I didn’t used to believe in ghosts， but I was trained to talk to them. My mother reminded me many times that I had the gift. It all stemmed from a lie I told when I was four. The way my mother remembered it， I refused to get ready for bed one night， claiming that there was a ghost in the bathroom. She was delighted to learn that I was a 1)spirit medium.
Thereafter， she questioned anything unusual—a sudden gust of wind， a vase that fell and shattered. She would ask me， “She here？” She meant my grandmother.
When I was a child， my mother told me that my grandmother died in great 2)agony after she accidentally ate too much 3)opium. My mother was nine years old when she watched this happen.
When I was 14， my older brother was stricken with a brain 4)tumor. My mother begged me to ask my grandmother to save him. When he died， she asked me to talk to him as well. “I don’t know how，” I protested. When my father died of a brain tumor six months after my brother， she made me use a 5)Ouija board. She wanted to know if they still loved her. I spelled out the answer I knew she wanted to hear： Yes. Always.
When I became a fiction writer in my 30s， I wrote a story about a woman who killed herself eating too much opium. After my mother read a draft of that story， she had tears in her eyes. Now she had proof： My grandmother had talked to me and told me her true story. How else could I have known my grandmother had not died by accident but with the fury of suicide？ She asked me， “She here now？” I answered honestly， “I don’t know.”
Over the years， I have included other details in my writing I could not possibly have known on my own： a place， a character， a song. I have come to feel differently about my ghostwriters. Sometimes their clues have come so plentifully， they’ve made me laugh like a child who can’t open birthday presents fast enough. I must say thanks， not to blind luck but to my ghosts.