I’ve got something of a ghost story this week. It’s not one of those scary ghost stories we used to tell around the campfire. Rather, it’s one of those modern clinical ghost stories that we take not to be scary because they’re told with a scientific air, the idea that they’re really true stories carefully and meticulously investigated, and so something quite natural which we need to understand and not fear. Right. When someone wins the Randi prize for clinical research into ghosts, I’ll believe it.
This story comes from a book I read too many years ago to recall terribly clearly, about a modern jet airliner (747/DC-10/L-1011 sort of thing) that crashed somewhere in, I think, Florida. The book (which I believe was entitled The Ghost of Flight 401 and am reconstructing as well as I can recall) went to great lengths detailing the events leading up to the crash, which seemed to include someone bumping a switch just hard enough to turn off the automatic altitude control but not hard enough to reset the gauge on the pilot’s panel so he would know that they were descending. It was a terrible crash, and a lot of people were killed. Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board investigators poured through the wreckage, and worked out what had happened fairly well. It had started when the plane, on approach to land, couldn’t get a positive confirmation that the landing gear was functional, and so asked to be diverted into a holding pattern over the Everglades while they tried to figure it out. While they were futzing around trying to check fuses and bulbs on the indicators, the plane accidentally got dropped into a slow descent, and crept toward the ground below. An air traffic controller got a glimpse of a wrong number on his screen, but wasn’t sure whether it had been an error at his end and was distracted by something else before he got back. The pilot’s altimeter was still locked into the autopilot setting, and the copilot, who had bumped his control stick when he stood up, was not in his seat to see the discrepancy revealed on his panel. By the time anyone actually was aware how low they were, it was too late to pull up, and they simply flew into the swamp at full speed.
Once the investigation was ended, there were probably several thousand parts of this plane scattered around a hanger somewhere that technically belonged to the airline. They did something quite reasonable: they went through the pieces, saved the ones that were only minimally damaged, and used these to make repairs to other, similar, jets in service. I remember in particular that one got a galley oven. Some seats were saved, and several other parts found their way into these other planes. And that, according to the book, was when the fun started. Planes that contained parts from the one that crashed started being the hosts for some very strange events. Apparitions were seen, settings on equipment were changed, and other experiences typically associated with hauntings occurred. The airline didn’t want people to think their planes were haunted; but they couldn’t ignore the stories. They hired some professional paranormal investigators.
From there, the book tells the stories of individual ghosts. I remember only one.
As mentioned, the reason the plane was in the air at all at that time was that it had already experienced a problem. It was on approach for landing, and set down the landing gear. When the gear goes down, there’s supposed to be an indicator that says it’s in place, one for each set. One of them didn’t light. That could be very serious; it could mean that the gear didn’t work, and they can’t land without getting it operational. On the other hand, it could as easily be that the bulb is burned out, or there’s a fault in the wiring, and it’s not a problem with the gear at all, but merely with the indicator.
The only reliable way to be certain is to look. The pilot sent the flight engineer down to take a look. The engineer never returned; the plane crashed into the Everglades before he was able to report his findings.
That engineer kept appearing on planes, or so they said. He startled people; he frightened people. No one wanted to see a ghost, and no one who saw one wanted to stay around long enough to interact with it. Yet it kept coming back.
Finally, the investigators were able to track down this apparition, and interact with it. It indicated to them that the landing gear was down, and then left, never to be seen again.
This is what interests me. Personally, I am doubtful of the entire story; but the idea that people are being terrorized by a spirit from beyond the grave who wants nothing more than to deliver the very important message he was trying to deliver when he was killed, to anyone who will take it, is extremely interesting. It’s the sort of Oh, THAT’S what happened that through its very quirkiness gives the story a logic and a legitimacy, even as it takes the fear from it. It is an answer to the question of why there is a ghost here that seems so human, so credible. The ghost is here because he has something very important to tell someone, and although there is no one left to tell, he still must tell it. It is a meaningless message to anyone now; surely the NTSB investigators determined that the landing gear had properly deployed, so it doesn’t even help us better understand the accident. It has no importance to us. Yet it still has import, vital import, to the messenger. Please hear the message; please tell the captain that the landing gear is working, and he can land the plane. He needs to know that.
There are, I suppose, few game worlds in which an idea like this would work. For some, the dead hunger for life, and hate the living out of envy for what cannot be transferred from the other to the one. In others, ghosts are mere nonsense, something that doesn’t exist but is believed by the superstitious. Others use ghosts as monsters with special abilities, with no real concern for the logic of where they originated or what they have become. There may be many other ways to handle the idea of a ghost; but could there not be an interesting game about such a ghost as this, who has a message to deliver, or a simple task to complete, who has been here ever so long awaiting the opportunity to do so?
In Charles Williams’ book Descent Into Hell, there is a construction worker building a house sometime late in the nineteenth century, who in his own despair and depression hangs himself from the wooden framework. Then he finds himself standing within that framework looking at his own body hanging from one of the beams. Time rolls on. The house is finished, people move in, a bedroom is built on that frame, and another man stands looking out the window at the world outside; yet beside him, unseen by him, there is a man looking that same direction, for whom this is yet the unfinished frame of a house with a body hanging from one of the beams, a body which was once his own. The question for the ghost seems to be, You’re dead; what are you going to do now? The answer might be, I have something unfinished here, something very important to me; but after that, I don’t know.
During pre-publication playtesting of Multiverser, I had been versed into a World of Darkness game; I was staying in an old home in Chicago that had been refurbished by a local church to serve as a safehouse against evil spirits. One day when I returned to it, there was a man I could barely see sitting as if in an invisible chair staring at a blank wall. He seemed completely unaware of my presence, but as the clock indicated the top of the hour, he rose, walked over near the wall, reached down as if turning off a television set, and then passed through a wall that had been recently added to go up a flight of stairs that had been removed. This was his home; it had not changed since he lived here. My presence was unnoticed and irrelevant. As long as the house remained, he would watch the news each evening and then go up to bed, as he had done every night of his lonely life.
It makes for an interesting turn on a ghost story.
Next week, something different.
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M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc. His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.
