Broke divorcées and soldiers on leave who rode the Greyhound line from Weehawken to Pittsburgh began posting Instagram photos of a tall white man in Revolutionary War garb who claimed to be Alexander Hamilton. He sat always in the same seat by the window across from the rear doors with a faraway look in his eyes. Riders who engaged him in conversation described him as “confused” and said he would repeatedly ask them what year it was and tell them he was trying to get home to his Eliza. At Montecito, in Virginia, tourists wandering the grounds of Thomas Jefferson’s estate reported sighting an old man with a billowing collar and velvet pants who seemed to hover several inches above the floor. No one could get a clear photo, but an audio recording surfaced in June of the apparition, who seemed to be reciting passages from the Liberty Papers.
In Saudi Arabia the temperature reached one hundred and forty degrees.
At night, Abe Lincoln could be seen wandering down the center divider of I-55 between Peoria and Springfield, stovepipe hat in hand. Tears ran down his cheeks, glimmering in the oncoming headlights.
At the Senate confirmation hearings for Judge Margot Nadir, viewers noticed a ghost seated directly behind the judge. It was the third day of testimony. After the lunch recess, when the judge took her seat once more, you can clearly see a young woman seated directly behind the judge, wearing a white dress. The young woman is pale, her blond hair pulled back into a loose ponytail. She wears oversize black sunglasses, her head bowed. On the dais, the committee chairman gavels the hearing back into session. He welcomes the judge back and jokes he hopes her lunch was more relaxing than the grilling she’s taken all morning. The judge smiles politely and leans over to pour herself a glass of water. As she moves, the young woman behind her lifts her chin and appears to look directly into the camera. Judge Nadir’s body blocks the young woman from the camera for 1.5 seconds. When she sits back, the young woman is gone, replaced by a middle-aged man with a goatee.
Twitter erupts. Video clips are posted by the thousands. Frame-by-frame analysis and animated GIFs. 1） The judge leaned over. 2） The young woman looked up. But when the judge settled back in her seat, 3） the young woman was gone. Was it a special effect? Was the entire hearing a computer-generated simulation caught in a glitch? Every pixel was inspected thoroughly and then inspected again. Internet researchers dug up photos of Judge Nadir’s daughter—missing now for four-plus weeks—and post them side by side with grainy blowups of the mystery woman. The meaning is clear. Story Nadir, twenty-four, is dead, and this is her ghost. Twitter parses each element of the image for hidden meaning—the white dress, the dark glasses. Why appear in that specific moment—after lunch on the third day? Why vanish?
The anomaly causes such a stir that an hour later the chairman is forced to recess for the day. Leaving the chamber, Judge Nadir appears stunned—as if she has somehow crossed over to another dimension, one in which Bigfoot is real, and Einstein never divined the Theory of Relativity. Flashbulbs capture her surprise. Back at her hotel, Margot reviews the footage with her husband—their son, Hadrian, plugged into a handheld video game in the next room. Remy rewinds the clip several times, playing it in slow motion. What does it mean? Where had the young woman come from and where did she go? She is blond, like their daughter, but the sunglasses make it hard to see her features. Sitting there, Margot is convinced there has to be a rational explanation. This is the kind of brain she has. It believes in rational thought and scientific explanation.
Next to her, Remy feels a headache coming on. His brain is more superstitious, always hoping for a miracle. When he reaches to pause the video, he realizes foolishly that his left hand hasn’t responded. He looks down—puzzled—to see the hand flat in his lap like the hand of a stranger.
Still the bodies fell. In state after state 911 was overwhelmed with frantic calls, twenty-four hours a day. Connecticut, Nebraska, Hawaii. My son is dead. There are demons in the wall.
The signs were everywhere, it seemed. What it meant depended on which god you worshipped. The God of Denial, the God of Revenge, the God of Beauty, Prosperity, Youth. All shared the same name—God will lift you up. God will strike you down!—but it wasn’t possible that White Supremacist Jesus and Civil Rights Jesus were the same person, that splash a pregnant woman with blood Jesus and turn the other cheek Jesus were even the same species of deity.
We had returned to the age of polytheism without realizing it. Which God we worshipped depended on which tribe we belonged to, which wish we prayed granted. Even Reason had become a God to millions over the last century—an omnipotent being of pure science, worshipped by lettered liberals in the organic produce aisles of their local Whole Foods. And Whole Foods Jesus knows there’s no such thing as ghosts.