September 13th to September 26th, 2022.
You’ll see a ghost this week, Virgo.
Sorry to just launch right into it. I drafted a few beginnings in which I slowly (gracefully, too) alluded to the supernatural prior to delivering such a shock, but in the end I thought this was a little snappier.
Some may lump a celestial body like my own under the umbrella of “supernatural,” which is understandable because—as I understand it—many human beings are idiots.
Just because different wares are sold under the roof of your town’s sole Eclectic Shop does not mean they are related disciplines. Incense has nothing to do with me! I find the color palette of prayer flags impossible to incorporate into a design scheme! I know your town’s Eclectic Shop displays a book about astrology beside their henna kit, but that doesn’t mean astrological insight is in lock-step with temporary hair dye
Sorry for unloading, but I’m sick of the prevailing Eclectic Shopkeep assumption that astrology is a discipline that some guy shopping for a funky beanbag may want to explore.
It’s like when you did improv and people asked you how stand up was going. You knew what they meant—they were asking you a thoughtful question, just making a small and perfectly normal mistake. You’d insist on explaining the differences between these two deranged activities, instead of just meeting the earnest inquirer where they were and answering the question.
The main difference between our situations? Astrology is divine and infinite, and improv is slated to be the subject of a ten part docu series about dowdy, previously unexamined cults (premiering 2043. Yeah, they’re still doing unnecessarily long docuseries in 2043. Rome wasn’t built in a day, etc etc).
Anyway, this week you’ll see a ghost. You’ve never seen a ghost before, and you’ll find you aren’t a big fan of the lifestyle. And who could blame you? The ghost really doesn’t make any effort to help you feel comfortable.
This is especially grating to you, as you are a skittish, jumpy individual. Your excitable nature informs the way you move through the world. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, you piously apply to this singular category of existence.
When you walk up behind someone whose back is turned, you make excess noise so the person knows you’re there. You’ll jingle keys, shuffle your feet, and occasionally exhale a dramatic sigh—all in service of helping others not be terrified by your presence.
After being this considerate for this long, it’s disappointing to discover that ghosts don’t play by the same rules. You’ll wake early in the morning—still dark—and see a young woman standing at the foot of your bed, staring at you.
Disheveled is the best way to describe the young specter. Her hair is matted and her clothes are tattered. She looks like little Cosette from Les Miserables—only slightly older and significantly scarier. Despite a lifetime of loving Les Miserables (she once spent $49 USD on an ill-fitting baseball tee that said 24601), your fandom doesn’t extend all the way to the beyond.
Before you see your ghost, you don’t even necessarily know what you think ghosts are. When people tell you their ghost stories, you believe that what they saw is true for them, but you aren’t sure what that means about the world of ghosts at large. You love rules and parameters, elements that anecdotal ghost stories always seem to lack. What are they? If they’re somewhere, could they be anywhere?
The apparition at the foot of your bed won’t do anything outwardly threatening, but you still find her presence deeply disturbing. Your ghost won’t have the same obliging countenance as a Casper. Instead, her presence feels keenly negative.
Though the ghost will only stick around for a few bone-chilling seconds, the effects of your encounter follow you through the days to come. You’ll begin showering with the bathroom door open (her defense is if the ghost appears beside her while she’s showering, she’d be less scared if the bathroom “felt bigger”—Virgo’s entire bathroom may have once been a pantry, mechanical closet, or simply the space that a refrigerator slides into).
Whenever your husband announces he’s headed on a small errand like a trip to the grocery store or a walk to the post office, you’ll leap into the air with uncharacteristic exuberance and insist on accompanying him. Normally, you live a vampiric life—leaving the house only for feedings—so your sudden eagerness to Be In The World fails to disguise that you’re afraid to be left alone with your ghost. Though it didn’t feel like she wanted to harm you, waking to her stare was pretty harm-y in its own right.
Perhaps some readers may have forgotten, but Virgo is of a literary mind—which means that sure, a ghost can scare her, but she’s still going to grasp for meaning and symbolism in this encounter as though her very life depended on it (it might, too. Who knows what ghosts are capable of! Their paths are the only ones the stars cannot see, the sole mystery to the infinite cosmos).
What could the appearance of Cosette mean, you’ll wonder. She arrives as your landlord attempts to raise your rent 26.7%. Since every other apartment in Brooklyn is basically also 26.7% more than your current rent, you’ve largely given up on moving and accepted your fate as a woman who will never eat at a restaurant again. Perhaps your ghost sees your resignation, and is urging you to leave and start anew.
Perhaps she was a stylist during her living years and is thrilled you finally understand that your face needs bangs, and she came to admire the way your flattering new do frames your face while you sleep.
Perhaps the supernatural world automatically sends a poltergeist to the homes of those unhinged enough to decorate like this:
You’ll invent a new theory almost daily for why this spirit chose to visit you. But none of your theories decentralize you as the main character. As I mentioned, ghosts lie just outside of the (mostly) boundless knowledge of the stars.
I don’t have any evidence to back up my theories, so our hypotheses should be equally considered.
I believe the ghost doesn’t care about you at all. I believe the ghost revisited an important place to her personally, for her own reasons that had nothing to do with your fortune. Maybe she saw you, maybe she didn’t. Maybe you were sleeping precisely where she used to watch the baseball games with her Pa. Perhaps your face rested exactly where her pet dog first performed a trick of obedience. Could it be that your eyes were at the particular latitude, longitude and elevation of her first heartbreak?
Perhaps to a layman like you Virgo, these theories seem implausible—your corporeal form lying exactly within the eyesight of a visiting ghost. However, to me, it seems far more impractical that a phantom would feel any personal investment whatsoever in your upcoming lease renewal.
Ask yourself this, Virgo—how could this ghost’s unfinished business have anything to do with you? Sometimes people are looking at you and seeing you, and sometimes people are looking at you and seeing themselves, Virgo.