Morris Deschain, whose class at UMF was on Philosophy of
Religion, had set up a booth at the Farmington Fair. He was
selling copies of his new book, Tales of Styrnmouth, a
collection of ghost stories about a haunted railroad station.
"It's true," he said, "that ghosts don't exist in the real
world; but it's no accident that they appeal to most people's
imaginations. Throughout most of history the spirits of human
beings have been abruptly cut off from those who knew them, and
our natural sense of the fitness of things demands that those
spirits must go on somewhere, somehow."
"But haven't most people believed that the dead go to
heaven or hell?" asked Kathy Lee.
"Not really. It's a funny thing: that may be the official
doctrine of many churches. But when someone actually dies it's
not easy to envision them in either place. Ghosts are usually
thought to belong to people who weren't good enough to go to
heaven or bad enough to be confined to hell. They had unfinished
business on the earth - and why not? Nobody dies with all their
business finished!
"In my stories there's a ghost who made some mistakes in
his lifetime that caused much more harm than he could fairly be
blamed for. Like the rest of us, he couldn't foresee the
consequences of his actions. He has to sort out which of his
behaviors were morally wrong, which were merely errors, and which
were good actions that unpredictably had bad results. In the
process he sets more causes into motion, which in turn have
effects of their own."
"Well, don't tell me any more," said Kathy.
"I'm looking forward to reading it."
from Farmington! Farmington!
by Licia Kuenning
