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Ghost Stories

October 2016

In their most frequent appearances in folklore and fiction, ghosts appear as shadowy versions of their former selves. Some consider ghosts to be spirits trapped on Earth because of unfinished business, unable to transition to the afterlife until adding final punctuation to their lives. Two of the stories here feature the dead returning in corporeal form. The world is haunted as much by events as by the lingering spirits of those involved in them, and the third story details a survivor’s determination to report the shocking brutality of a political prison and memorialize its victims.

Hauntings: International Ghost Stories
By Susan Harris
Ghosts and all they represent lurk perennially in the universal consciousness and in literature around the world.
Water in the Rice Fields up to My Knees!
By Johary Ravaloson
Since when do dead people care about rice?
Translated from French by Allison M. Charette
Wheels
By Takako Arai
Perhaps she wanted her own fires to burn
Translated from Japanese by Jeffrey Angles
Multilingual
From “Tazmamartyrs”
By Aziz BineBine
So he passed most of that night under the corpse.
Translated from French by Lulu Norman