In Esperanto: Vera Fantoma Rakonto

My first Mardi Gras was 20 years ago, on my birthday—New Orleans being a place that truly embraces the spirit of my birthday—and for some time, from within a crowd across the street, just after dusk had given way to night; I saw, then watched, the ghostly-blue visage of what seemed to be a woman's face, perfectly still, as it hung in the darkness of an empty Garden District balcony; eyes downcast, unseen, a faint eldritch glow that did not penetrate the surrounding gloom: her expression somber, pensive, maybe even mournful; up above, but not watching, the flambeaux that bobbed, and oblivious to the drums that boomed, parading through the street below—too unreal to be real, yet too real to be anything else—and because the brain itches when it can make no sense of what the sight claims to see, I squinted my eyes, twisting them up, trying to make her corporeal; to manifest her into the world of the living, to shelve her into a warehouse of things, or to send her away entirely to the realm of the fanciful, until finally, she lowered her phone.

Victorian ghosts haunt stairwells, attics, and moors.

Modern ghosts haunt their phones.