A Real Christmas Ghost Story

Before reading another word, I must hereby state that I do not believe in ghosts. (The reader will shortly discover why such an adamant declaration is integral to the understanding of this particular story.)

When you’re dead, you’re dead. You don’t get a special ticket to wander around as a ghost, whatever the heck that is.

Now on with this (possible) ghost story:

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It was a briskly cold and clear - and quite windy - Christmas Day that year.

Christmas Day, with all its joy and celebration, had come and gone.

It was now almost midnight. I found myself standing in a Bristol cemetery, visiting the graves of my dearly beloved parents.

To say I was feeling “down” may be the ultimate understatement. As my friends know, I suffer from intermittent severe depression (which seems to be a common fate for many of us deep thinking-introspective-empathetic personality types).

No, I wasn’t going to commit suicide. Not really. But I must admit it was on my mind. As I looked up from the graves and toward the stars, I was thinking about how tiny and insignificant we all are compared to the incomprehensible vastness of the universe. Such moments can sometimes be somewhat precarious to our further existence. But they can also prove to be immensely humbling and eternally enriching, should we survive them.

Then out of the cold darkness … and above the wind (which managed to swirl up a few leftover crinkly brown autumn leaves - I could scarcely see them, but I could clearly hear them) … I suddenly heard the distinctly unmistakable sound of human footsteps behind me.

I turned around to see the origin of those footsteps come stumbling past me in the moonlight. At maybe twenty paces away, I saw Old Joe.

I hadn’t laid eyes on this dear soul in at least ten years, since I had last taught him at the Bristol Jail. Old Joe appeared to be stumbling stone drunk - as was his normal natural state when not incarcerated.

“Old Joe!” I called out, and immediately walked swiftly toward him. “Are you okay?”

But as I walked toward him, Old Joe was nowhere to be seen nor heard. At all.

Yet I’d have sworn on a truckload of Mountain Dew that I’d both seen and heard him.

---

Six months passed. I was visiting with another ex-inmate/student of mine, Jeffrey Vineyard. As we sat side-by-side on a bench in downtown Bristol, I asked Jeffrey if he knew whatever had happened to Old Joe.

“Mr. T.,” he replied, “Old Joe’s been dead nearly 10 years now.”

Jeffrey saw how much his words startled me. “But that can’t be true, my man.” I insisted. “I saw Old Joe in a graveyard late one night, stumbling around drunk. It was just last Christmas.”

Jeffrey didn’t reply. He just stared off into the distance, blankly. An uncomfortable moment passed.

“Jeffrey, how did Old Joe die?” I asked.

My friend let his head fall toward his lap. He whispered one word. He whispered it in a voice so low that I could scarcely hear him. But he didn’t need to repeat what he said. “Suicide.”

---

Perhaps it really was Old Joe’s ghost that I saw, visiting from the Great Beyond - as did Marley’s ghost to Scrooge in the Charles Dickens classic, ‘A Christmas Carol’.

Perhaps I saw an angel, traveling on a similarly honorable mission of mercy as might have Old Joe’s ghost.

Perhaps I saw someone who strongly resembled Old Joe. Old drunks do stumble around a lot alike, you know. That is perhaps the most likely explanation. Whenever we apply “Occam’s razor”, the name given for the time-honored and not-really-hard-for-anyone-to-do method of deductive reasoning, we find that the simplest explanation of any event is, more often than not, the truth.

Whatever happened in that graveyard, I choose to call it a miracle. I may not believe in ghosts, but I do believe in miracles.

And what is Christmas, if not a miracle?