Can Ghosts Keep a Secret--Is It Confidential?

Written By Kurt Vonnegut

When I first heard about ghosts writing books I wasn’t shocked at all. I just sat there sipping my coffee and reading the Indianapolis Star newspaper. After all, I’d seen worse in Dresden and having been the creative midwife that birthed Billy Pilgrim’s run-in with the Tralfamodorians and that whole mess about the time-space-continuum, and all, I was hardly phased. I’ve written enough words about Tralfamadore and old Billy to sell a million Fortune Cookies, but apparently not enough to amass a real fortune. So it goes. 

So, I wanted to understand this ghost writing thing, because to me it seemed like an awfully good story, or maybe too good to be true. If I could capture a storytelling ghost and get him to talk to me--well then, maybe I could have another real book on my hands. The fact that a real live ghost could write a book in your own voice and do all of the hard work, while you continued making money, and eating popcorn and watching movies, and going to children’s soccer games, was something so quintessentially entrepreneurial that I just had to investigate. We, Americans are curious like that, you know. So it goes.

I might point out that seeing and hearing a ghost are two different things. To hear a ghost’s voice is to hear something entirely human. To see a ghost is to see something entirely inhuman. To read a ghost’s writing, on the other hand, is to communicate with the ghost telepathically, and this interested me the most. 

When it was time for me to meet the ghost I was pleasantly surprised by how sincere he was. It was quite surreal, actually. He was invisible to everyone who read the book, except the lone fact that only he and I knew he was the one who did most of the writing. I tried cajoling him with compliments and praise, in order to get him to spill the beans on the author’s identity but he wouldn’t budge. He simply said something to throw me off his scent. So it goes.