The Ghost Variations One Hundred Stories

Ghost stories tap into our most primal emotions as they encourage us to confront the timeless question: What comes after death? Here, in tales that are by turn scary, funny, philosophic, and touching, you’ll find that question sharpened, split, reconsidered—and met with a multitude of answers.
 
A spirit who is fated to spend eternity reliving the exact moment she lost her chance at love, ghostly trees that haunt the occupant of a wooden house, specters that snatch anyone who steps into the shadows, and parakeets that serve as mouthpieces for the dead: these are just a few of the characters in this extraordinary compendium of one hundred ghost stories. Kevin Brockmeier’s fiction has always explored the space between the fantastical and the everyday with profundity and poignancy. As in his previous books, The Ghost Variations discovers new ways of looking at who we are and what matters to us, exploring how mysterious, sad, strange, and comical it is to be alive—or, as it happens, not to be.

KEVIN BROCKMEIER is the author of the novels The Ghost Variations, A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip, The Illumination, The Brief History of the Dead, and The Truth About Celia; the story collections Things That Fall from the Sky and The View from the Seventh Layer; and the children's novels City of Names and Grooves: A Kind of Mystery. His work has been translated into seventeen languages. He has published his stories in such venues as The New Yorker, The Georgia Review, McSweeney's, Zoetrope, Tin House, The Oxford American, The Best American Short Stories, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and New Stories from the South. He has received the Borders Original Voices Award, three O. Henry Awards (one, a first prize), the PEN USA Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an NEA Grant. In 2007, he was named one of Granta magazine's Best Young American Novelists He teaches frequently at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and he lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he was raised.

GHOSTS AND MEMORY
One: A Notable Social Event • 3
Two: The Guidance Counselor • 5
Three: A Hatchet, Several Candlesticks, a Pincushion, and a Top Hat • 7
Four: Milo Krain • 9
Five: Amnesia • 11
Six: A Long Chain of Yesterdays • 13
 
GHOSTS AND FORTUNE
Seven: The Hitchhiker • 19
Eight: Wishes • 21
Nine: How to Play • 23
Ten: The Scales of Fortune • 25
Eleven: A Moment, However Small • 27
Twelve: A Gathering • 29
Thirteen: Mira Amsler • 31
 
GHOSTS AND NATURE
Fourteen: Elephants • 37
Fifteen: The White Mare • 39
Sixteen: Many Additional Animals • 41
Seventeen: Bees • 43
Eighteen: A Blight on the Landscape • 45
Nineteen: An Ossuary of Trees • 47
Twenty: Things That Fall from the Sky • 49
Twenty-one: A Story with a Drum Beating Inside It • 51
Twenty-two: The Sandbox Initiative • 53
Twenty-three: Renewable Resources • 55
 
GHOSTS AND TIME
Twenty-four: Thirteen Visitations • 61
Twenty-five: The Office of Hereafters and Dissolutions • 63
Twenty-six: An Obituary • 65
Twenty-seven: The Midpoint • 67
Twenty-eight: The Whirl of Time • 69
Twenty-nine: Minnows • 71
Thirty: A Story Swaying Back and Forth • 73
Thirty-one: A Time-Travel Story with a Little Romance and a Happy Ending • 75
 
GHOSTS AND SPECULATION
Thirty-two: The Phantasm vs the Statue • 81
Thirty-three: Footprints • 83
Thirty-four: Passengers • 85
Thirty-five: New Life, New Civilizations • 87
Thirty-six: A Blackness Went Fluttering By • 89
Thirty-seven: The Prism • 91
Thirty-eight: His Womanhood • 93
Thirty-nine: There Are People, They Had Lives • 95
Forty: The Soldiers of the 115th Regiment • 97
 
GHOSTS AND VISION
Forty-one: Action! • 103
Forty-two: The Way the Ring of a Moat Becomes Comforting to a Fish • 105
Forty-three: Spectrum • 107
Forty-four: Every House Key, Every Fire Hydrant, Every Electrical Outlet • 109
Forty-five: The Walls • 111
Forty-six: Playtime • 113
Forty-seven: All His Life • 115
Forty-eight: Take It with Me • 117
Forty-nine: A Story Seen in Glimpses Through the Mist • 119
 
GHOSTS AND THE OTHER SENSES
Fifty: A Lifetime of Touch • 125
Fifty-one: The Runner-Up • 127
Fifty-two: So Many Songs • 129
Fifty-three: A Matter of Acoustics • 131
Fifty-four: Bouquet • 133
Fifty-five: The Mud Odor of the Snow Melting in the Fields • 135
Fifty-six: Instrumentology • 137
Fifty-seven: When the Room Is Quiet, the Daylight Almost Gone • 139
Fifty-eight: A Sort of Fellow • 141
Fifty-nine: A Lesser Feeling • 143
 
GHOSTS AND BELIEF
Sixty: A Small Disruption of Reality • 149
Sixty-one: The Abnormalist and the Usualist • 151
Sixty-two: Real Estate • 153
Sixty-three: Which Are the Crystals, Which the Solution • 155
Sixty-four: Countless Strange Couplings and Separations • 157
Sixty-five: Rapture • 159
Sixty-six: 666 • 161
 
GHOSTS AND LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP
Sixty-seven: Lost and Found • 167
Sixty-eight: Another Man in a Mirror • 169
Sixty-nine: The Apostrophes • 171
Seventy: A Man in a Mirror • 173
Seventy:-one Turnstiles • 175
Seventy-two: A True Story • 177
Seventy-three: Bullets and What It Takes to Dodge Them • 179
Seventy-four: Knees • 181
Seventy-five: The Man She Is Trying to Forget • 183
Seventy-six: The Eternities • 185
Seventy-seven: Too Late • 187
Seventy-eight: Detention • 189
Seventy-nine: I Like Your Shoes • 191
 
GHOSTS AND FAMILY
Eighty: The Ghost’s Disguise • 197
Eighty-one: A Source of Confusion • 199
Eighty-two: Unseeable, Untouchable • 201
Eighty-three: Ghost Brothers • 203
Eighty-four: A Second True Story • 205
Eighty-five A Life • 207
Eighty-six: Extraordinary Gifts • 209
Eighty-seven: An Inherited Disorder • 211
Eighty-eight: Prayer from an Airport Terminal • 213
Eighty-nine: Hatching • 215
Ninety: Bilateral Symmetry • 217
 
GHOSTS AND WORDS AND NUMBERS
Ninety-one: Parakeets • 223
Ninety-two: Euphemisms • 225
Ninety-three: Roughly Eighty Grams • 227
Ninety-four: The Ghost Letter • 229
Ninety-five: A Matter of Linguistic • s231
Ninety-six: Dusk and Other Stories • 233
Ninety-seven: Telephone • 235
Ninety-eight: Numbers • 237
Ninety-nine: The Census • 239
One Hundred: The Most Terrifying Ghost Story Ever Written • 241
 
A Partial Concordance of Themes • 245
Acknowledgments • 267