On Ghosts: An Exclusive Guest Post From T. L. Huchu, Author of The Library of the Dead — Our March Speculative Fiction Pick
Paperback $19.99
The Library of the Dead
The Library of the Dead
By T. L. Huchu
In Stock Online
Paperback $19.99
Part mystery, part dystopic thriller, and part magical academia with a lot of heart. This contemporary fantasy mash-up has just the right amount of supernatural and horror elements to keep you up at night, but it’s Ropa, our precocious narrator and resident ghostalker, who instantly becomes indelible by the end of the first page. Here, Tendai Huchu discusses ghosts, “bringing up the bodies” and sleeping with the lights on.
Part mystery, part dystopic thriller, and part magical academia with a lot of heart. This contemporary fantasy mash-up has just the right amount of supernatural and horror elements to keep you up at night, but it’s Ropa, our precocious narrator and resident ghostalker, who instantly becomes indelible by the end of the first page. Here, Tendai Huchu discusses ghosts, “bringing up the bodies” and sleeping with the lights on.
I confess to being one of those adults with an enduring fear of the dark. Turn off the lights and the terrors from my childhood come crawling out from under the bed. The ominous creaking of the floorboards become spectral footsteps. Is that just the wind rattling the door or some supernatural entity seeking entrance? Whose cold hand brushed against my cheek? I wake drenched in sweat and scramble to turn on the light. There, see, I am a rationalist, an atheist; there’s nothing there. Go back to bed. All is well.
Psychologists claim our brains are hardwired to believe in ghosts and the supernatural. Apparently, atheists tend to “report a higher belief in the paranormal than religious folks” and a 2019 YouGov poll showed Brits are more likely to believe in ghosts than in God, so I find myself in good company. Ghosts appear in every culture, and it is said that one’s beliefs, religious or not, also determine the sorts of ghosts you’ll encounter. Unfortunately for me, being Zimbabwean, I’m unlikely to meet Casper the friendly ghost, since the culture I am from predominantly believes in malevolent entities. I can’t recall any stories of positive encounters with ghosts from the Shona culture. They are wandering spirits outside the sanctified realms of the ancestors. These spirits haven’t been “brought home” by their people using the necessary rituals after death, so they are lost, and their confusion and anger makes them dangerous. But I live in Edinburgh, the ghost capital of the western world, and am often shocked by “ghost tours” and the idea that people pay money to stimulate encounters with the supernatural.
The commercial element is important, since dealing with the dead has always been left to a specialist class like n’angas, sangomas, sharmans, mediums or priests, who carry out this sort of work for reward. The work is fundamentally the same; all that differs is how it manifests culturally. That’s why Ropa Moyo, our hero in the Edinburgh Nights series, is a ghostalker. She charges money to deliver messages between the living and the dead. Our culture monetizes everything, so why not the afterlife? Ropa plays the mbira, a traditional Zimbabwean musical instrument, used in ceremonies to contact spirits, in order to speak with (mostly) Scottish ghosts. Ghosts, ghouls, spectres, poltergeists, spooks, wraiths, presences, apparitions, phantasms, visitants, drive the series. But what are we really talking about when we speak of these things?
On the most literal, superficial level, ghosts are the souls of departed humans. Ernest Becker in his seminal “The Denial of Death” speaks of this need we have to cheat death that manifests culturally in fascinating ways. Nothing is greater proof of this desire than the pervasive belief in ghosts. Death is not the end; we go on, even as our bodies expire. We defy physics, the laws of entropy, by moving into a different plane of existence — we are immortal.
Then why are the departed so needy, often demanding propitiation, sometimes downright malevolent? The presence of a ghost often reveals some kind of unfinished business. Wait, wasn’t that a Patrick Swayze movie? Never mind. The sorts of things Ropa deals with range from the trivial (passing on cake recipes) to the dire (tracking missing fortunes some are willing to kill for). I’ve been to enough funerals to know that suppressed feuds and familial animosity can erupt in these crucial moments. For the living, death unearths things long swept under the carpet. This same truth applies to nations, in Ropa’s case Scotland.
No ghost is meant to linger forever. It seems to me they exist to serve some sort of psychological function, as a way for us to engage with past injustice and ultimately to find catharsis either by vanquishing them or easing their passing. My favourite ghosts are not the horror movie variety that merely exist for a good jumpscare. Don’t get me wrong, the fear factor is a huge part of the draw for me, but I want the fear to lead to something more. When I was a kid, it was the ghosts of conscience that plagued Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens’s wonderful “A Christmas Carol”. They helped him become less of a dick and to live this life more meaningfully. I also love the ghosts in Netflix’s brilliant “Haunting of Hill House”. Yeah, they were freaky, but what they represent means so much more.
The ghosts Ropa Moyo encounters in the Edinburgh Nights series draw her deeper into Scottish history, particularly the Scottish Enlightenment which did so much to shape the world we live in today. They open the door to her adventures and, in so doing, get her to ask questions about the society she lives in. In writing this series, I’m trying to “bring up the bodies”, and Scotland is littered with them. In dredging this history up, I’ve seen amazing, awful things. They fascinate and scare me in equal measure. And that’s why, for now, I choose to sleep with the lights on.
