Love, Novela [Completed]

Re: My House is Not Haunted

From: novela-harmon@bethel.edu
Date: Mon, Sep 11, 2017 at 3:48 PM
Subject: My House is Not Haunted
To: grace-k-nelson@bethel.edu

I titled my paper (in Spanish), "My house is not haunted." I'm discovering that's a common dichotomy. The Panteón de Belen (Bethlehem Cemetery) is proudly haunted because it draws tourists; the host homes are decidedly not haunted because it scares off students. So even ghosts are products of the economy. (Too bad I didn't learn that last semester; it would have garnered me some participation points in my International Economics class.)

I had to looked up the word for "haunted" to write the paper. Interestingly (to me), the word doesn't have a direct correlation in Spanish. The English word (I looked this up too) means "a place frequented by a ghost." It means that a ghost hangs out at this location on a regular basis. The word that tends to be used in Spanish, on the other hand, as a translation for haunted, as in haunted house, is embrujado - bewitched or cursed. Somehow that seems even worse.

Also, while we're on it, "ghost" doesn't exist as such either. The word I learned was fantasma, but that obviously translates as "phantom" as well as ghost. They don't mean exactly the same thing, at least the don't conjure (sorry) the same image for me. So why do we (the English-speaking world) have two different words? We must feel the need to be specific about what we don't believe in.

The idea of places being haunted is worldwide I think, and yet everyone you and I know believe it's preposterous. At least, I did until I was in the supposedly haunted house. It's almost like the reverse of "no atheists in foxholes." Or maybe it's the same. If it's just imagination, how did the first person in each culture happen to imagine something like that? I guess the biblical answer might be that there were evil spirits - demons - then, and there are demons now, and they manifest in whatever way works to their best advantage. I'm not sure which is worse, really. I guess with ghosts, at least I could pretend like they're trying to warn me about something or that they need my help finding their way or some other benign nonsensical thing they do in popular movies.

Other than the research, it was kind of therapeutic to write the paper, though not enough still for me to venture out to the bathroom during the night.

I hope you're doing better than we are. We don't even have helmets.

Love, me