With daylight savings time approaching the darkening days can be challenging – as can Halloween and the winter holidays that follow. The challenges of the seasonal transition toward winter can be bleak. Hoped for, anticipated, and advertised holiday opportunities offering happiness and gathering can, in reality, and for many of us be times of deep loneliness. Recently, I was challenged by the presence of an angelic, intuitive intelligence to “lighten up” regarding my perspective on this time of year. The students, teachers and families of our Saturday NLCC/LCE Mandarin language Saturday classes (pictured here) certainly helped as well!Angel Portella is the Congregational Administrator at the Follen church. A Follen Angel. Last spring I was at Follen hosting a celebration of life for our beloved teacher and friend Michael Koran. I invited people to freely suggest class ideas, and in Michael’s honor and the spirit of his always open arms, I would welcome all of them. LCE uses the Follen church a lot for events and the next time there, Angel asked if she could talk with me about something. 
The conversation started with Angel: “You’re not a Halloween guy are you?” And my reply: “In fact you are right. I’m not a Halloween guy… I don’t like scary things or gore.” Angel laughed and said, “Not liking scary things or gore should not disqualify you from enjoying Halloween and the wonderful magic and spirit of the season. Halloween is a holiday more in-line with Christmas than with things that are over the top nightmarish Hollywood horror movie stuff.” I thought about Charles Dickens. I like A Christmas Carol. Angel asked me if I ever saw A Nightmare before Christmas. I had not. She said that she had an idea for an LCE event, and that if I were to go along with it I might get a bit closer to being as much of a “Halloween guy” as I was a “Christmas guy.” And so, when spoken to by an angel I tend to lend an ear…and when spoken to by a Follen Angel I lend an extra ear. And thanks to Angel (and Michael), LCE hosted a wonderful evening of Moth style ghost stories.
The conversation started with Angel: “You’re not a Halloween guy are you?” And my reply: “In fact you are right. I’m not a Halloween guy… I don’t like scary things or gore.” Angel laughed and said, “Not liking scary things or gore should not disqualify you from enjoying Halloween and the wonderful magic and spirit of the season. Halloween is a holiday more in-line with Christmas than with things that are over the top nightmarish Hollywood horror movie stuff.” I thought about Charles Dickens. I like A Christmas Carol. Angel asked me if I ever saw A Nightmare before Christmas. I had not. She said that she had an idea for an LCE event, and that if I were to go along with it I might get a bit closer to being as much of a “Halloween guy” as I was a “Christmas guy.” And so, when spoken to by an angel I tend to lend an ear…and when spoken to by a Follen Angel I lend an extra ear. And thanks to Angel (and Michael), LCE hosted a wonderful evening of Moth style ghost stories.If you’re reading this it’s probable that you know that Lexington Community Education offers a lot of classes and events and you can find us six days a week at Lexington High School in the evenings offering language learning classes, or classes on philosophy, astronomy, cooking and just about everything else having to do with mind body and spirit….but NEVER have we offered an occasion regarding ghosts…mind body spirit, yes…but not Spirits. I actually once offered a class on astrology in this math and science loving town and received a complaint letter…(and through that complaint found our wonderful Astronomy teacher BTW).
Ghost stories! How could I justify such an occasion? I had to do some research. Perhaps there could be ghost stories of all kinds, and all kinds of ghosts! Typically we think of ghosts as energies and remembrances from the past…but with the mention of Charles Dickens we may recall the ghost of Christmas future was the most frightening. It appears that time works differently in the ghostly realms and needs not be linear. And the assumption that ghosts and stories about ghosts need to be scary? While being scared can be fun and exhilarating (tales of the unknown or unexplainable often are) a ghost story can also be a tale of remembrance of the best, most loving, most missed person or experience and wished for communication. Ghost stories can be stories stronger than any Valentine’s day box of chocolate hearts….and sweeter, too. In thinking about the topic I realized that part of this whole “ghost thing” is about re–membering. Re-membering as in, putting the members of a loved one back together again. Remembering so hard that the disappeared body appears before our eyes! Or we hear with our physical ears, a voice. We smell a perfume that she used to wear – mysteriously it returns; or other things appear. Happenings happen as a reminder not to forget. Not to forget them. Not to forget them with us. Or not to forget THEM…those whom we never met but whose houses we now inhabit perhaps or whose trails we walk. 
But along with the idea of love and longing and happy re-membering there are serious and sad ghost stories as well. LCE hosted an author talk with Alex Green on the history of the Fernald School recently. There is a cemetery there. Not far from here, with people buried with no name indication or markers. There is sadness and stories in the soil there. People who led lives largely unseen, mostly unloved, and now long unremembered. And there are ghost stories here of people that came before us here on this very land who were displaced and replaced. And there are people who are with us today, walking among us ghost-like and voiceless in the shadows. Very real and very ghost-like people walk among us everyday shells of former or potential selves thanks to drugs or abuse. “Loneliness is a crowded room” and a lack of communication creates ghosts. And perhaps a breakthrough experience with a “ghost” from this or other realms is really only a call for communication. A yearning to be seen, heard, remembered, valued, honored and loved. Dream experts say that all nightmares come in the service, and with a message of health and wholeness. Perhaps ghost sightings, experiences and stories have the same message. There are reverberations that last. Some physicists posit that everything that happens continues to happen forever….like a recording. They say that events stay vibrating, and if we could only rewind “the non-linear tape” of time/space we could get back to that exact moment that took place yesterday…. or 220 years ago when Charles Follen was in his Church community. Physicists would tell us that Charles Follen is still at the Follen church, vibrating as he did with life and ideas and a stern and stark passion for justice. They would also say that in this very moment Charles Follen is still boarding the Steamship Lexington to return from New York to Boston for the dedication of his church, and also that the Steamship Lexington is still at this very moment filled with smoke and flames and sinking into the water of the Long Island Sound where Rev Charles Follen perished. Theologians, mystics and poets might tell us that soul substance is permeable energy that can traverse the layers of time and space. And here we are at the time of year when the ancients believed the veil of the boundary between worlds grows extra thin….where all the saints that came before us are to be honored and remembered. Here we are, all just passing through…soon to be gone…soon to become ghost stories of a sort ourselves….if we are fortunate to be remembered for a while. Well, as you can see I’m no expert but I’m happy to be journeying toward becoming a blended “Halloween/Christmas” guy. Perfect love drives away all fear. Wishing you a brightening darkening this October…and a light-hearted/filled, and Hallowed Halloween!
Craig Hall, Director
