It is a strange and wonderful truth, the way existence remembers our place in it.  There is a painting on the cave wall, and thus the cave remembers we have been there for a time.  There are shards of flint and the remains of a campfire telling something more of our time there.  Forensics- chemistry, physics, and biology read even more of the memories of a place.

It is also passing strange that we bring with us memories from other places.  Standing deep in right field, I remember hundreds of baseball games, thousands of pitches, and the never-ending hope of a ball being hit my way that would magically, somehow, land in my glove, and we would win the game.  I remember Fenway and Yankee Stadium and Camden Yards.  I remember playing catch with my dad, and getting hit by a thrown bat in T-Ball.

The place I find myself tells this story: of drinking beer and telling lies.  I bring with me my own stories, also of drinking beer and telling lies.  Out of the corner of my eye, I see a ball land in the deep grass, and I wonder where the center fielder is.  I hear the crack of a bat on a ball, and I look toward the backstop, but there’s nobody standing at home plate, nobody on the pitcher’s mound, but it is passing strange that the backstop, the pitcher’s mound, and home plate are all there.

I think “ghost” is just our word for what happens when our memories and the memories of a place combine with such potency that we can call to mind fine details.  Of people, of place, of childhood, and old age.  Of joy and sorrow.  Perhaps most of all, of hope.