The hotel ghost wanders from floor to floor,
Rustling starched sheets, rattling loose windowpanes,
Scaring the bejeebus out of an occasional tourist,
But she gets no joy from this.
A man who saw her claims she’s a lost woman,
A murdered prostitute or a forbidden abortion gone wrong;
Another declares with absolute certainty
She’s the specter of a wife who took her own life here
After following her wayward husband to some illicit tryst,
but neither of these wishful dramatists come close.
A woman who saw her one alarming June night strikes nearer,
She guesses the phantom is an innkeeper herself,
A former owner dissatisfied with the current corporation,
But even this isn’t quite right.
In fact, it’s only one young girl who nails it,
Solves the mystery of the lady in black,
And only because she’s the only one to hear as well as see,
To catch the faintest strain of the ghost’s frail singsong rhythms,
Humming softly to herself an old cheerful Cuban folk melody,
As she keeps on performing the same routines
That brought her such comfort after she fled her mournful life,
Changing soiled sheets and
Cleaning smudged windows
Of the fingerprints from a million curious wandering children
Pressing their noses against the glass to gaze at the sea,
As her own once did,
And asking their madres what lay on the other side.
Storyteller, scholar, consultant. Loving son, husband and father. Kindhearted mischief-maker.
I'm the Director of the Games and Simulation program at Miami University in Ohio, where I am also an Assistant Professor in the College of Creative Arts' Emerging Technology in Business and Design department. I'm also the director of Miami's Worldbuilding and Narrative Design Research Laboratory (WNDRLab). I have a Master's in Comparative Media Studies from MIT and a PhD in Media Arts and Practices from the University of Southern California.
In past lives I've been the lead Narrative Producer for Microsoft Studios and cofounder of its Narrative Design team, working on projects like Hololens, Quantum Break and new IP incubation; in a "future of media" think tank for Microsoft's CXO/CTO and its Chief Software Architect; the Creative Director for the University of Southern California's World Building Media Lab and the Technical Director, Creative Director and a Research Fellow for USC's Annenberg Innovation Lab; a Visiting Assistant Professor at Whittier College and director of its Whittier Other Worlds Laboratory (WOWLab); the Communications Director and a researcher for the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab; a founding member of the Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT (now The Futures of Entertainment); a magazine editor; and a award-winning short film producer. more »
The opinions put forward in this blog are mine alone, and do not reflect the opinions of my employers.
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