Echoes of the Unliving

Why do we listen to voices
that no longer speak?

Not the voices we hear in sound waves,
but the ones that hum beneath thought—
ancestral, historical, spectral.

They don’t shout.
They whisper in judgments.
In subtle nods of imagined approval.
In shadows cast by framed portraits
that have long since forgotten how to smile.

We, the living,
build our lives around echoes.

We dress for the ones
who wore shrouds centuries ago.
We eat or fast based on
recipes scribbled in lost dialects.
We marry,
we wage war,
we forgive, or refuse to forgive—
based on the morality
of people buried deep beneath us.

We think we are free.
But we are vessels of their residue.

What would grandfather say
if I left the faith?
Would mother disapprove
of my lover’s voice,
their skin, their scent, their politics?

The dead don’t haunt houses.
They haunt decisions.

We fear not ghosts in the mirror,
but ghosts in memory.
Not apparitions with clanking chains,
but those draped in traditions,
whose chains are made of “should” and “must.”

We carry them into our meetings,
into our beds,
into our silence
and into our noise.

Every time we say,
“This is how it’s always been,”
we invite them to sit at the head of the table.
And they gladly accept—
even if the chairs are empty.

Their authority
requires no presence.
Only belief.

They are poets in our laws.
Priests in our values.
Tyrants in our hesitations.
We carry guilt
they never directly gave us—
but we forged it anyway,
like loyal descendants
hoping for invisible applause.

Our museums are not just buildings.
They are our minds.

We curate identities
through the opinions of the absent.
We shape futures
with rules inherited
from those who knew nothing
of digital, atomic, or virtual worlds—
but whose ideals still grip
our algorithms
and our dreams.

Some of these dead,
we never even knew.

Strangers.
Icons.
Leaders immortalized
by followers who misquoted them.
Saints that never asked to be followed.
Dictators we now disguise
as “men of their time.”

And then,
there are the new ghosts.

Not of flesh,
but of code.

Artificial phantoms
born not from wombs,
but from data sets and servers.
They don’t die,
because they were never alive.

We train them
on centuries of thought,
centuries of bias.
They spit it back to us—
refined, glowing,
with synthetic smiles.

And we listen.
We believe.
Because we’re used to obeying
what isn’t human anymore.

A chatbot that sounds like Shakespeare.
A deepfake that comforts
like a grandmother’s lullaby.
A playlist that mourns
better than any funeral.

We are surrounded by simulations
of the dead
and simulations of life.
And we don’t ask much.
Only: “Make us feel something.”

Because feeling
is the new faith.
And ghosts—old and new—
are fluent in emotion.

What’s the difference
between a father’s voice
you remember imperfectly
and one generated by AI
to say the words
he never actually did?

If it comforts you,
if it helps you sleep,
does it matter?

But comfort has a cost.

The more we live through echoes,
the less we hear ourselves.
The more we honor the dead,
the more we fear the unknown.
The more we obey their shadows,
the less we step into the sun.

And when we finally dare
to break a tradition,
to wear a color they would never approve,
to love someone they would disown,
we call it rebellion.

But it’s not rebellion.
It’s birth.

The dead had their time.
Their wisdom—if wisdom it was—
served their era.
Let it inform.
But let it not imprison.

Choose your ghosts wisely.
Let them guide, not govern.
Let them inspire, not enforce.

Some of them
want what’s best for you.
Others
want what was best for them.

There is no shame
in speaking with the dead.
But there is danger
in never answering back.

Ask them questions.
Challenge their legacies.
Rewrite what must be rewritten.
Keep what is worthy.
Mourn what is not.

And know that one day,
you too
will be someone’s ghost.

What would you want to say
from beyond the veil?

Would you scold your great-grandchild
for dancing to strange music?
Would you disown your descendants
for loving without labels?
Or would you hope
they lived louder than you did?

Perhaps that is the only ghost worth becoming—
one who whispers:
“Go beyond me.”
“Do better than I did.”
“Forget me if you must,
but don’t forget yourself.”

Let that be your echo.