The Ghost Collector

Your first date isn’t going well. The food is great but you can't enjoy it because this guy is just too much.

His eyes make you feel uncomfortable, he’s not yelling or raising his voice but he just seems too intense.

You can tell he’s sincere, but he’s also insecure. He’s showing too much too fast— putting his whole self out there. And it's offputting.

He comes across as desperate, and lonely.

Anyone in your shoes would be turned off.

Such a letdown, because his dating profile made him seem like a great fit— exactly what you were looking for.

You just want this date to be over. But you can’t cut things short, you can’t just leave.

As strange as this man seems, you get the vibe that he’s harmless, and you can’t bring yourself to hurt his feelings.

If you came out and told him there’s no future and no chance, he’d be crushed.

So you muster a smile and manage a nod, and try to listen to his awkward, boring rant:

“I didn’t always believe in ghosts though.”

His eyes are wide and earnest, he’s even raised his eyebrows, like exclamation points.

But he's still boring.

“When I was younger I thought the very idea was silly. When someone dies, they disappear. When someone disappears, they’re gone. I couldn’t see plausibility— or the sense— in a person lingering after they’re gone. I was too optimistic back then. Or maybe I was just too naive. I know better now. I know the departed are never really gone. They come back to stay!”

There’s a nervousness in his gaze, a projected anxiety. It’s as if he’s begging your attention, despite a quiet certainty you’ll deny it and reject him.

You sit patiently, though your smile is halfway out the door.

He reaches out with both hands, gesturing for you to wait, though you haven’t even moved. “I know you don’t believe me, because I wouldn’t have believed me. But I’ve seen them. The ghosts. I know they’re real. Real as you and me. Over the years… I’ve begun collecting them. Like mementos of lives spent and lost.”

He thumps his chest, “I have eleven ghosts. I can still hear them whenever it’s quiet.”

He meets your gaze and nods proudly. “Some people go all their life without ever catching a glimpse of a real ghost, and then there’s me. I accumulate real ghosts. I think, on some level, I must be special. Like, there's something about me. Something in my aura projects an openness that ghosts are simply drawn to. Like a moth to a flame, for ghosts I am a sort of beacon.”

You try not to roll your eyes. Not only is he a paranormal investigator, he’s a self important paranormal investigator. This whole dinner date could have been avoided if he’d put that shit in his bio.

***

Your food is gone, and he's still talking. Rambling on about each of the ghosts in his collection, going into unwanted detail about what each ghost was like in life.

One ghost was a tall blonde woman who worked as a lawyer. Another was a woman with very dark hair, and an artsy personality. One ghost was very religious. Another was a psychologist.

And so on and so forth, and you know if you have to hear any more of this drivel you might just shout.

You need to come up with some excuse to put an end to this.

You give your waitress a look, hoping she'll notice your discomfort and swoop in with the check, for a rescue.

But she's rushing between tables and doesn't seem to see.

"Well, I'm loving this conversation. Are you up for dessert?"

You shake your head, you pat your stomach, you say something about being too stuffed. You see your opportunity-- you add in a quick line about having an early morning.

He nods. "Okay, I understand. Well, I hope we can meet again soon."

And just like that you're finally on the off-ramp. You feel a weight sliding off your shoulders, you can breath full and deep again.

There's a brief awkward hem and haw over who should pay the bill.

Once that's settled, you both stand. You quickly shoulder your purse so it rests between you and him.

He still seems harmless, but his desperation is blazing now, you get the vibe he's gonna try and lean in for a hug, and you just want some barrier between you.

You understand he’s yearning for human contact, but that’s not your responsibility and you hold no obligation.

You secretly wish him well, but breath a sigh of relief that you won’t be the one to heal him.

He says: “Well, thanks for coming out. I really enjoyed seeing you, should we plan for sometime next week?"

You stammer a quick excuse that your week is really packed, but you'll check your schedule and get back to him.

The minute you say all that, you wonder if the gentler thing wouldn't have been to just be direct-- to tell him, thanks but no.

He raises his arms and flashes a pitiful smile. "A good night hug?"

You give him a one-armed side hug, a quick tap and you pull away quickly-- he doesn't smell bad or feel dirty, but still... you didn't want to touch him, or be touched by him. Now you're yearning for a shower.

And you hope you aren’t leading him on.

*

That night your phone dings, and you see his name in your push notifications.

You flip the phone face down, and push it away.

You tell yourself you’ll respond tomorrow, when you have the energy. Right now you just can’t.

Then it dings again, so you silence it and find a show to binge.

*

In the morning you check your phone, and you see the guy from last night has blown it up. He texted four messages, each several paragraphs long.

He’s also in your socials, sent a couple DMs. You don’t read the texts yet, and you don’t open the DMs. It’s just too early for this shit.

You’ll do it after work.

When you actually have time to figure out how to let him down gently.

*

There was a storm that led to a power outage at work. You find a couple tasks you can still work on, without electricity. But once those are gone, you’ve got nothing to do. While everyone waits for the power to come back on, you glance at your phone.

The guy, the weird ghost obsessed guy, he’s sent another couple messages.

You know you need to nip this in the bud. Poor guy, poor weird guy has gotten way too attached and all too quickly.

And here you are stuck at work with no work to do. You decide now’s a good time to dig into the unhappy task of actually reading his messages so you can respond with a polite rejection.

The very first line in the very first message makes you wrinkle your lips in disgust. “Good morning beautiful, how’d you sleep?….”

Not only an unwanted compliment, but a forced sense of closeness. You don’t want him calling you beautiful— you don’t even want him thinking it. And asking how you slept, wishing you a good morning? Too much from a guy you don’t want. Ick.

You take a deep breath, to keep reading.

“I really loved hanging out with you last night, didn’t want our time together to end. But I also wouldn’t want to make your day harder. I know you said you had an early morning, so I hope you got a good nights rest. And that your day gets off to a good start :) no pressure and no rush, but I definitely want to see your pretty face again. How’s this week looking for you, and how do you feel about sushi?”

If you liked him at all, maybe this message would have worked. But you don’t and it doesn’t. You just feel pressured, nagged even.

Part of you wants to do the easy thing: just block him and forget he exists. But you know that would hurt him, and you think you’d feel bad, so you resolve to give him an answer, even if it’s not the one he wants to hear.

But after his pressing invitations, there’s another wall of text, though this is going into rant territory.

Even given the circumstances, sitting at work with nothing to do but wait for power, you really can’t be bothered to read that crap.

Your time is your own. And you’re thankful you have the distance of a phone between you.

You figure you’ll just reply to his invitation to second date and finally have this done.

But as you start to tap out a gentle ‘no thank you’ the lights flicker and the power comes back on.

Some of the old women you work with begin to applaud, but you just put your phone back in your pocket and get back to work.

For the rest of the work day, your unwanted admirer is out of sight out of mind.

*

When you get back home all you want is to kick off your shoes and put your feet up and have some food.

You’re trying to be good about what you eat, but it’s been a strange day and you don’t feel like cooking.

Still, you’re good about it. You choose some fresh veggies, and a little dip.

Then you sit down for another episode of the show you started last night.

And your phone rings.

It’s that guy.

And it’s a call, not a text.

You really don’t want the confrontation and awkwarkdness of telling him you’re not interested in hanging out— it’s too hard to do that directly over the phone.

You know it’s considered impolite to break up over text, and he might think of it as a break up, but you were never together. You only went on one date and never expressed any interest in another.

So a text should be fine.

You groan. His timing couldn’t be worse. You just started to relax and unwind after work.

But you don’t want to leave him in the dark, better to just get this done and not have to think about it or him again.

You let his call go to voicemail, but he leaves none.

Then you pick up your phone to finally buckle down and text your reply.

You start to tap out a message about how he’s a really nice guy but just not what you’re looking for at the moment, and how you don’t want to go on another date with him but you do wish him well and hope he finds a good fit for him— you take your time because you wanna get this message just right.

You must be firm, but you don’t want to hurt him. You gotta let him down but still be encouraging and not crush his spirits.

You put in effort, to make sure this message isn’t unduly hurtful.

But before you can finish putting your words together your phone dings, and a message from him pops up.

Your brow furrows as you read, wondering how he texted so much so fast.

“So, you never read my messages last night. Or when you woke up. Then you did read them around noon today, but you left me on read with no reply! I knew what that meant, right away: you didn’t want to see me again. That was obvious. But still, I STUPIDLY gave you the benefit of the doubt. I thought maybe you were just having a crazy day or extreme circumstances and that eventually you’d atleast have the common decency to tell me ‘no’ directly. So I wrote up this message and saved it in my drafts but then I held out for a little while to see if maybe once you got home you’d finally reply. At this point I already knew you weren’t gonna. But I wasn’t going to send this right away. Common decency demanded I gave you one last chance. Right? So I called. All in the hopes you’d have the spine to answer and give me a clean rejection. Do I not deserve some fucking closure? But when I called, you IGNORED my call. If you’re reading this message now, then I know everything I need to know and you don’t get any more chances. Guess I’m collecting yet another ghost. It’s a pity because at first I really liked you, but it could never work out between us, because I’m a decent person who would never ghost somebody. It’s bad enough you ghosted me, but I have lots of experience with this, and it just rolls off my shoulders. I almost wish I could just look the other way, but I can’t. I know if I let you off the hook, you’ll ghost another poor guy just like you ghosted me. And I cannot condone that behavior because I know other guys are bound to be more fragile. See ya soon, bitch.”

The realization hits you like a ton of bricks.

Your eyes feel like bowling balls in your skull, with the weight of this message. He’s not just some weird guy anymore. Two lines scream danger:

“Once you got home…. See ya soon, bitch.”

He’s watching you, the realization is heavier than a ton of bricks. You dial 911 and run to lock your doors.

You set the phone on speaker.

Then you huddle with your back to a wall, your body is tense and your ears begin to prickle.

Every little sound outside sets you on edge.

You remember him saying something about collecting other ghosts. Was he just talking about people who ghosted him? And you wish you’d listened more closely to his rant in the restaurant. You thought he was some wannabe paranormal investigator, but he was this all along?

What did he do to them? Did he kill them?

You go to reread that last message he sent and you see it’s been edited:

“I know you’ve already called the police. That’s okay, they’ll just come and take your report. But they won’t find anything actionable during their visit. And it takes time for digital forensics to analyze edited messages and see the originals. For now they’ll clear your house. But it won’t be to protect you, because they won’t believe you’re in danger. It’ll just be to shut you up. They’ll reassure you that a message is just a message— with no direct threat there won’t be anything for them to act on. They might even promise to make a couple patrols past your place. You’ll show them my dating profile. They might guess I used a fake name, but they won’t care because that’s the norm on apps like that. And in their eyes you’ll just be some lonely person who got in too deep on some wonky online hookup. They’ll think you’re a slut or they’ll think you THINK you have a stalker. They won’t take you seriously.”

And just as you finish reading the message changes. He’s edited it again. Your hands shake as you read the message you’ll be showing the police:

“Sorry for blowing up your phone the past day or so. I really enjoyed chatting with you on our date and was hoping you’d want to meet again, but I can take a hint. I wish you would have just told me straight up that I wasn’t your type, but don’t worry I won’t bother you again. Hope you find what you’re looking for elsewhere. Have a great week anyway.”

***

***

Authors note:

I wrote this for the “Everything Looks Better from Far Away” challenge.

It’s partially a story about how sometimes nice guys only seem that way, and how a gentle face could hide a monster.

On that note, here’s the creepy, stalker ish song I was listening to when I wrote it:

But this story is also a reminder for me personally that ghosting isn’t always a deliberate or personal thing.

I actually just got ghosted by a woman I was really beginning to like. And while it’s a let down I try to remind myself that there could be a million reasons why somebody might ghost someone else— it hurts, it’s not something I’d deliberately do to anybody else… but if someone does it to me that’s not necessarily damning.

The ghoster in my story didn’t do anything wrong.

Things come up, life is full of distractions, obligations, and higher priorities. Ultimately I think when somebody gets ghosted the best thing that they can do is try to remember that everyone’s got a full life going on behind the scenes, so it’s good to have a little patience. Getting hurt by the act is actually kind of a self centered response, because it sort of makes the exchange all about one’s self and forgets that the ghoster might, for one reason or another, be unable to just be direct.

Long story short: as disappointing and uncomfortable as it is to be ghosted I just remind myself that I’m not entitled to other peoples time or attention.

Also, for what it’s worth: I think this is the first time I’ve ever written a story in the second person. For me it’s kind of an experiment. Wide open to criticism, about what worked or didn’t work!

And if you’d like to read another horror-take on this challenge, I also wrote this: