Draw close now, my children, and listen up well,
For there's a lesson to learn in the tale I will tell,
Of three kinds of ghosts which may wander the land,
Which you might recognize, should you see them firsthand.
The first kind of ghost haunts the place of its
death,
Wherever it was when it drew its last breath
Most often this
shade met a violent fate,
And so in the spot where they died they yet wait,
Whether done in by
murder,
disaster, or
war,
They cling to that pocket of ground evermore,
With their phantasmic chills, they remind passers by,
That on this spot, abruptly, somebody did die.
The ghost of the second kind finds its way home,
And there does it stay, no more given to roam.
The house where in life it kept comfort most sure,
Is the place where the
spirit in death will endure.
No matter where body became split from
soul,
'Tis the manse of its memories which it will patrol.
Forever it wanders the rooms of its days,
There to glimmer in thought of
habitual ways.
The third kind of ghost with the
body remains,
Whether tucked in a
graveyard or tossed out on the plains.
No matter where once it had lived or had died,
It stays near the corpse, thereupon to reside.
The
crypts and the graveyards must be thick with such ghosts,
Regarding their gravesites and maintaining their posts.
And this must explain, in the days growing older
Why cemeteries stay just a little bit colder.
Now there are, to be sure, times when things coincide,
Where the body remains in the place where it died,
Where the death came about in the home of its life,
And the corpse stayed right where it had memories rife,
Why the ghost chose this place we may never find out,
But one thing is certain without any doubt:
You've not far to wander, far ahead or behind,
Before one of these species of ghosts you will find
