Q & A: My character has just realized he's a ghost -- what is his state of mind likely to be?

Q: I’ve hit a snag in the scene when my main character dies and returns as a ghost. The first thing he sees when he “reawakens” is another ghost, who becomes his companion.

The last thing he sees is a column falling toward him, and then he’s launched into a world of ghost, witches, and magic. He is there packing up furniture and boarding up the building before he dies.

I don’t want to flat-out say “hey, you're dead” and I want to avoid a long dialogue during the scene. (I’m planning to jump ahead and have a narrative describing his first weeks as a ghost.)

 

A:There are two types of reaction patterns for you to consider. The first is the good old standard of shock, but the second is characterological.

I'm a WHAT?! Generic Human Shock

First, consider the generic human "I-can't-believe-this-is-happening" state of mind, the kind you'd expect almost anyone have.

Disbelief is the most obvious example of this. In extreme circumstances (and I think this counts!), many people experience derealization (a type of dissociation that leave you feeling like the world around you isn't real, or like you're watching it on TV rather than experiencing it--this is similar to that feeling of everything slowing down during a car accident). Especially if your character finds himself looking down at his corpse, I think dissociation (feeling like part of you is "split off" or "disconnected") is going to be pretty natural.

He might also go through the grief stages, which sounds funny but is not uncommon with the kinds of stressors that make you wish you could back up and do things differently.

1. First, you feel like you should be able to back up and make things better. (You are denying that what has happened is real, and that you can't change it.)
2. Second you feel anger, and try to change things with sheer force of will (like yelling at your dead body to get up again, say).
3. Then you realize you can't fix it and that things will never be the same, which is depressing.
4. Fourth, of course, is acceptance.
   
   

Character-Specific Reactions

The second type of reaction, and this is more important than the things above, is characterological.

Most people's stress reactions are stronger versions (or defense mechanism versions, if you like) of the way they deal with other things. It's like, under pressure, the personality defaults to whichever traits are strongest.

Theorist Gordon Allport believed that everyone had about 5 "central traits" that are characteristic of them, and many more "secondary traits" that were more situation-specific. Your character is likely to default to a central trait, or jump back and forth between two or three in his attempts to deal with what has happened.

Since you told me he's had a rough few days leading up to his actual death, you have a good opportunity to foreshadow his thinking and behavior patterns by showing milder versions to the stressors he faces.

Examples

So...let's say that the way he deals with things is to try to reason his way out of them -- after his immediate reaction, he's likely to intellectualize his death. (I don't know how he sounds, but just to give you an example -- "There is no evidence of life after death; therefore, I cannot be dead." Let's say he's standing there looking at his body, so he tells himself, "This is merely an out-of-body experience, a misfire in the brain...")

Or maybe he's the kind of person who likes to avoid unpleasant truths -- his denial is likely to be stronger and last longer than the average person's. (He's likely to try to go about his business as usual, determined to prove he's alive, no matter what happens.)

If he's the kind to get angry at things, he's going to be really, really mad. (He could be mad about being dead, he could be mad about everything he had to get done, he could be mad about old houses with rickety pillars...)

Any of these things would give him a way to deal with (or not deal with!) his new ghost companion without having any kind of dialogue; you can pick up the story again later when it finally starts to sink in that this is For Real, with general references to his state of mind following the accident, even as general as "he'd been mad ever since..."

Perhaps your character finally decides to ask the other ghost some questions. If your character is an intellectual sort, he might demand an explanation; if he's an avoider, he might tell the ghost to go away, or to fix what happened; if he's an angry sort, he'd probably yell at the ghost. Again, whatever makes your character unique is what's going to characterize his feelings and reaction following the accident.

All of my examples are just examples, since I'm working from a general description; obviously you'll need to adapt them to your story and your characters.