Reprint, ‘Hauntings,’ 31 Oct. 2025

[READ THE ORIGINAL HERE]

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Dear Ghosts,

I’m fond of quoting Thomas Hobbes: ‘Imagination and Memory are but one thing.’ We might add ghosts to that list. They’re a kind of memory, too, a collective memory, or if you meet one, a hallucination, which, at least in the early days of psychiatry, was considered a ‘disease of imagination’—that is, a malignant imagination. In any case, stop trying to haunt me. I don’t believe in you. You’re just embarrassing yourself.

Cheers,

—BD

31 Oct. 2025