Ghosts are so tech-savvy, they star in their own viral videos

For a long time, ghosts were women in white saris singing high-pitched songs, asking passing vehicles for a lift. This sexist image of a spook in need of public transport is at last changing. After replacing the warbling with abrupt laughs or moans, and being accused of doing this only for attention, they now prefer to shimmer discreetly at a distance. A creepy background score is so yesterday; phantoms today are tech-savvy. An apparition walking on rooftops has just gone viral in Varanasi, although opinion is divided about the video: some people think it’s fake, some ghosts think it’s genuine. Even if clad in the usual white – it’s high time the otherworldly textile industry discovered dyes! – this is one ectoplasm that’s definitely trending.

A word of travel advice for those who haunt. Many a banshee has lost her voice in noisy pubs, where not even the living are audible to each other. Avoid flea markets – a djinn is easily overlooked in the middle of all that frantic haggling. The tendency to pooh-pooh the paranormal can make any self-respecting spirit question its existence. Remember the one in The Canterville Ghost, by Oscar Wilde, who was routinely humiliated during demonstrations? The supernatural must constantly up its game.

Ghosts can be friendly like Caspar or a soulmate like the one in Wuthering Heights or desi like Bulbul, who may have consulted a numerologist on names. There are ghosts who favor Christmastime like those Scrooge saw and even one who eternally roams the afterworld for Wi-Fi in a short story by John Lanchester. While Yeti and Loch Ness keep us guessing, the house itself is the occult in a Shirley Jackson novel. KR Meera’s ghost in Aan-Pretam (He-Ghoul) has his ex-girlfriend roll her eyes: ‘Even when he’s a ghoul, a man is a man; shows off more than he’s got!’

Girls will always fall for vampires and zombies; wedding albums show the bride smiling shyly at thin air. Exorcists, meanwhile, are busy taking ‘before’ and ‘after’ selfies with the possessed. The post-pandemic world has the TV on at full volume, and we all know poltergeists need peace and quiet for their activity. Taking the trouble to appear headless to drunk teenagers is a sheer waste of the eerie. Crawl out backwards on all fours from someone’s computer by all means, but be prepared to keep repeating the act for a TikTok video.

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