Kingdom of Knuffel

Akili Li wrote:You know, I never much worried about ghosts in cemeteries. It seems like if I were a ghost, there's so many cool things to go and see and do. I would want to check out a coral reef and explore deep ocean trenches where the continental plates are pulling apart. I would want to get close to a volcano, since I'd already be dead and couldn't get killed by the fumes. I would want to visit restricted libraries, and audit classes I can't afford to take.
I feel like the only ghosts who would hang around in a cemetery either has no imagination, in which case it's hard to be scared of them, or they're tired and introverted and want the peace themselves, in which case it's hard to be scared of them.

Yeah I've never actually been scared in cemeteries, the living are much more menacing. XD

Those are great ideas! As a ghost my first priority would be to hang around my boyfriend (assuming he didn't die with me) and my pets and try to make contact, but after that some traveling would definitely be in order.

Now I'm thinking of trains -- have you seen "Spirited Away"? There's that scene where Chihiro rides the train...

Through the water...

And passes cool stuff...

And at night!!

Every time I see it, all I want is to ride a train through water, does that exist, has that ever existed, waaaant!! *Tantrum*

Akili Li wrote:An abandoned city would be fun to explore, yeah. I still wouldn't want to live there, though, even without the people. I like my balance of civilization/nature to fall more heavily in favor of nature. ;)

I saw a trailer for a documentary that I never got to see, where some abandoned city was reclaimed by trees and weeds and wolves and stuff. Maybe it was Chernobyl? I gotta look that up...

Akili Li wrote:If we have to have those tall buildings anyhow in cities, why can't we have bridge walkways between them every twenty floors or so?)

I don't know but I think the same thing! I see them occasionally here and there in the city near which I live, walkways that go across a street, but they're only like one floor up and they're not good enough. :I If I don't live long enough for that to be a common thing, I will be a very angry ghost!

Akili Li wrote:My mother wants to be cremated. She says if her spirit is stuck where her body is, then with cremation we can scatter bits of her ashes all over some neat spots. My father, on the other hand, wants to be buried for no better reason than "if you're buried you get a headstone. And if you get a headstone, you can put something funny on it. If it's funny enough, you can be more famous after you're dead than while you were alive, and that's even funnier. And if you're dead, you need something funny to cheer you up. You can't eat ice cream when you're dead." At least, that's what he said a few years ago when he was fighting cancer. I'm still not sure how serious he was.

That is a good reason to have a headstone. Or your father could go the statue route, and have one of himself made eating ice cream. That'll learn you, afterlife. Assuming you have no ice cream.

How is he doing now?

So far so good!

Hm, a statue of him eating ice cream? That sounds more like bragging.



Where would you want to travel, as a ghost? Would you try and finish your 'bucket list' first, or start out in places that you'd never be able to go as a living person?


I haven't seen "Spirited Away" but those are really pretty clips!

I know there are some train tracks that run close enough along the edge of lakes and bays that you can't see the shoreline from the second-story windows where you're seated. You see land on one side but just the water from the other. That's ALMOST like riding a train through water?
Or maybe a moving walkway through one of those fancy aquariums with the tunnels underneath some of their tanks?
(I bet somewhere on Earth there's a train on a really long bridge. We've spanned some incredible distances with bridges at this point, surely one of them is for trains...)


Documentaries have trailers? Huh. I never knew that. There are probably abandoned mining towns in North or South America that have been mostly reclaimed at this point. I wonder if it's possible to visit those? Probably slightly less dangerous than Chernobyl. Radiation-wise, anyhow. Possibly other safety issues, maybe I should save that for ghost-exploring.


Yes, you too with the bridges between buildings? This must be possible! I bet it's more of a who-owns-which-buildings-and-is-responsible-for-insurance-and-upkeep-costs thing than any technical limitation.
You know those sky scrapers in Hong Kong that have the open spaces in the middle ? I wonder, if that was a more common design, if the cities themselves could build bridges using spaces like that, as part of transportation for cities...

I would personally like to be buried whole. I don't like the idea of my body being cremated personally.

Akili Li wrote:Where would you want to travel, as a ghost? Would you try and finish your 'bucket list' first, or start out in places that you'd never be able to go as a living person?

Most of my living bucket goals involve things like "learn to draw better" and "finish writing a book"... probably hard to move a pen around when you're a ghost, so I guess I'd do other stuff. <.<

Like you I'd probably want to go to places I couldn't with this frail human body. I might visit your volcano at least briefly (I do have weird random nightmares about melting in lava, don't know what that's about, but I guess as a ghost I can face that), but I'm more drawn to super-cold places with ice and snow and beautiful frozen things. Ooo, can we go into outer space as ghosts? It'd be nice to visit the moon, and other planets, and the sun!

Speaking of bridges!

Akili Li wrote:You know those sky scrapers in Hong Kong that have the open spaces in the middle ? I wonder, if that was a more common design, if the cities themselves could build bridges using spaces like that, as part of transportation for cities...

No I absolutely did not! But I do now, and you just blew my mind.

It would be awesome to take an elevated train or monorail through those. Or just sit in them, looking out.

Oh, ha ha, yeah, it's funny how things you take for granted are unknown to someone else, and then they casually mention something in passing that you've never heard of.
As one webcomic put it, "I had a different life experience!"
Hm, just to sit in it and look out... I've never checked to see if the base of the holes are open to people the way some flat rooftops are.... that would be fun, though! I might just be adding something else to my list right now.


See, now, I would definitely cheat and write a children's book so I could "finish" and then get stuck on illustrating it (the "draw better") and go back in despair to writing a full-length book, and then never get either done. So that's a pretty ambitious bucket list, to me!
Mine is simple stuff, like... okay so right now I'm living in the US, right? And they have these porcupine creatures roaming around, native to the area, but I've only ever seen them in zoos. So one of my bucket list items is to see one in the wild. Which, I am assured by neighbors and family that so long as I keep walking everywhere and keep my eyes peeled at night, it will happen. So it's not even something I have to work very hard to do...
I should probably be more ambitious.



Ice and cold places, that would be amazing too! Like going down to antarctica and watching the penguins, or investigating ice caverns, or... I usually get cold really easy, but this is ghost-tourism, so that's not a factor! I never thought of that! Plus there's a lot of Iceland that it would be fun to explore, and it gets pretty cold there.

Yessssss, outer space! I really want to visit Uranus and see why it's spinning on its axis in such a strange orientation. As far as I know it's the only planet to spin on its side like that, but then I haven't really looked into planets since before they decided that Pluto wasn't really one.

Moi, your dad comes up with the funniest sayings!

Do you know what you would want done with your ashes, then, if you want to be cremated?

My parents already bought their funeral plots o.O so they're definitely being buried. They are doing it because Dad wants to be buried by his parents, who are in the same cemetery. The cemetery also has a mausoleum for cremated remains that looks like a library, and all the ashes are in urns shaped like books with the person's name on the spine. I thought that was pretty cool.

The cemetery where my father's father is buried hosts a "scattering day" once every seven years, where people can come with cremated remains; they try to get a representative from every religion in the region so there's someone on hand to say a few words if called on, and apparently it's a pretty popular event.

People who have inherited urns and ashes from relatives they never even met will drive a long ways to show up, since it's a respectful way to legally dispose of human remains, and that can be an issue.

A lot of the florists in the region will donate one wreath to the funeral home, and then offer deals of bundles of petals that people can buy, to scatter along with the ashes.

I was there two days after one of their scattering days and the petals were EVERYWHERE, still. It's how I found out about it.