This is Our Haunted Spirits
Love is a hauntingβbest paired with a gothic novel and a good single malt.
What to expect here:
Each month, I pair a book with a whisky and write slow, deeply haunted essaysβsome personal, some historical, some fictional. All are love letters to the past, to the stories we carry, and to the lives we almost lived.
I believe in ghosts. One of them was my twin.
She died the night I was born.
And for a while, I talked to her like she was still there.
Because maybeβshe was. Maybe, she still is.
I was five years old when I first scared our babysitter, Kara.
βItβs so cute she has an imaginary friend,β she told my mum who enquired what she meant. βThe little girl she plays with and talks to.β
My mum had smiled, the moment touching a part of her she was still learning how to give voice. βThatβs her twin,β she told Kara. βShe passed away.β
Kara had paledβjust a littleβbut accepted the innocent moment for what it was. Had she believed her? Or maybe just indulged the ache in my young motherβs voice?
Weeks later, when my mum arrived home from an evening shift at a local service station, it seemed Kara was now a believer. Bag in hand and pacing by the door waiting to go, the teen was wide-eyed.
βDoes she see other things?β Kara had asked, arms folded across her chest. βOther people?β
My mum took a deep breath. βWhat happened?β
Kara looked away, staring into the corner of the room, lost in a memory of her own before she spoke, her voice spiderweb thin. βShe wanted to know who the policeman was outside. She told me he was waving at me and wanted to come in.β
Mum nodded. Sensing the reveal.
Karaβs eyes misted, her hand went to her throat. βMy dad was a cop. He died a year ago. Iβm so sorry, I have to go.β
Kara never came back.
I eventually stopped seeing ghosts.
But that gossamer thread between myself and the afterlife, between this flesh and blood realm and my sister who lived beyond, never really loosened.
These days, Iβm visited in dreams by loved ones long past. I get messages, have premonitionsβone that even saved my life.
And that connection is always strongest when Iβm writing.
Writers of gothic works often shy away from revealing their spiritual experiences. I understand why. But I write because of them and pretending anything less feels untrue.
I write to try to understand what happened on the night of my birth. Why Iβm here and my twin is not.
Was it fate?
Will she come back again to another life?
Is she guiding me, somehow?
Why do I get to run and sob and read and be a mother and drink whisky and make love until stars burst behind my eyesβand she can only watch?
This is what drives me to pick up the pen.
Every word is a missive to the beyond. Like Iβm her field guide to living, capturing the agonising ecstasy of every moment.
Itβs me saying to my twin, this, this is what it feels like to breathe.
Itβs me, begging her to write back.
To tell me that love is eternal.
To tell me she isnβt gone.
To tell me one day, Iβll stop feeling like half of an unfinished equation.
And sometimesβif I get quiet enoughβJess still answers.
I am a fiction writer.
An essayist.
A ghost-believer.
A truth-teller of forgotten women, of unseen things.
A student of history.
A historian of the heart. Of my heart.
This Substack is a love letter to the things that inspire my work.
Gothic fiction.
Single malt whiskey.
Crumbling castles.
Misremembered heroes.
Textile art.
And ghost stories.
For what is love, once itβs lost, but a haunting?
βAnnie x