events.

Life forms beyond the ordinary.

Spiritualism: communication with the deceased.

Superstitious beliefs.

Mindreading, psychokinesis (moving objects through mind control).

A basic assumption that the ghost has not left the building.

Yes, I can check all these boxes.

In fact, I see myself writing a book in my not-too-distant future about all this. Talk about ‘precognition’! But for now, let me tell the story about just one of my heart-throb ghost lovers.

He just happens to be famous, at least for those who read poetry or were forced to read it in high school!

His name is John Keats (1795-1821), a short-lived English poet who is a major poet in the English Romantic tradition.

I first read his ethereal, nature-centered, aesthetic, tortured, yet sometimes hopeful display of emotionality when I, too, was in high school, and did not have a clue as to what the heck he was saying. Something about a nightingale, beauty, classical Greece, melancholy, stars, and the brevity of life.

Having trained as a doctor and witnessed those early operations (pre-anesthesia), Keats knew a bit about pain and dying! So much so that he opted out of the medical profession so he could write poetry!

But having experienced such things, as well as the deaths of his mother and a younger brother, one can understand why he would write: “ … for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death.” (from Ode to a Nightingale)

So, I became an English major in college and went to graduate school to obtain another degree, one where my major study was of the English Romantic poets, Keats being one of them!

And then, decades later, I was a visiting minister at the Rosslyn Hill Chapel in Hampstead, England, just outside of London. And guess who had lived a mere 15-minute walk away? My ghost-lover, Mr. Keats!

And guess where he wrote much of his poem to that now-famous bird! Yes, right there in his back garden, under a plum tree while he was suffering from “consumption” (now known as tuberculosis), the disease that was to take his life at the age of 25 in Rome, Italy.

But shortly before I entered his abode (now a museum), I was resting from my walk from the church and was sitting on a bench in that back garden of the house. Just sitting there, minding my own business, and feeling quite fortunate that I was in the very spot where Keats had once been.

Then suddenly, I “felt” a presence, and there, right before my eyes – a mere 20 feet away from me – was this young man dressed in Victorian clothing! And he was looking at me, as if to say: “What are you doing here?”

Confused, I blinked and he had vanished!

But I knew who he was.

In fact, the painting that I have chosen to accompany this article is a close depiction of the Keats I saw that memorable day, including his look of curiosity!

Stumbling into the museum that once had been the poet’s home, I told the receptionist what I had just experienced. And she laughed, informing me that I hadn’t been the only one, because the great man often visited, but that I should not be worried about him, for he meant no harm.

And the next morning, during my sermon at Rosslyn Hill Chapel, I told the congregation about my visit from the poet, and they nodded and smiled, as if to say: “But of course!”

Happy All Souls Day to all of you, alive or otherwise!

NOTE: Don Beaudreau is a member of the Ajijic Writers Group, and a self-confessed, unabashed paranormalist.