Dennis Mahoney

Ghostlove Dennis Mahoney

I'm an occultist living in a haunted brownstone in upstate New York.

The building is a ghostly double-image of itself, like a picture painted brightly over an older, weirder picture. It's an equinox place, my mother once said, where dark and light things are equally in power.

I want to tell you, dear strangers, why I was there and what I found.

The three-winged pigeon. My cynical doppelgänger. The loneliness and marvels and confusions of the house. And most of all the ghost living in my bedroom.

We learned how to talk without using sound. She was secretive and scared and difficult to know. But she was also warm and playful, as willing to share the room in silence as to trace vulgar symbols on my hand to get a rise.

She helped me with the hundred-pound centipede, the hostile little man living in my basement, and the emptiness I'd felt since my mother lost her mind.

I tried to help her out of limbo with experiments and spells until I realized if they worked - if we succeeded - I would lose her.