(*fourteen unverified claims)
- Ghost Dads exist, believe you me.
Fathers, living and no longer, conjure equivalent quality spirits. Their shadows extend indefinitely across villages, shires, and provinces. Across the block. Across the street. Across the house, or room. Across the world, across the veil. Across the void to You.
- Ghost Dads are a sight to behold.
When shades of Fathers are fully embodied, their presence is undeniable. Their robes are bright, their voices muted. They shine from without, more than from within.
Their companionship, fleeting (for Hamlet and children of all ages) runs an emotional gamut. Their otherness is of our globe for but a short whisper in time.
- Ghost Dads make their own weather.
When souls of Fathers are disembodied, there’s no limit to shape or size or sort. Their enveloped appearance (for the uninitiated) can disconcert the best of us.
Their approach is by stealth, an ethereal front, bringing afternoon fog to our coastal streets. At inexact moments they roll on in, our hearts held like lanterns before us.
- Ghost Dads love us. That’s why they show up.
Michael, my wife Diana’s father, plays with electrical currents. Stovetop light bulbs begin to pop, giving up their filaments. A flickering lamp means he’s come to call. A battery drained before its time means, “Miss you! Wish I was here!”
When the cable box reboots midday without cause, he is likely futzing with our DVR. We imagine he watched Succession once, but Ted Lasso on repeat is more his speed.
- Ghost Dads enjoy their time at the shore.
At the beach when Diana least expects their hugs, Michael urges waves to ask, “Do you miss me?” At Crystal Cove State Park, where we held his surfer’s paddle out memorial, the shore break comes to life.
We play “Avoid the Spray” all day with willets, curlews, and whimbrels. The royal terns watch us, standing on one leg, their fatherly crest feathers misdirected by the sea breeze.
Diana wipes off her sunglasses, wrings out her hair, and mutters how “there’s too much salt” in her eyes. She does her best to reassure him, “Yes, Dad, I’ll get back in the water.”
- Ghost Dads tell Dad Jokes (as you may suspect.)
Michael’s humor returns from the great beyond (as if such a place truly exists.) “Why does your cousin Ava always spell her name backwards?” he asks, pun-prepared for his next observation.
“Hey, noisy!” he interrupts Diana’s silence, teasing, which has happened more and more since he’s gone. “Let’s skip rocks for schists and giggles,” she wishes she had replied.
- Ghost Dads’ powers have limitations.
Diana misses the joyful voicemails her Dad often left for her. She saved all she had from her old iPhone to her laptop late last year. She hasn’t been able to listen to them since.
His prized surfer’s jacket—orange canvas, white racing stripe, with a 1963 Junior Nationals patch—is stowed in a bin in our storage unit. It no longer smells like him.
His random visitations, described here in detail, are all that remain in our lives.
- Ghost Dads love connecting the (polka) dots.
Daniel, my father, enlists coincidences to make his presence known. At the local Hispanic grocery store, there’s a Daniel (per his name tag) at the busy checkout.
Mexican Austrian-Czech polkas, norteños, blare away from a familiar source: a matte blue 1960s General Electric transistor radio, well-paled in the sun’s Californian glare.
I know all its several features by heart. The chassis fit with a collapsible handle. A directional antenna. An AM/FM switch. A see-through Spirograph tuning dial. The exact same model my Dad had when I was young, perched high at the top of our refrigerator.
- Ghost Dads find ways to be heard.
The present tense Daniel bags my multi-colored cookies, authentic mole, and real plantains. A baritone announcer intercedes at a song’s finale, speaking Spanish at lightning speed.
My coincidental universe warps without warning. The cashier’s name tag. The pale blue radio. The brash brass oom-pahs. The deejay’s pronouncements.
Their quadruple conjunction opens spacetime as his animated voice becomes my father’s. Dad is back, on the air, at his European Ethnic Melodies Show, 7:00-9:00 pm Tuesdays, on WHRW, the local college radio station in Binghamton, NY.
His show ran for a total of twenty four years. These days, he is always “on the air.”
- Ghost Dads live on in the things they loved.
Stopped at a traffic light, the well-waxed car in the neighboring lane plays Elton John’s “Daniel.” Overhead on the railway overpass, the Amtrak California Surfliner sails on by toward San Juan Capistrano.
The track sounds–click-clack, clickity-clack, click-clack–remind me of my childhood. I am with my brother and parents at age 8 onboard a vintage steam train my Dad so loved.
We rode the rails all over the Northeast, wherever the trains still ran. Arcade & Attica. Lehigh Gorge. Strasburg. Steamtown. New Hope & Ivyland. We sat on plush seats behind life-sized versions of my Dad’s many HO gauge engines.
We are riding due south now, in the Surfliner’s cars. Blue waves and sunset to our right, my father’s smile wider than the ocean.
- Ghost Dads appear in the darnedest places.
Mornings in the mirror after shaving, I see my father in me and me in him. If I turn my face at just the right angle, I can separate and/or merge our images. Our jawlines, our ears, and our foreheads. Our puffy bags under our Slavic eyes.
I hear him in my cough, when I clear my throat. I feel him in my hands, when fix small objects. I taste him in his favorite old school candies: Goldberg’s Peanut Chews, Zagnut bars, and Mary Jane peanut butter and molasses taffy.
These events would please him to no end, if he was still here, which he is not.
- Ghost Dads have unconscious powers.
Sometimes, I, too, (unknowingly) project myself on planes beyond our own.
Across our solar system, chasing Voyager’s probes with their golden recordings. Into closely monitored spacetime wormholes behind locked fences on secret, government bases. Toward haunted industrial buildings overgrown with heavy metal-absorbing vines.
More often, my unintentional DadLandTM broadcasts beam out, like an off-kilter pirate radio station. Bouncing off the ionosphere, my rippled shortwave signals search for ground.
- Ghost Dads meet you where you are.
When they least expect it, my emanations will haunt the lives of our two adult children. During late-night Ouija board drinking games on their respective coasts, I’ll drop by, unannounced.
Letter by letter, familiar messages will appear and their brows will begin to knit. Under the influence, my prescient words (undeniably mine) will materialize.
Howling with laughter, they will ask “The Spirits” who calls them, again and again. I’ll reply, through the unified seance touch of their trembling fingertips, “Pick up. It’s your father.”
- Ghost Dads are beyond this world.
Someday soon, I will reach my offspring in ways I can’t possibly imagine. Our entanglement will be spooky at a distance and will never, ever, ever collapse.
I’ll appear when they need me in meaningful ways. I’ll visit in a manner they cannot explain.
I’ll be there, except I’ll be gone.
I’ll be the Ghost Dad they’re looking for.
Robert Walikis is a writer, playwright, poet, and songwriter. His short stories “Terrafir” and “Peak Child” were semifinalists for the North American Review’s 2023 and 2022 Kurt Vonnegut Speculative Fiction Prizes. His creative nonfiction essay “Most Non-Compete Clauses are Legally Unenforceable” was runner-up for Grist Journal’s Issue 16 ProForma Contest. His very short story “Funerary Rumors” was second runner-up for PRISM International’s 2022 Grouse Grind Lit Prize for V Short Forms. His work has appeared in Post Road, Grist Journal, PRISM International, and elsewhere. Rob lives in Maine with his wife-partner-writer-artist Diana Mullins. He makes maps and tells stories. Read more at www.robertwalikis.com.