THE AFTER-IMAGE GHOST
One night when I was seven or eight, I went to bed – or was ordered to bed – as usual. As always, I clicked off the overhead light and dashed across the room before any “boogers” could get me. When I crouched to make this brief run, I sometimes glanced up at the light, which would momentarily blind me. This didn't really matter, as I jumped under the sheets in complete darkness.
That night the light blinded me just as I snapped off the switch. I jumped into bed and closed my eyes as I cocooned myself in the covers.
An after-image hung behind my eyelids, yellow and sharp with purple highlights. Rather than a simple blob of color, this image looked like a woman. The figure startled me, because I didn’t remember anything feminine-looking in my room – certainly not the overhead fixture, of which this was presumably an echo.
The after-image woman in yellow and purple had long, flowing hair and an oval, sallow face. She wore bell-shaped hoopskirts out of the mid-nineteenth century. Her arms seemed to be bare. In this quasi-photo image, she appeared to have just stepped into a room from a doorway on my left. The back of her dress was cut off vertically as if by a door frame, and her right arm stuck out as if she had opened a door wide and now let her hand hang on the knob. No background of wall or door was visible, however.
She had an air of looking for someone or something, though she did not move. Her eyes, mere purple blots in her yellow face, were turned intently upon me.
I opened my eyes in the darkness of my room. The after-image hung before me, only a shapeless mass now. I closed my eyes, and the image returned. Open, featureless blob; closed, ghostly woman in bell skirts.
The After-Image Ghost frightened me, but I did not run off to my parents’ room. It would have been difficult to explain, and, besides, how do you run from an after-image? Any direction you move, it’s already in front of you!
The After-Image Ghost took a long time to fade. I kept expecting it to move or speak, but it did nothing but shimmer and break up, finally becoming no more than those random sparks you see behind your eyelids.
Was the spectral woman just a trick of the light? Possibly, but it was some trick!
