This week on Mining Shadows, I stick with the theme of fictional writing inspired by personal experience. The Ghost Without a Face is about my first encounter with either sleep paralysis or a genuine ghost (I’ll let you decide). If you would like to listen to a more in-depth version of the real story (and hear about the time I met the Hat Man), it’s featured in an episode of one of my favorite podcasts, Scary Stories to Tell on the Pod (embedded below for your listening convenience).

One of my goals as I begin to use this online space is to become less afraid of sharing my work. Related to that goal, I am also learning how to make myself stop editing. As a recovering perfectionist, I could spend a lifetime tweaking almost anything I create, and I know I must move past that mindset if I ever want to achieve my goal of publishing a novel.

Without further ado and with much vulnerability, I present:

The Ghost Without a Face

The recess bell was still ringing as Cori and Jordan ran through the double doors and onto the concrete, racing toward the far edge of the playground. The sprint slowed to an awkward, lumbering jog as they hit the sea of pea gravel, but they kept pushing, eager to reach the old set of swings that sat away from the rest of the equipment before anyone else. Today, they needed privacy.

Two days ago, while the girls giggled and whispered through the early morning hours of a Friday-night sleepover, they made a life-altering discovery—they had each been visited by the very same ghost. This discovery shifted the energy in the room, and before long, their whispers swelled to a quiet roar.

“GIIIRRRRRRLS!! GO. TO. SLEEP!!!” Cori’s mom howled from the next room, the irritation in her voice piercing through the wood-paneled walls. Tammy was the perfect sleepover mom. She stocked up on snacks and soda, but more importantly, she let the girls watch the scary movies her boyfriend rented (even the R-rated ones). But the girls knew never to mess with Tammy’s sleep.

“Uuuggggh, I guess we better try to go to sleep,” Cori groaned. “Mom turns into a werewolf if she has to get out of bed before her alarm goes off.”

“I need my beauuuoooOOOOty sleep!” Jordan did her best (and quietest) werewolf impression, pointing her chin to the ceiling for effect.

The girls giggled one last time, then rolled away from each other to ward off any temptation to talk more about their shared specter.

Now, after a long and painful weekend of pretending they hadn’t just learned that ghosts exist, they could not wait to compare their stories and get to the bottom of why this spirit had chosen them.

“WooooHOOOO!” Jordan screamed as she dove onto the swing stomach first, assuming the superman pose, “We made it!”

Cori sat on the swing next to her and held up her hand for a celebratory high five. “Ok, Clark Kent, let’s get serious. We only have thirty minutes before we have to join the zombies again.”

“Ok, ok,” Jordan said as she took a seat on the swing. “So…how many times have you seen this ghost?”

“Just twice so far. Once, he was just standing in the yard when Mom and I were pulling in the driveway, but the other time, I was out in the back yard climbing our tree, and he just showed up in the branch next to me! I think he’s trying to tell me something.”

“So you think it’s a he?” Jordan asked, kicking at a weed that was growing up through the rocks under her feet.

“Definitely. He’s always wearing those old-fashioned sneakers like in the Sand Lot, and he just kind of stands…like a boy, ya know?”

“Hmmm. Yeah, I guess I know what you mean.” Jordan kept her gaze on the ground and twisted in the swing. “I saw the sneakers, but I haven’t seen its…er, his…face yet. It always looks sorta blurry.”

She wouldn’t admit it, but Jordan wasn’t sure if all this ghost talk was pretend, or if Cori was serious about her newfound paranormal friend. She had never even seen anything resembling a ghost. But boy, did she want to.

She and her mom had recently moved in with her grandma while she recovered from knee surgery, and for the first time ever, Jordan had access to cable. One night, after making herself comfortable on the pastel floral sofa, she turned on Nickelodeon where an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? had just started. Five minutes in, she was hooked. It was the perfect level of spooky to watch alone, and if it did get too scary, she could always hop in bed with Grandma and watch Bob Ross paint his happy little trees. No one could stay scared while Bob Ross was on tv.

Between her new favorite show and the scary movie marathons at Cori’s, Jordan was desperate to have a ghostly encounter of her own. So on that Friday night, when Cori pulled the covers over their heads, turned on a flashlight, and said, “I have to tell you something…I think a ghost is trying to talk to me,” Jordan couldn’t help but say, “No way…me, too!”

This was nothing new—it was exactly how they talked about their pretend husbands or the imaginary kingdoms they ruled. But they were at that age where the lines between make believe and reality begin to sharpen, and this felt different. They obviously weren’t princesses, and they knew they were too young to get married (boys were gross, anyway). But Jordan knew people—smart people—who believed ghosts were real, and she hoped they were right. So maybe Cori wasn’t pretending.

Now, as the girls spent their recess digging into the details of their brush with the paranormal, Jordan got a funny feeling in her stomach. The voice of her Sunday school teacher reciting “Thou shalt not lie” echoed through her mind, and she started to wonder if all this pretending was really her sinful nature wanting to lie. But this had made her feel so grown up, like she and Cori were members of their own Midnight Society, and she didn’t want to give that up.

She shook the feeling of guilt and leaned into the conversation headfirst, and for weeks, all they could talk about was the mysterious ghost boy who had chosen them as friends from the other side.

Like second graders often do, the girls eventually lost interest in the faceless ghost boy, trading late-night spooky stories for hours-long adventures with Kirby and Zelda.

Then, one Saturday night, when her mom was working a late shift, Jordan hugged her grandma goodnight, plugged in the string of purple Christmas lights that outlined her room, and tucked herself into bed, eager to start the new Goosebumps book she had just bought at the Scholastic book fair. A few chapters in, when her eyelids grew too heavy to hold open, the book fell from her tired hand and onto the carpet with a thud just loud enough to wake her. Leaning over the edge of the bed to rescue the book, something in the doorway caught her eye.

Her heart began to race as she stared into the dark hall. But she could see nothing. Holding her breath, she tried to listen for the thing she couldn’t see, but her ears were too full with the rush of pumping blood.

Finally, she released the air from her lungs, and as if her breath gave permission, a figure took shape in the darkness. The lavender glow that filled the room seemed to retreat, as though it, too, were afraid.

“It’s just your imagination,” Jordan thought to herself. “None of this is rea…..”

Her thoughts were replaced by sheer terror as the figure crept out of the shadows and into the light. Floating inches above her bedroom floor were two red, rubber-toed, tennis shoes.