It started out as an experiment. My partner and I couldn’t get our hands on a proper spirit box, one of the classic ghost hunting machines that automatically scans radio stations to catch bits of words and phrases. The theory behind the device is that spirits can use the random chance to communicate, forming words out of lingering phonemes and dangling vowels in order to communicate. We thought that spirits other than the human dead might enjoy using it as well, and, thankfully, there’s an app for that.
We downloaded the application that, research told us, cycled through the biggest database and avoided some of the tricks other apps might try. (One app earned its low rating by including a list of pre-recorded spooky words like “Dracula” that it interspersed in the random noise.) Then we sat down, hailed the deity we thought would have the most fun with a new toy, and fired up the machine.
“Where should I put your altar in the new house?” I asked Loki, settling back into the couch as my partner Bat sat with zir headphones on, listening to the random noises that were all ze could hear. “Do you like where it is?”
“People are angry,” he said, stilted, as Bat relayed the message.
“Who’s angry?” I asked, a little alarmed.
“Beatrice.”
“I don’t know a Beatrice,” I said. I could hear the hiss and buzz of white noise coming from the headphones, cranked up as they were, and a prickle of fear curled around the base of my spine.
“Weird,” the voice said, and changed the subject.
Afterwards, when I had time to sit, I pulled out a tarot deck and followed up with a form of communication I knew better. Who was Beatrice? I asked, and got a much clearer answer. Someone who hadn’t moved on, who was upset because I didn’t follow her religion, who was lingering in my new apartment. The same airy and bright apartment that had felt welcoming the moment I stepped in to tour it.
There was a time in my life where news of a haunting would have made it impossible to step back into any space. Now, I was mostly curious. I laid down a card to ask what I should do about it.
Nothing, the card said. Don’t worry about her. Things like this only have power if you give it to them.
A collection of vintage radios on a shelf in a thrift shop [Raw Pixel, public domain]
We got the idea to experiment with the spirit box from a web series that, a friend of a friend had assured us, was cursed. “Ward up,” we were advised, “before watching it.” And so we did, burning a candle and donning protective charms as we lounged on the couch and binged a season and a half of content.
I expect curses to be insidious, malevolent things, things that capture the attention and bend the will. What I didn’t expect was ten episodes of sheer, unbroken boredom. “Surely,” I said to Bat, “they’re going to drop the beat at some point. Surely it’s going to get interesting.”
Ze just grinned at me. “You’re so angry,” ze said, gesturing. “You’ve been angry for six episodes. I bet they’re eating that right up.”
I paused, and then grinned and shook my head. “Mostly I’m annoyed,” I said, my good humor returning. “I just wanted something interesting. Do you think it’s because we warded too well? Would this be fascinating, if we let down our guard?”
“I think this is the curse,” ze said. “Or the magic, or whatever it is. I think they’re dragging it out, building the tension, eating that. Delayed gratification is a liminal space, right? It’s like they’re building a battery.”
I rolled my shoulders, and let go of the annoyance as well as I could, tried to see the humor in it. “Well it’s very cleverly done,” I said, and smiled. “Let’s do something else for a while.”
A person in the booth at a radio station [AndrzejRembowski, Pixabay]
I used to laugh off people who talked about psychic vampires until I watched What We Do In The Shadows. While three of the protagonists are classic vampires, with all of the fangs and grave dirt that entails, the fourth is a mediocre looking man named Colin Robinson, who draws his energy from his victims through boredom and annoyance. Rather than hypnosis or brute force, Colin Robinson holds his victims in place through politeness and obligation, droning on in a way that renders them helpless to leave the conversation, until, inevitably, they fall comatose and slump to the floor.
While I hesitate to accuse anyone of draining energy with malicious intent, I know the siren pull of obligation. The moment I am in a room with someone else, my instinct is to monitor their needs and their preferences, shaping my own to match. It’s an instinct that has saved me in many situations, one I developed to protect myself, a central pillar that structures everything about me. Without it, on my own, I am at a loss.
My recent move means that I have pieces of my life splayed out across a dozen surfaces. Everywhere I put my hand, it lands on a half-finished project or a dangling thread. I abandon work half-done, turn my attention elsewhere until the needs I can’t avoid – sleep, food, light – force me out of the cycle and into a moment of rest. Slowly, in pieces, my house coalesces around me. I have never been more aware of the power I wield with my attention.
This doesn’t, as far as I can tell, mean that I should only pay attention to weighty and important things. Far from it. I am relearning the value in long nights of reading and time spent in meaningless conversation, the recharge found in letting my attention fade and go nonspecific while I’m walking or cooking. But when it comes to magic, I am learning that having a strong intent is only the mechanism of my working. The way I leverage my attention, how I allow it to be diverted or used, is the water powering the wheel of every spell.
It’s a hard thing to realize, when my attention is constantly in a dozen places, flipping channels fast enough that words are lost and tasks are dropped in the shuffle. Turning the full force of my thoughts, what I’m sure elder magicians would call my will, onto one topic for any length of time is a struggle. I can, however, if I am careful and cautious, notice where it’s being pulled. As I settle into a new life, the work ahead of me is not what to spend my time on – there is always something – but where to avoid wasting it.
I pick up and put down rules about this as if I am trying on clothes, looking to see how they fit and how they fold around my life, where the corners wrinkle. I promised myself that I would only build out three altars in the new space, so that I could focus on a limited number of connections – but the altars multiplied anyway, stretching to fill out the many nooks and crannies of my life. I decided to maintain a tighter schedule with my chores, stewarding my space with more care – which left boxes packed and piles of ephemera with nowhere to be stored in drifts around a spotless kitchen.
I am feeling out priorities with trial and error, cutting down until I notice something vital by its lack. As I find them out, I feel things sloughing off more than I notice their lack. What do I do, when left to my own devices? What had I done, before now? What is the signal in my life, and what is the noise?
Bulova 870s series Transistor Radio from 1962 [Mister rf, Wikimedia Commons, CC 4.0]
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” is my constant refrain, these days. It’s the undercurrent that swells into every conversation, the words I mutter as I lean against the wall with another open box in my arms. I have pushed through the great and cataclysmic change, and now I am trying to imagine the calm and hopeful light that shines on the other side. I am called on to create a space I want to live in, a life I want to live. There are a million aspects of that, dozens of urgent issues that call for my immediate attention. The hours in the day are finite.
I do not have a vision of what I want to be, a central goal to organize the infinite pressing issues of each day around. What I have, instead, is a growing list of lacunae, spaces where my self-imposed obligations used to be. I am growing into them, and the static is getting fainter. I am listening for the message that lies underneath.
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