The New Yorker's Short Story 'Ghosts And Empties'

Anya is a normal teenage girl from Russia, still trying to fit in into her school. She comes from an immigrant family and tried very hard to get rid of her accent and fit with the American culture. She is a typical girl that worries about boys and all type of girl stuff… However, she smokes.

As I walked, the air of this haunted, dreadful and sorrowful land had sucked the life out of everything and roared as humanity began to disappear. As I carried on walking, I noticed that the small fraction of light was getting smaller and smaller, until it had been engulfed into a think black ash like smoke. Aggressively, the wind walked past the building with its cruddy feeling, blowing away all signs of life. Deeper and deeper into the land was a burning car door. The fire roared and crackled. The roaring and crackling of the burning car door merged with the aggressive air and created the loudest sounds ever heard on land. Growing darker, the skies made me feel nauseous. The fear of not waking up if a human fell asleep towered

We begin by learning that David lives on a street with sparse traffic and that gossip of urban legend quality travels fast in this small area. This sensational tale of a burglar who dies in a chimney receives, along with no suspension of disbelief from our narrator, no media coverage in a newspaper so short on material that it is noted that an article about a cheese eating contest made the front page at one point (Sedaris par 1-10). All of which sets the stage for a thriller or horror story in a very small and peaceful community. David’s internal dialog tells of his fears of zombies and how he attempts to remain on high alert

Dr. Gabor Mate, a Hungarian born Canadian physician, who is also a neurologist, psychiatrist, and psychologist, but who specializes in the study and treatment of addiction, reveals revolutionary evidence pertaining to addiction. In Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Dr. Mate worked with patients suffering chronic drug addiction for 12 years. With 20 years of experience as a family practitioner, Dr. Mate is a renowned speaker and teacher throughout North America; sharing his extensive knowledge with diverse audiences including health care professionals and educators (Mate, About Dr. Mate, 2016). The Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Dr. Mate’s most recent best-selling book, illuminates the origins and causes of addiction. As Co-founder of Compassion for Addiction (a non-profit organization), Dr. Gabor Mate encourages a greater understanding; “addiction is the attempt of affected human beings to escape a profound discomfort with themselves and their world” (Mate, Compassion4Addiction, 2015). Drawing on cutting-edge science, Dr. Mate presents the world with a shocking discovery: “The source of addiction is not to be found in genes, but in the early childhood environment.” Therefore, Dr. Mate simply “calls for a more compassionate approach toward the addict.” (Mate, 2016) As cutting-edge science concludes addiction to be a mental health issue, rather than criminal behavior, the American legal system demonstrates a devastating disservice to its own society.

Imagine, if you will, a brisk night wind coming fast across a lake carrying a pungent smell, something you can’t quite identify, but is nonetheless familiar enough to send a shiver up your spine. As it hits the trees, they creak out a somber call in the still night air. Or was that groan something more…human? You notice, for the first time, the absence of tires humming on pavement and you wonder if it’s that late, or maybe just a slow night. The soft tapping of your shoes on the sidewalk is the only accompaniment your slow breathing has as you move towards the warmth of your home, holding thoughts of a warm bed in the palm of your hand to keep the chill away. You don’t notice at first, perhaps because the reality of what you’re hearing is

The article “Ghost Stories: There Was Something About My New House” by Hannah Betts, follows the author’s own paranormal encounter in her old home. Hannah and her family moved into a spacious Victorian manor that was always rumored to be haunted. Being skeptics, the Betts family decided to move into the house anyway. During their time in the manor, several smaller encounters, such as hearing footsteps and voices; which ultimately led to a ghost breaking a mirror, etching 666 into the shards of glass, and writing “I’m going to (explicit) kill you all” in blood. In her article, Betts uses pathos to appeal to the reader’s emotions by her use of tone and mood, the parts of speech, and foreshadowing.

Charlotte Gilman, through the first person narrator, speaks to the reader of the stages of psychic disintegration by sharing the narrator's heightened perceptions: "That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid, but I don't care--there is something strange about the house--I can feel it" (304). The conflicting

One of her spookiest book claimed by readers would be Deep, Dark, and Dangerous. The story talks about how an old girl who died haunts a family with her spirits. It all traced back to Hahn’s childhood, as she experienced these scary things happen around her. Hahn has experienced ghosts in her life which made her write stories that related to hers. Hahn has once said she has encountered a ghost at a hotel inn in Kansas.

In the first passage the writer Margaret Dulaney expresses that she suffers from worthless days; I find the passage to be relatable to the everyday person looking for their purpose in this world. Dulaney tries to relate to the reader by using this attention grabbing and thought provoking statement, “I wonder if I am the only one who suffers from worthless days.” The passage is spoken in first person; Dulaney begins to tell the reader her personal experience with feeling worthless. Dulaney seems overwhelmed with feeling worthless but she remains optimistic as she waits for her purpose.

A disclaimer, before we continue: I can watch horror movies all day and not be fazed by the time I go to sleep, but Stephen King has obviously let the brutal Maine winters get to him while he writes these stories. I read Stephen King’s collection of short stories known as Night Shift. In this book, three stories in particular stood out to me: Jerusalem’s Lot, The Boogeyman, and Gray Matter. These three stood out to me either because I was able to fully immerse myself into the story, or they thoroughly creeped me out.

This abnormal phenomenon significantly affects the narrator and robs him of his rest. The faint sound of a spirit will only add to his inability to sleep through the storm. Distraught and scared by these events that he cannot rationalize, he decides desert his efforts of sleep and attempt to walk them away. As the narrator’s efforts to suppress his fears fail him he decides to read a story to his old friend Usher, by paranormal activity, the sounds that are written in the book begin to occur parallel in the Usher residence. He finds himself agitated “by a thousand conflicting sensations, in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant…” (Poe).

Again, the author selects a new set of imagery, such as stars, moon, sun, ocean, and wood to remind of the heaven in which the speaker used to live, and then to sweep it off right away. The last statement “For nothing now can ever come to any good” (16) finally reinforces the speaker’s loss and unhappiness. In loneliness, the speaker’s love becomes fiercer and more truthful. It is the fierceness and truthfulness that lead the speaker to the last stair of hopelessness. The end of the poem is also the hopeless end of the speaker’s life because of “nothing …good.”

Considered one of the most respected African plays, The Dilemma of a Ghost revolves around a newly married couple, Ato and Eulalie. Ato’s Ghanaian family has saved tremendously to send him to University in the United States. After he completes his studies, however, Ato surprises his family by returning home with an African-American bride, Eulalie. Spread out over a year, the play mainly focuses on the cultural differences that both Ato’s family and Eulalie struggle to accept in each other. Aidoo captures a number of upsetting problems confronting the post-colonial Africa, as she highlights the

In the short story Ghosts written by Edwidge Danticat a young man named Pascal and his family (mother, father, and a brother once a police officer, immigrated to Canada) live in an underprivileged area of Haiti called Bel Air. His parents once pigeon breeders, now own a restaurant in the neighborhood. The eatery caters to the working-class citizens as well as the local gang members. When Pascal is not working at the restaurant he is either attending computer programming school or working at the local radio station as a news writer. Pascal has the desire to have a program on the radio station, that he will use as a platform to discuss and alleviate the numerous issues within his community with guest such as; gang members, community leaders,

There 's that look people get told they have, where they look like they 've seen a ghost. I want to know what it means to have that feeling but knowing you 're the ghost. It had been too long since I stepped foot anywhere near these parts of the city. After I turned and changed into who I am now, I never wanted to risk getting seen by any members of the family that runs this part. That is actually a good reason they have never been able to extend their territory any further. It 's kind of easy to hear when a gang war is about to break out for someone to gain new ground. And for me, it 's all too easy to join the defending family and help kill men you were once friends with to make sure you had the room to run fucking wild. I 'm made a few good friends, nah I made a few bad acquaintances by doing that. The men that run other parts of this city know me by who I am now, only one knows me by who I was. Maybe it 's for the best he knows Big Mac is against him, less likely that it 's me behind the mask then. God, in those days, before I grew up and found out doing everything I was getting told to do, without being told to do them was so much better, Claire not counting, she just above another voice in my head. But the freedom I have, may not seem like a good thing for the city and its people, but I love being me and only this me.