Take me to a place where the dead roam the Earth and the living float above them.
Word of the day: Aeriform – gaseous or unreal
Weather: wash out!
Mood: sun dried!
I got up this morning to find Hamoudi looking miserable in the kitchen. He was making a tower out of clothes pegs and sighing. The pegs kept pinging across the room.
‘What’s up, champ?’ I asked.
‘I think it’s starting again,’ he said.
My ears pricked up and I had to hide my eagerness behind a veil of concern.
‘Seeing ghosts?’ I whispered.
‘Maybe,’ he said, the peg tower shot a pink peg under the fridge and then collapsed. He started again.
‘What do you mean by maybe?’ I asked, trying to not get tetchy, because seriously, he likes to drag things out. He figured out a method with his building, creating a triangle with three pegs.
‘When I was at the station yesterday, I saw this movement out the corner of my eye. A red cap, and blue jeans. I think it was a small boy. Then he was gone, just vanished.’
‘Well, if it was busy…’
‘And last night, I woke up and he was standing at the end of my bed. The same clothes, red cap, blue jeans. But his eyes were hollow, staring at me.’
‘Did you recognise him? Did you speak to him?’
‘No.’ He puts another layer on the tower, and it stays upright, but this doesn’t make him happy.
‘I left Canada to get away from all this,’ he says. ‘What if they’ve followed me here?’
It would be cruel to point out that if there are dead people wandering around Canada, they are probably everywhere. I pat his shoulder and the peg tower falls down again. Sympathetic though I am, I’m also pretty excited about this development. If there are ghosts in our flat, I wonder if I’ll be able to see them. Maybe Hamoudi can introduce us. That would change everything.
inkbiotic 
You won’t see them. I totally get the ideas of talking with dead and so. In russian culture it is a lot more popular than in western to try to build some communication with dead. I understand also your fascination with H and trying to see the world through his eyes. But the dude is psychotic. The thing he needs is good psychiatric care.
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I’m not sure how I’d help him with that, maybe I should talk to Jinjing.
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I don’t think that I would try to get him commited. But I think that it is good to see what is going on as what it is, namely very well treatable illness. And I would pay attention to where it is going. Not that he decides that you are one of the dead ….. 😀
Don’t overextend yourself trying to help him because you can’t. He needs to take meds and that means that even if he gets the psychiatric care the huge problem of compliance still remains. You just can’t do anything before things escalate. So try not to be in the center of escalation.
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I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m not convinced it is psychosis. After I had my brain injury I had psychosis and this isn’t like that.
I’ve known a few people who’ve had visions or bizarre beliefs – whether seeing ghosts or having secret knowledge. They’ve always fascinated me, but I don’t believe they were ill just their brains worked differently to the rest of us (maybe they would end up ill one day, but so could we all).
I’ve listened to what you’ve said and I will keep it very much in my mind, and maybe talk to Jinjing if I get the chance, but otherwise I’m going to carry on as I am, careful not to encourage any delusions, but not hiding from them either.
Maybe, just maybe, Hamoudi can see dead people!
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“Seeing” ghosts is rather scary. I have ‘felt’ them on more than one occasion. Feeling the hair on the back of your neck rise up is NOT a good feeling.
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Do you think it’s scary because it’s unfamiliar or because they are dangerous? I like to think it would be possible to communicate or connect somehow.
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I have not ‘felt’ danger. I just can feel someone watching me. At the battlefield in Tennessee, the face would disappear when I turned around. At the car graveyard, the feeling of being watched was SO intense that it made me nervous but I never felt in danger. I would LOVE to be able to communicate. But I can’t. I can just FEEL them now and then.
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Ah I see, I certainly understand why that would be intense.
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VERY
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