If you ever see a naked ghost
please know you’re being had.
No one has ever seen a genuine naked ghost.
This is because ghosts are advertised
as checking back with living
in the clothes they died in.
Have you ever seen it otherwise?
Well, maybe Casper the Friendly Ghost didn’t die in a sheet,
but sheet-attired ghosts are really a Halloween thing.
If we didn’t don sheets when we pretend to be ghosts on Halloween,
no one would be able to distinguish our costumes from the other Halloween kids’,
the princesses, or the pirates, or Barney, or a mutant ninja turtle.
If you wore something other than a sheet,
and you were supposed to be a ghost,
you’d have to tell everyone that even though you were dressed as
Darth Vader or Super(wo)man
you were a dead Darth Vader or dead Super(wo)man.
Maybe you’d have to wear a sign around your neck saying,
“I’m actually dead and this Zorro outfit is what I died in.”
Or hey, every kid, no matter what the costume,
would be playing dead, would be a ghost, from now on.
If adopted universally that would be a great idea.
Unlike Halloween ghosts, however,
real ghosts all die attired in some kind of clothing,
which means, of course, that their clothing dies, too.
Otherwise ghosts wouldn’t be able to
walk through walls because their clothes,
if they were still living clothes,
wouldn’t be able to penetrate walls,
would be torn up or torn off.
Then, my friend, you would see a naked ghost.
Which will never happen.
When you think about it,
ghosts like Jacob Marley are impressive.
Not only did his clothes die with him,
but somehow he added on, and I quote:
cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel –
and all of them obviously deceased so they can move freely through walls with him.
How does Marley get saddled with all of these afterlife artifacts?
Is there some kind of Ross Dress for Less or Army surplus store in Purgatory
where you can gear up to suffer with lugging all this paraphernalia around?
I wonder if you have to pay for them with dead credit cards,
or are all these torturous doodads furnished for free?
And hey, since all the accursed items are dead,
what if they don’t weigh anything at all?
Maybe they’re just some kind of visual-effect punishment,
so living folks who see them, like Scrooge, catch the hint about suffering.
Amazingly, too, if a person dies naked while, say, taking a shower,
that person’s ghost will come back with at least an ex-towel
wrapped around its waist, due to protocol or maybe modesty,
picked up probably from the same place Marley shopped.
Anyway, if you do wake up one night because a ghost has disturbed your sleep,
and if that ghost is really naked, and not your spouse playing a joke on you,
then savor the moment.
Especially if it’s a good-looking ghost.
But seriously, check twice to be sure you’re not being had.
Lanning Lee 