👻If they were a ghost, what methods would they use to haunt someone?
“I’d take it nice and slow, as if it were a full seven course meal on a date night at the best of restaurants. The hors d'oeuvre, the preview of things to come, would be to start slowly undermining their memory, piece by piece. A pencil moved there, a few papers moved slightly, books carefully rearranged just enough to seem off and make them look twice to find them. Subtle, manageable, and hardly ill-omened, if I’m careful and do so without being caught in the act.”
“The soup is the smallest of escalations. Undermining their memory further by leaving faucets dripping. Not running, for that would alert them as to my presence, but making them question if they properly closed the sinks or if the house itself has issues. I don’t want to be detected, after all. The game’s only just begin at this second course.”
“From there, the proper appetizer would be to start moving furniture ever-so-slightly, adjusting it so every time they walk into a room, it seems almost like how they remember it, but it is just off enough to alert the senses as to something being wrong. People are more perceptive than credit is given, often enough, and a few degrees of change for items in a room will be noticed. Not by the conscious mind, perhaps, but the subconscious would be kept on constant high alert. Which is my intention. I mean to wear them down, after all.”
“The salad? That comes when they finally have started to settle down after the appetizer. The mind can only stay alert for so long until it is exhausted. And once exhaustion sets in and my victim is less alert, I'll continue to do what I did during the hors d’oeurve, only now moving those very items when they are in the very same room, waiting for their back to be turned to move items just enough to mess with their perception of reality. I couldn’t do this any earlier than when exhaustion set in, as they would immediately catch on and doubt themselves. But with the mind exhausted, they’re more likely to accept and less likely to consider an outside force is interfering and messing with their perceptions.”
“Which brings us to the main course: accidents. Having had their memory thoroughly messed with by now, I’ll take it upon myself to start setting up accidents. They can be harmful or harmless; it doesn’t matter if damage is done. We’re talking removed bolts holding ladders together while they are on them, chairs being subtly damaged so that they are more inclined to break if the owner sits down too roughly in them, the light source going out at a bad point when descending stairs, the usual. Not too frequently, for then it may be determined that there’s involvement of outside forces, but frequently enough to slowly build up the question of clumsiness and if they did take proper precautions to prevent accidents from happening. At this point, outsiders may well quickly discover my presence if I try to act while they are around, but the victim may well still believe it to be their own fault, brought on by the constant undermining of their memory from the previous courses.”
“Dessert is the grand reveal; the cumulation of all that self-doubt I’ve been building up in the mind coming crashing down. Even I can’t plan how someone may take the revelation that their entire life, from how accident prone they are to their questionable memory of their own home, was manufactured. Would they be able to bear it? Would their will break? Or would they run screaming when, as a ghost, I choose to manifest by pulling back a seat at the breakfast table and taking a seat, and finally speak, giving a casual ‘good morning’ as if it were an ordinary day?”
“As one well may expect, the mignardise would be something small, far less grand, and simple in gesture, meant to cleanse the palate and reach a satisfying conclusion. And in such a case, it would be me ceasing to mess with the poor soul, so long as they acknowledge my presence in the house and treat me as a person still, and not a thing that happens to come as a package deal with the building itself. By lasting up till this point without cracking, they’d have earned the right to live there in peace.”
[Thank you for the ask @meepsthemiqo!]
