The Ghosts We Bring

Parvale wasn’t a haunted house in the traditional sense. No spirit was tethered there, no crime unsolved. Instead it acted as a resonator: manifesting your guilt and sins as shades.

People came there, brought by word of mouth: the penitent, the defiant, the masochistic. Some fled screaming into the night. Few found what they were looking for. None came more than once.

I asked the caretaker, the only person who could stand to stay, what his secret was.

“First, you have to stand before your sins and beg forgiveness,” he said.

“And then?”

He smiled. “Then you have to forgive yourself.”