The ghosts appear as solid living people. They have strength and power and yet their
existence is denied. Why? Who is it that
keeps the ghosts alive? Mostly the deniers who want to impress their
rationality on the world, who vehemently insist that ghosts do not exist
because they can’t see them – therefore all mediums are frauds.
At one point the main character was institutionalized
because of a mental illness which we don’t get to know beyond the various
standard labels fought over by the reigning experts. There Alison was tortured in the way patients
are usually tortured by living in the sanitized ward where they are not
entitled to own their knowledge. Alison is a victim, marginalized, unable to get
on with creating peace in her life. Accosted by people suffering from grief,
hated by strangers who accuse without knowing her, and the dead people who need
to get a message to their loved ones.
The last episode I watched begins with a man who suffocates
his lover in their bed which Alison gets to know about through a woman who knocks on Alison’s door seeking help. She begs for Alison’s help. Out
of compassion Alison stays at the apartment and experiences the death of the murdered
woman. The psychologist who is studying
Alison for a book on psychic-phenomena, and who wants to
protect her while inserting his own theory on everything she says, goes with
her and sees the murderous ghost. Only
he doesn’t suffer the symptom of being suffocated – he just witnesses it.
There is a scene before the murder where you hear the man
instruct the woman not to turn on the radio, talk to anyone outside the
apartment, or to make a sound within. In effect she is to be invisible,
inaudible, not real. She is not to
exist.
The psychologist, Robert, who is haunted by the presence of his dead son, denies any of the phenomena
he felt at the spooked apartment, explaining it in terms of his psychological
reasoning.
After the death of his young son, Robert is frozen in guilt and
sorrow, his wife leaves, marries someone else and is now pregnant. She feels betrayed by
Robert’s interest in Alison and demands that he cut ties with her. She accuses
him of betraying the memory of their dead son.
The story is filled with characters making demands on
others. Demanding they see the world as
they do.
After Alison insists that the woman (who sought her out)
should leave the apartment immediately because
her life is in danger, a centre-fold news article reveals the true identity of
the woman. She is a journalist who assumed another name. The journalist
“proved” Alison is a fraud because she created the haunting story. Again Alison
finds herself betrayed, under attack, alone and reviled.
At the end of the episode the ghosts re-enter the vacant apartment
claiming victory that they have returned to this beautiful place that
no-one wants because it is haunted.
Whether ghosts are real or not, or whether we create ghosts,
or ghosts are created to keep us afraid of the unknown is never answered. But I
suspect this series is mostly about the loneliness of people who live in a
culture built on ideologies and experts and who find themselves alone because
the world demands adherence yet does not listen to them. We live in a nattering, chattering age,
calling forth the Shrew and taming her, replaying Othello and his Iago, creating
the new Hitler and Stalin, calling those who see the world differently – idiots
and frauds.
Why does our culture in this post-modern world insist on
trying to prove the existence or non-existence of phenomena? What does the journalist have to gain? What does the ex wife have to gain? What does
the psychologist have to gain? And what do the ghosts gain?
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