Daily Nourishment for October 31, 2024: Ghost Encounters with Guidance from Lauren Winner
Daily Nourishment Read Time: 40 seconds
Pause/Prompt/Practice Time: 15 minutes
A Note from Lauren: This week’s offerings will be calendar-themed, as we move toward All Hallows’ Eve and All Saints’ Day.
Pause.
Inhale. Upon exhaling, make the sound of a ghost. Repeat. Repeat again. Stand up and flap about like a ghost.
Prompt.
In addition to be a chronicler of old New York, Edith Wharton also wrote ghost stories. About the genre, she wrote:
[A] ghost-story….must depend for its effect solely on what one might call its thermometrical quality; if it sends a cold shiver down one’s spine, it has done its job and done it well. But there is no fixed rule as to the means of producing this shiver, and many a tale that makes others turn cold leaves me at my normal temperature. The doctor who said there were no diseases but only patients would probably agree that there are no ghosts, but only tellers of ghost-stories, since what provides a shudder for one leaves another peacefully tepid. Therefore one ought, I am persuaded, simply to tell one’s ghostly adventures in the most unadorned language, and ‘leave the rest to Nature,’ as the New York alderman said when, many years ago, it was proposed to import ‘a couple of gondolas’ for the lake in the Central Park. The only suggestion I can make is that the teller of supernatural tales should be well frightened in the telling; for if he is, he may perhaps communicate to his readers the sense of that strange something undreamt of in the philosophy of Horatio.
Practice.
When did you most recently, or first, encounter a ghost? Describe the encounter in the “most unadorned language.”
Or: what was your experience of ghost stories as a child? Write for ten minutes.
Bonus Practice: Wharton also wrote that “What the ghost really needs is not echoing passages and hidden doors behind tapestry, but only continuity and silence. For where a ghost has once appeared it seems to hanker to appear again; and it obviously prefers the silent hours, when at last the wireless has ceased to jazz.” I love the surprising (to me; perhaps less so in 1937) use of “jazz” as a verb. Write a sentence about ghosts that uses a word that’s foremost a noun as a verb.
Want More?
-Nicole Jones’s terrific “Ghost Hunting with Edith Wharton”
-A portrait of Edith Wharton (then Edith Jones) as a child
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Workshops, Gatherings, & Resources
—New Resource: A Solo Writing Retreat for Election Season and Beyond
—New Resource: Parenting with Art® Lectio Divina Cards Information about ordering these cards can be found in my Books + Spiritual Direction + Retreats & Gatherings email newsletter . To stay in the loop on all of my work, writing, book recs, and more, subscribe to that weekly newsletter at charlottedonlon.com/subscribe.
—October Co-Writing is live. All SDW Members get free co-writing through November. If you aren’t a member and would like to join us, please contact me at charlotte@charlottedonlon.com and I’ll hook you up.
—The Great Belonging Project is live here and The Great Belonging Project October Refresh will take place Oct 1-Oct 31.
Today’s Daily Nourishment was provided by Lauren Winner. Lauren Winner is a writer, professor, Episcopal Priest, & spiritual director.
Read Lauren’s full bio here.
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