The Wild Hunt (https://wildhunt.org/tag/ghosts)
My father began asking me to go home sometime in August. He started with subtle hints – the aroma of freshly brewed coffee, random old music, and snapshots of shared memories. But I should mention that no embodied being in my home drinks coffee, and my dad left this realm 16 years ago.
That little wet and bedraggled baby shone his light onto a deep, haunted wound and showed me that my part of that haunted space could heal now because the rest is healing, too. It is a big release to let a ghost go. To let that much darkness go. To cleanse a haunting.
The U.K.’s Ministry of Defence and archaeologists are working together to learn as much as they can from Flower’s Barrow hillfort before the site is lost to the sea. And many residents and visitors to some of the U.K.’s historical and notable sites relate their unearthly experiences.
For the past few years, troubled as they have been, the energy leading into the arrival of autumn has been all about getting ready; preparing for lean times, stocking up, building community connections, and helping one another. That need still exists, of course, and is more important to be met than ever it has been.
That sorrow began to diminish when, a few nights after he died in October of 1974, I saw my Grampa LaPorte for what I thought would be the last time. I was 8 years old, and his was the first ghost I saw that I realized in the moment actually was a ghost.