Pam told us about the ghosts that haunted the house and barn she grew up in near
Danville, NY. The flying mason jars and the voices of kids playing in the back room
and footsteps approaching her bed. She hid under the covers. She’d heard theories
about how ghosts or ghostly manifestations were simply traces of an event "burned"
into the place, or air, or ether, or whatever, but she didn’t believe that because she
felt that the entities in her childhood house definitely had intention, acted in a
calculated way, and weren't simply repeating traces of some past incident. She said
they'd responded to people in her family. When her sister finally demanded
(from the ghosts) certain items back that had been strangely missing they reappeared
later in some other room.

Recently Pam asked her mother about these events (apparently it wasn’t something
that her parents freely addressed when they were growing up) and she did agree that
yes, strange things did occur in that house (a house in which they still live) but she
wouldn’t or couldn’t go so far as to say that they were ghosts. And I suppose why
should she – it is a leap, or perhaps it’s as random a conclusion to say those inexplicable
events were the manifestations of ghosts as it is to attribute it to some aspect of physics
we don’t know about, say. Or I guess it might be the same thing.

In general Pam thought that ghosts are a weaker energy form than living people.
As she was the oldest of six siblings, she noticed that these unusual incidents occurred
less frequently as she and her brother and sisters grew up. She thought that it had to
do with this big family always making a racket and moving about through the house at
all times. What’s the relationship between ghosts and people? Do ghosts need undisturbed
space and quiet to be much more active? Do most ghosts lead some kind of raucous life
when we're not looking? Or do they need an audience in a way, a presence to acknowledge
their thin existence?