"Do that one again, you whispered."

September 11, 2020 4:54 AM

"There's a ghost in your house. There has been since you moved in. You don't call the house 'haunted'; it isn't scary. The ghost is quiet and kind. They seem to care about you." "Ghosts" is a story by Blue Neustifter about "identity, support, and choosing to live." YouTube video (11 minutes, captioned) of the author reading it aloud. Neustifter posted an earlier version of this story as a Twitter thread. Content notes by the author: "second-person ('you') protagonist that is implied to be transfeminine; dysphoria; depression".

On Twitter, Neustifter (a.k.a. Azure Husky) posted "Ghosts" in a thread of about 40 tweets, starting: "A ghost who lives in your house but all they do is rearrange your fridge magnets to spell out self care and helpful messages"...

You go downstairs in the morning, reach to open the door and pull out some juice

DONT FORGET YOU HAVE A DOCTOR APPOINTMENT AT 2 say the fridge magnets

Then they wiggle and slide around

ALSO YOURE ALMOST OUT OF ICE CREAM YOU SHOULD PICK UP SOME TODAY

and later:

When the dress arrives you panic and leave it in the package for several days.

Eventually the package is moved to the top of your dresser, still sealed.

THE CAT WAS CHEWING ON IT says the fridge

TAKE YOUR TIME

(I'm sorry but this thread has aged out of ThreadReader so I can't link to a compiled version of the Twitter thread. If you find one, please link in the comments?)

The Otherwise Award (formerly the Tiptree Award) included the Twitter version of "Ghosts" on its 2018 long list. Editor Bogi Takács included "Ghosts" in the anthology Transcendent 4: The Year's Best Transgender Themed Speculative Fiction. And fans have made an illustration and a zine version.

posted by brainwane (7 comments total)

I love this story and Blue's reading of it. I wish I'd had a ghost when I was thinking about transition, but be the ghost you want to see in the world, I guess.
posted by death valley compound at 5:31 AM on September 11, 2020 [3 favorites]

This is lovely, thanks for posting it!
posted by LobsterMitten at 8:21 AM on September 11, 2020

You can also read the up-to-date story as the transcript of the first link. (Three dots above subscribe/right of Save.) Since it was captioned manually, it has nice formatting and everything.

Also, another lovely story!
posted by Anonymous Function at 10:32 AM on September 11, 2020

"As the months go on, the hard things feel less hard. They're still difficult, but you find that facing obstacles isn't as scary when you have a sense of who you are. And sometimes you think its kind of nice, to know you've done things that are scary and made it through."

it sure is dusty in here
posted by Is It Over Yet? at 11:28 AM on September 11, 2020 [1 favorite]

Does anyone else remember Text Messages from a Ghost, by Danny Lavery back when he was writing under the name Mallory Ortberg?

I wonder if it's the same ghost
posted by babelfish at 3:41 PM on September 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

Beautifully written story, I feel like everyone could use that ghost, for all kinds of things impacting their heads. A caring sounding board and sense checker.
posted by MattWPBS at 4:42 AM on September 12, 2020

I love this story <3
posted by sibboleth at 8:55 AM on September 12, 2020