This month I am visiting my metaphorical lighthouse after focusing, the past nine months, on essays regarding my first twenty plus years growing up, working and living on the grounds of Danvers and Medfield State Hospitals. I have been reading a book entitled Lighthouse Ghosts, written by Norma Elizabeth & Bruce Roberts. It highlights thirteen stories of different lighthouses with documented tales of apparitions. The lighthouses are located from California to the Great Lakes in Michigan. More lighthouses found on the coast of Florida, North Carolina, Maryland, Plymouth MA and Maine. Thirteen stories in all. It is noted that Bruce Roberts has written and collaborated along with other authors ten books about lighthouses. I find that impressive. If you have a passion about the histories and stories associated with lighthouses Mr. Roberts must have a place in your library.
A few of the lighthouses mentioned in Lighthouse Ghosts, I’ve had the pleasure to visit. The latest visit took place last year. It was at the lighthouse located in St. Augustine, Florida. Before I attempted to climb to the top, I visited the famed Fountain of Youth located in St. Augustine. I needed all the help I could get! I must admit that I was so focused on each labored step up the red and white tower, accompanied by my phobic fear of heights, I didn’t notice any ghosts during that hour long visit. I was just glad to step back on the soil, proud that I did it at my age. BUT I must say that ghosts, apparitions and spectral beings are very much in my “why not?” library.
Each month I visit my metaphorical lighthouse you’ll notice I always sit at the base while I contemplate something, anything, and everything. I respect the stairs but if you’ve been following along you’ll notice each visit at my lighthouse I sit and lean. Not much climbing for me. Ghosts; we hear and read about them a lot. Not just in old lighthouses but on old battlefields like Gettysburg, Lizzie Borden’s house, Mount Washington’s Hotel, and of course a cemetery. There are a plethora of high tech Ghost Hunters throughout the world. Ghosts to be felt, heard, smelled or seen; just point the spectral techies to your ghost. (Come to think of it, I should contact them to help find the gremlins my auto mechanic can’t seem to locate!)
So you might ask why am I focused on ghosts this month? My first response is easy, the holiday season always allows Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol to rise again in my collective consciousness. ( Since first published in 1843, Dickens’ novella has never been out of print!) Of course the central character. Ebeneezer Scrooge is visited by three ghosts. These ghosts are not only scary, colorful, coherent and thoughtful, they are so focused on changing Scrooge’s miserly ways that, surprise- they succeed!
Ghosts were needed then are they needed again? Our business men are now in the mindset to begin laying off thousands of workers as we begin the holiday season. Are they also acting miserly? May be. But for the most part I think not. As I sit leaning against my metaphorical lighthouse, I look at the waves of change washing up on the rocks at my feet. For the past few decades we have had almost full employment except for the two years of lock downs to supposedly protect us until we manufactured enough masks to wear, and other scientific remedies still being debated.
Full employment. Well Nicholas Eberstadt’s 2016, (updated in 2022, post pandemic), Men Without Work, argues that we are far from full employment. In the U.S. there are millions of men who, for many reasons, choose not to work. They, for the most part are not seeking work and therefore not collecting unemployment. Hence,they do not show up in our government’s vaunted weekly unemployment statistics. Ads in place seeking people to fill vacant positions are everywhere I look. Yet Mr. Eberstadt you inform me there are millions of men between the ages of 25 and 55 who are silent, not looking for work and with no pitchforks in their hands, apparently unnoticed by the politicians and policy makers.
You might ask how do they live? May be, when they become ghosts someday, they will teach us how they lived while not working as Scrooge’s spirits taught him. As another wave crashes into my solitude, I am startled by this factoid. A few weeks ago it has been reported that the eighth billion person was born. Eight billion of us walking on Mother Earth. So many of us were laid to rest by pandemic, war, accidents, Mother Nature’s anger, or just our evil nature to each other, eight billion of us still breath her air.
So, does that mean there are less ghosts living in lighthouses today? Also any one notice ghosts are never homeless? They seem to know their home and never leave. And, finally, is there a tabulated census of ghosts?
I’ve started reading The Nickel Boys. The author, Colson Whitehead has produced many novels that have been on my must read list! Next year, during the winter, I look forward to reading Whitehead’s novel, The Intuitionist.
I wish you and your families the merriest of holidays.
Be in peace and joy!
Thank you for reading.
Mark