Most people are haunted by something. In some cases it has a name and a face; in others, it's nameless and faceless, known only by the occasions in which it seems to loom over events.
I'm haunted by some lost people - not dead, as far as I know, but I don't know whether they're dead or alive and have seemingly no way of finding out. The internet knows nothing of them. They might be out there somewhere or they might not. A few years ago I bumped into one of them on the escalators coming out of the Northern Line at Euston. That really was like seeing a ghost. Not lost loves necessarily, but unfinished stories. People who slipped out of my life when I was young and went through bouts of depression and withdrawal and simply fell out of contact with them. People who might remember parts of my own past that I've forgotten, or that have become vague and confused over time.
If it weren't for the internet - its promise that everything is addressable, everything and everyone can be found - such absences might not seem so absurd and unbearable. There are plenty of people from my childhood who can be found without any trouble at all on Facebook, whom I've no interest in talking to at all.
I'm haunted by some lost people - not dead, as far as I know, but I don't know whether they're dead or alive and have seemingly no way of finding out. The internet knows nothing of them. They might be out there somewhere or they might not. A few years ago I bumped into one of them on the escalators coming out of the Northern Line at Euston. That really was like seeing a ghost. Not lost loves necessarily, but unfinished stories. People who slipped out of my life when I was young and went through bouts of depression and withdrawal and simply fell out of contact with them. People who might remember parts of my own past that I've forgotten, or that have become vague and confused over time.
If it weren't for the internet - its promise that everything is addressable, everything and everyone can be found - such absences might not seem so absurd and unbearable. There are plenty of people from my childhood who can be found without any trouble at all on Facebook, whom I've no interest in talking to at all.