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So you came to Amity for the ghosts, eh?
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Oh don’t look like that! Of course you came for the ghosts, there is nothing else here. So, how long will you stay?
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Two weeks you say. Well then you may be lucky and see one. We don’t get many visitors from the other side you know and not very often.
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Go looking for ghosts? Only the insane Fenton parents and the Guys do. The rest of us folk prefer spirits. Much nicer than ghosts.
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The difference? Well, one will maybe hurt you,posses you, torture you or kill you while the other one won’t. People usually go looking for the Cliff Spirit though fortunately not many people find him. Unfortunately most who do are teens but what can you do? Damaged youth looking for help.
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Evil? It depends who you ask. Why don’t you buy a drink and sit down? If you wanna hear more that is.
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You do? Excellent!
The ghost attacks started two years ago and along with the cruel ghosts came the kind spirits. The first ghost attack was caused by the Lunch Lady ghost who is not important to this story. The important one is the one who stopped her. A spirit called Phantom.
Know this. Whenever a ghost attack starts Phantom is quick to show.
For two years now he has been our guardian against ghosts.
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Ghost Hunters don’t do much, except for Red occasionally. But Phantom is the one everyone trusts.
Ghost Hunters are human like us and they can be both good and bad. They are mostly bad, but it is difficult to prove. Common opinion is that they are mad. That they lost their humanity to their obsession with ghost hunting and will become ghosts when they die.
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Of course this is relevant to the Cliff Spirit! Phantom that is. Not the Ghost Hunters.
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Yes, he is. Now stop asking questions and let me finish my story okay?
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Great.
He calls himself Phantom but people refer to him as the Cliff Spirit when they meet him outside of ghost attacks because you meet him while you are standing above a metaphorical cliff.
You can’t take it anymore. Maybe love turned its back to you. Maybe family and friends abandoned you. Maybe there is to much weight on your shoulders. Maybe breathing is to much. I don’t know what but you can’t take it for any longer.
You will start walking towards somewhere. Your instincts and your thoughts are gonna hone towards a certain place. Follow it, don’t fight it. Maybe it will lead on a bench or a table with chairs or a tree. Stay and wait.
There is no reason to feel scared when suddenly you feel colder. As long as you hear a young man’s voice saying “Hello, stranger. Is there something you need from me?” there is nothing to fear. Remember that you came to him. You can leave him whenever you want without worrying about repercussions. If you feel the need to ask him to death, don’t. It will make him sad. If he is already crying, don’t ask why, unless you can take it. Those are your tears after all, not his.
Now what will happen next depends on the person. Some people just let everything out. Fear and pain and stress and pressure. It is not uncommon to hear people crying during the night. After that the Cliff Spirit maybe will hug you or make a joke or take you flying or make you a flower out of ice. Something anyway to make you feel better. Maybe he will give you advice which more often ends up being something like getting help from someone alive. Or how to keep yourself safe until you can escape or defeat whatever troubles you. He even offers being your bodyguard during those fights.
Others just have normal conversations with him and others sit in silence.
Some ask for favours. As long as no one gets hurt or no serious crime is committed, those are done to the best of the Spirit’s ability. One boy even managed to get him as his date to prom while the Spirit helped him with coming out of the closet.
If you are hurt physically he will heal you, that’s for sure.
After you get what you need, it is tradition to give him a gift. It is not required but people like to do it.
It’s not as if he keeps most of them.
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Hm? Well for example I gave him a teddy bear. Next time I saw it, it was in the hands of a young child. The girl had been kidnapped by her father who lost any rights to her. She had one black eye and three broken fingers, but smiled, a bigand bright smile, as she told the cops the story of the nice boy with white hair who gave her the teddy, whom she named Moonshine inspired by his hair, who asked about her family, her friends,her favourite colour and animals and listened to everything she said as if it was the most important thing he could ever learn.
A friend gave him a spare blanket she had. Tomorrow morning it was wrapped around a homeless man.
Someone once gave him a notebook. A month later it was found in the Nasty Burger. On the front page it wrote “For those who need help but fortunately not mine.” And inside were numbers to call and websites to visit. Some give help to those who need it and others just lift your spirits. Some help you raise money in secret online and others lead to groups where you may find people to connect. On the last page it writes “And of course I am always one step before the cliff.” Sometimes what is written inside changes without a hint that it was not always like that. One thing is for sure. It has gotten bigger.
If you don’t have anything to give, spare change is fine. It just does not give you the same feeling of doing something good as something else will.