The Essence of Ghost - SCP Foundation

The crowded theater shouts encore! encore! So too does the mystic crave the return of the performer.

The desire for a final word from the dead is one the undisciplined occultist should strive to resist. I did not always believe this, of course, but my life has yielded ample evidence for what I’ve come to regard as the most dangerous sorcery—not for its direct threat to life or liberty, for there will always be more accursed and wretched spells, but for its relative ease of access and tantalizing opportunities.

I am speaking, of course, of the séance. The ultimate encore. And the ultimate fallacy.

- Lyle Burnley (Collected Sayings of the Burnley Dynasty, 2001)

We open to a dark room. A fireplace glows, illuminating the profile of a figure sitting in a rose-pink armchair, deep in thought. The individual—a man, tired, dressed in plain clothing—stokes the fire with a metal point. One hand on the fire iron. One on his temple. He reaches down with his ungloved hand and places another log into the pyre. The fire roars and the room’s personality becomes briefly visible.

The architecture suggests late Victorian—a deep ruby floral wallpaper, two faded blue couches. A fractal gold rug weaves spirals forever. The armchairs form a ring around an oak coffee table, stained in bright crescent moons. An ancient book rests on its surface. It’s black as sin. Rainbow velvet tongues lap at notable passages.

The man massages his head; a pounding, thousand-drummed army marches across the wastes. Their war cries ring in his ears. He feels a sharp pain—the snake chews at his heart, coiled and tight. It’s eaten through to the soul.

Stairs lead up behind him to somewhere higher, a darkness shines from up there. Painful memories. He won’t be going back. In this room, there are no windows and no doors. All by design.

Save for the fire, the air is cold. It hates. In a few days the creditors will be this house's final company, here to vulture off whatever they can.

Damn it all. They can have whatever’s left of this place. Let them feast on dust.

The figure places the iron to the side and faces the coffee table. It’s still early, says the cracked French clock on the mantle. A miniature Orpheus, bronze, meets his gaze. He opens the book and reads.

In my time I’ve witnessed many a novice subject himself to such base practices as the séance. Or, how it is written in the black books, seoir. Old French, to sit.

When I was a child I was an unknowing witness to one of these sessions. It was led by my Uncle Edgar Bachran who was, at the time, a practicing medium. He and some club members of a certain Pollensbee society gathered one late October evening in the basement of the garden’s shed. I wasn’t supposed to be there, but neither were they. Edgar was dressed in some ridiculous costume in the center of the room, his hands gesticulating like rabid dogs. The others sat in a circle, all touching hands around mundane crystals, likely quartz, that they no doubt believed to be magic. Their faces bore the expressions of schoolboys. I knew not who they were. They were not friends of ours.

Oh, the gathering was successful alright. Despite their amateur and insensitive procedures, they managed to conjure a spirit from the depths of Hell. But it was not their desired patron.

In the place of King Charles the Mad, a known obsession of Uncle Edgar (who had at that point collected an extensive library of Medieval French texts), the crowd instead bore witness to a man named Huguet de Guisay, a 14th-century French noble known for his cruelty and his responsibility, in part, for the conflagration of four men and the near-death of the king.

Huguet appeared in the seventh chair, burning with the heat of a star, a thing condemned to an eternity in the sea of flames, chained to the pillars of some insane sun. He appeared in that basement shed screaming in pain and confusion—he likely did not even know he had been conjured by the troupe of fools.

I was close enough to the old shed’s stairs to escape before the building came down on top of me. The next day I sifted through the remains with my father and sisters, finding naught but ash and bone.

I did not know what I had seen until I was much older. Needless to say it left quite the impression. My father was sure to make a lesson of it.

Indeed, a séance is a delicate matter.

- Henry Burnley (The Bal des Ardents Affair, date unknown)

The first great shock of the séance comes from its simplicity. The ritual is quite easy, almost redundant. There are many variations, using the planchette or the Ouija, cabinets or tables or trumpets or any other such paraphernalia. These elements are purely aesthetic and completely accessory to the only true prerequisite; that of the medium, the channeler, the vessel for communion.

The second revelation is that of risk. Would you stare at the sun? Open your mouth and drink the sea? Then answer, why would you bear your essence to the unabated divine, to the cosmic stream that carries us ever downward?

I am reminded constantly of the final days of a contemporary I have regrettably come to know now only as a cautionary tale. His name was Eyroi Emmen Pasanique—a fantastic medium twenty-odd years ago, but you won’t find him in the records. For the best, I’d wager.

He cornered me at a conference on Witch-Cults and insisted I shadow him at his coming séance, citing my recent publications on otherworlds. I was old enough to know better, not to mention that I knew to avoid his ilk—the type to terrorize the dead, to wring them dry and bleed their ink on a page.

I said to him, “Do what you must. I will not stop you. But know this: What you seek is a fantasy. It is unforgivable.” I knew he had much to say about me and my father’s legacy, of our relationship with the supernatural. But he and I parted after that, and said nothing more to each other.

I learned much later the fate of Eyroi and the others—of their deaths and subsequent abreactions.

The séance had been conducted flawlessly from a technical perspective, or so I was told. Expert craftsmanship from the medium, as I had come to expect from him. I was called to investigate the integrity of the ritual, to identify if foul play had been responsible—there was, in that age, a great deal of theologic homicides. It was a known possibility that one in proximity to a medium could disrupt the service with a certain slipknot tied around the ring finger. I declined the invitation. I did not need to see to know why they had died.

The attempted séance of Ivanhoe Martin ended in such dazzling failure for the medium and all attending guests because the most basic respect for the spirit was never observed. No one had ever asked if Martin wanted to be spoken to, especially by such a colorful crowd. Evidently, he did not.

I was away at the time but the news of the incident managed to find me nonetheless; a pile of worthless letters, sentiments from another world. I was hounded by his posse, who presented me with his latest findings. Some of which were transcripts recorded from that very night. How people I could consider partners in the field are capable of such cruelty fills me to this day with great horror. His men wanted certain things published in accordance with his will—I won’t get into the details. His demands I simply could not accept. I would not let that man butcher my family’s name like that. Eyroi was gone, and I prayed his ideology would die with him.

- Henry Burnley (Remembrances of the Ugly Fish, unpublished, dated 1996).

No, I won't. I won't do it. Absolutely not. Oh, I could, yes. I could. But I won't.

Alright, here. Let me show you—I’d like you to answer something for me right now. Look around at all these people. Take them in. Memorize where everyone stands. Memorize their clothing. Posture. The sound of their voices. Breathe it in, become intimate with that knowledge.

Your brother's at this reception. Isn't he? That's him, right there?

If I asked you to cover your hands in paint and walk and push your way through the crowd until you reach him, touching nothing but him and only him, could you do it? Maybe. Now what about doing it blindfolded? Covered in… in barbed wire, with the building burning to the ground around you. Could you do it then?

Maybe. If you were smart, agile. If you had a good memory, if you could remember where your brother was standing and what he looked like, if you could withstand the pain.

But if I asked you to find someone you had never seen before, never met, someone you didn't know outside of a name or a face—it would be impossible. You'd be searching blind on two fronts. Getting paint everywhere. Making a mess.

I'm exaggerating of course. There isn't fire, not typically.

I'm right about the crowd, though. There are so many people out there, who have or are yet to live. You wouldn't believe it. So many people. And out of all of them, you have to find one, with nothing else to go on but that stuff that flows in our blood. Some call it love. I prefer a more scientific definition.

I had a friend once who wanted to play a song to Gram Parsons—she studied a while and practiced but when it came down to the navigation she missed completely and ended up talking to half a dozen piles of ash and twenty-odd dogs. It's a big waste of time if you ask me. Unless you’re Dad, I wouldn’t bother.

- Matilda Burnley (Overheard and transcribed by Paul Senreve, Recovery Office, 2010)

I have said many times and I shall say it once more: To trample on the finality of death is foolishness without cause, risk without reason. Nothing will be gained by defiling a life after its conclusion—natural or otherwise. Few pause to consider the reality of it. What more can be gained from a poem after its final line? A performance after its final act? There is a cosmic truth to finality that must be respected.

I was instructed of this many times in my early studies by mystics much wiser and more accomplished than me—my father was one of them. He hated all of this. He told me once about his time on an investigatory committee formed to proof séances in the thirties and forties. He gave me all the statistics. Seventy percent of séances are staged, mostly for the purposes of exploiting grieving loved ones of the deceased for cash. Of the remaining known séances, over half were conducted by amateurs with no formal training, leading to a vastly disproportionate rate of injury and trauma—not for the medium or any of the living, as they’re rarely left with lingering damages, but for the deceased.

I did not heed these warnings. Such is the nature of this art, and of childhood. I had my experimental years; I stole my share of texts from father’s study. He knew all of this, of course. He was counting on it. I had to learn the hard way when I was yet untrained so I would not carry such folly into my prime. Who else would take up the family mantle and spread our name across the world in this new century of science? He had instilled in me at a young age that seed of curiosity, had nurtured it tenderly. But he hid it behind a thousand curtains—endless warnings, forbidden rooms, cautionary tales.

It wasn’t until I was much older that I learned he too was an avid medium in his age, one of the best. The anonymous passages from The Imperial Poems of Han that I had read a thousand times in my youth were collected from secret séances of the Music Bureau performed by none other than my own father, under fake names, for he could never be caught going against his teachings like that. He had accomplished what he set out to do—he had become a magnet for the fantastic. These secret works, never published in the Burnley name, were testaments to his skill and dedication to cultural preservation. Let no one claim he didn’t care for his craft.

I never dredged up this history when I endured the many accusations in his later years—flung at me for being so utterly careless with my craft—whenever he caught me at my work, long after I promised I would quit that lifestyle. He called me dangerous, avaricious, and, worst of all, a scam artist, a pious fraud. Just a boy playing with knives and a family name.

I will not lie about my actions; I have laid my sins out to dry, plain for all who care to look. I have atoned, I have made my reparations. I understand it will not be enough—can never be enough.

The only difference between my father and I was that he never reconciled with his own mistakes. Even when he lectured me of danger and insensitivity he still longed to drink from that bitter cup to the dregs. He wore his twin faces seamlessly. But I never had the heart to remind him.

I was going to ask him of it, why he never let me live as he did despite wanting nothing more from his firstborn. But then he died, and he was gone.

- Henry Burnley (diary entry, dated November 2012)

The clock reminds the man of his agency, and he sets the book down. The rites are in order; the book rests on the table, open to a page on séances written a long time ago by a once-great man. A pile of dust burns slowly nearby.

The white dust's herb scent fills the air, and with its arrival, the man feels a deep stirring. On the page, some words are written. The instructions are followed, and with a simple stroke of the pen he parts the seas, opens his eyes and walks the haunted land. The hot red sand between his toes, he walks far in this sacred place. It takes a long while but eventually he is found, a shape in a place devoid of detail.

The man is sitting twice, simultaneously. Two bodies bridged, and with a steady hand he turns to stoke the fireplace as he speaks to the air:

Hello, Dad.

I don’t know if you’re hearing this. If you are and you just don’t want to talk, that’s okay. I’m burning some essence I stole to reach you right now so you better be getting this. Before you tell me, I know it’s a sin to burn another's essence but what’s one more curse, right?

I don’t want to waste your time so I’ll tell you what I have to say.

We buried Henry last week. The funeral was nice, simple. You’d have liked it. We tried to keep it short like he always said he wanted. He was so much like you, always brief on the formalities. Nothing like Matilda, her service was lavish. Can you believe a dean from every Ivy League showed up to say something? She was so smart. We buried Henry next to her, figured he would appreciate that. Their bond was… something incredible.

I haven’t heard from Laura yet. I thought she might’ve been living in Nova Scotia but her name doesn’t come up. She’s probably moved on by now. She wasn’t at Matilda’s service but I know she was in town. Just had this feeling. Someone left flowers on the grave the morning after, but I don’t know if that was her. I don’t think she knows about Henry yet. I sent a bunch of letters out to her old addresses—I hope she sees one of them. She’ll be alright. She’s always strong in times like these.

I’m here, same as always. I’m fighting with the city to get the house turned into that park you wanted, but they keep pushing it back, back. You know how government is. Malcolm came by asking about Henry and I just—I couldn’t tell him. Not after Matilda and Mom. I lied and said he was out chasing a lead in Greenland but I think he knew. He always could see through me. He just shared a drink and left me some books he thought I’d enjoy. He misses you. We all do.

Henry, Matilda, Laura… and me. That’s everyone accounted for.

…

I didn’t tell anyone I was doing this. I know it goes against everything you wanted in life and death. Do you remember when you sat us down at the table and told us how things were going to be once you were gone? You had all of this stuff out, books and files and keyrings, passing them all around. Most went to Matilda, but we all knew that was going to happen. Henry’s I never could figure out, but I knew he knew what it meant, and I didn’t press. Laura was Laura about it… you remember. But when you told me what was going to happen to me, how everything was going to change. And you told me whatever I do, never doubt that you did it out of love. Because you believed in me. Believed that I had some element of strength or spirit within me that no one else had, and that all of this would somehow rest easier on me. And you told me never to contact you, never to try it because it would never change what was about to happen.

I don’t think I believed you. About the curses, I mean. You were always so strong about it, I would have never known anything was wrong except for the days you skipped dinner or flew out to the coast unannounced. But those were things that happened to Dad because Dad was special. That’s how Henry phrased it. Is it weird that I was a little excited? I remember all the things you would tell us about your work before you retired. You tried your best to bury it in metaphor but I was smart enough to know you weren’t borrowing the things you kept in your study.

Years and years of a runaway imagination. I guess I wanted to have something I could claim was worth more than this life. You had all these stories, all this knowledge built up that we were forbidden from touching. When you said I would be getting a piece of that world I was happy to carry that weight. I was…

I was so mad after you left. I even hated you for a time. I mean, how could you expect me to know what to do now? You never told me about these things, never told me how to find the will to keep going. I wanted the weight, sure, was happy to help carry the burden but only if you would be around to teach me, to show me the way. On my own I was lost. And then all that stuff with Mom and Matilda, and the fires at the school…

Sorry. I’m sorry. It’s been so long since I’ve had someone to talk about it with. It hurts so much now, you know? Was it like this when you had them? It feels like this weight I carry, it lives in the chest and the stomach and the neck. I read what little you had on them, about how you said it was the spiritual becoming physical. But I think it’s gotten worse. There are days I can hardly move, and the light hurts, and Sweetgum is calling again asking for something else of yours and I just…

God, why did everyone have to leave?

Why did you think I could carry all of this on my own? The sins, the house, the family… Did you know? Or did it even matter to you? Why would it? Just pass the chain off to someone else, not your problem anymore. Live a life of careless appetite, who cares when you have your children to clean up after you—it’s easy to find solace in your mistakes when you’re not the one who has to inherit them.

God, I hope you're comfortable now. What am I supposed to do when it's my turn? I have no kids, not that I would ever put them through what you did to me. Am I supposed to pass them off to Laura, make her do a little work around here for once? Carry it with me to the afterlife and live with it forever? You never asked yourself this, because you had so much faith in us that we would get it all figured out, that we would carry the torch farther and faster than you ever did in life. I bet you thought that I would free myself from this, that I’d sit with Matilda and puzzle it out, or chase a tome halfway across the world with Henry. Because that’s what you would’ve done.

Well, Dad, I’m not you. None of us were. After you died we hardly talked, never saw each other. We each vanished into our own little worlds. And I was left here. Left with your mess. Your curse. Not my brother, not my sister, not mom, not you. Just me in this empty fucking house with your iron snake around my neck. While everyone else gets to grieve and drift away I have to keep this mess together because somebody has to. We can’t just let the legacy of the great Lyle Burnley fall apart, can we? What would they say about our family then? Someone has to represent this sinking ship. There are favors and laws and commitments now, things that you never bothered to clean up because you thought I could do it. That I was smart or clever or strong enough to figure it out, to do all the things you never got around to. You killed this family. You put your children through Hell. Because of your mistakes. Your failures. Your inability to take any responsibility for the things you did. How dare you drag me down with you.

…

It hurts. It hurts so much now. I know you probably hate me for doing this, talking to you, but I had to. Everyone has left me. Everyone is gone. The family is gone. And I don’t know what to do. You told me I could carry this weight, that it would rest easier on me. And I—I don’t know why, and I don’t think I’ll ever know. You’re right, this will not answer any questions. It will not ease my burden. It was probably a waste of time. I don’t even know if you are listening to me. But if you are, hear this:

When it's my time to go, and I know it will be soon, I will not subject another to this pain. This guilt. I’m not running anymore. This is what you wanted, right? For your sins to die with me? It’s all going to be over soon. I don’t know when exactly, or how, but I know it will. I’ll be with you soon, Dad. And then we can carry this weight together. We can carry it together. Because I love you, Dad. Because I love you, we will carry this weight together.

- Arthur Burnley (Transcribed from covert listening device, Burnley residence, subbasement level. Archived, 2015)