Carnival of Souls

Carnival of Souls was released in 1962 and was all but forgotten until it was re-released in the late 1980s. The story is about a woman who is out with two of her friends and is challenged to a drag race somewhere in Kansas. During the race, the women’s car flies off a bridge into the water, and it is feared that the three women are dead. Only Mary Henry, played by Candace Hilligoss, survives.

She turns out to be an organ player, and she leaves Kansas for a job playing organ at a church in Utah on the banks of the Great Salt Lake. She heads west, where she starts to see visions of a man or a ghoul, which continue to haunt her for the rest of the movie.

She slowly goes mad, having visions of the ghoulish man, and at times, other people cannot see or hear her. She finally goes to an old abandoned carnival that once was a dance hall and, before that, a bathhouse. 

This movie speaks to me because of its obvious nod to trauma but also survival guilt. It is hard not to think about the people in my life who are no longer here and not think how I survived them. I have been in traumatic events with people who didn’t make it, and I think back to walking away from that tragedy alive.

There are scenes where Mary stops being seen and heard by other people. The first time, she tries to buy a dress; the second time, she is trying to buy a bus ticket. No one can see her. She has been forgotten. Trying to explain the guilt of survival feels like I am not being seen or heard. It isn’t the fault of the person sitting across from me, but the lack of understanding is alienating.

When I lived in Portland, where I grew up, I would see ghosts on every corner. Sometimes, they were just people who looked similar to someone I remember, but other times, they were apparitions. I would look down and walk away quickly, not looking back. 

I have moved away from Portland to a place where I have no ghosts or traumatic experiences, but the internet keeps reminding me of people who are no longer there. I rejoined Facebook a few months ago and saw all the ‘friends’ no longer living. They have the annual happy birthday posts on their wall, and then the anniversary of their demise is remembered. I’m not sure if it’s so people can keep remembering the person or to let us know that they can’t forget the person. 

Grief will carry on for a long time, and it can make us feel isolated because there is nothing anyone can say that will connect us back to the living until we are ready. Grief will visit now and then as the days turn into years and decades. Sometimes, it is a song; sometimes, it is the sound leaves make when crunching under my shoes; sometimes, it smells like a cigarette behind a gas station. Their face will appear in my memories, and I will feel that loneliness that strangles me.

Sometimes, I think of those people in my loneliness. I am lonely. When I’m lonely, I miss the people who are not there. I miss what I used to know. I have difficulty being present and accepting what I have now when so much is missing in my life. 

I can suffer from the opposite; for example, I can’t remember some people I spent so much time with. I can remember the stories and the adventures, but their faces cannot be recalled. They are just a foggy blur that, no matter how hard I concentrate, I can’t remember. I don’t know even some of their names. 

Carnival of Sould spoke to me so much about the forgotten and remembered ghosts that haunt me. I remember waking up with the faces of loved ones gone, staring down at me with rage in their eyes; why was I asleep in a bed while they had to haunt me from the cold afterlife? 

There is a scene where the ghosts dance in the abandoned dance hall, and I couldn’t help but feel that I have seen that before. She sees a ghost of herself dancing with the main ghoul, and I have seen myself as a ghost.

While Carnival of Souls is part of that campy mid-century horror drive-in culture, there is something beautiful about it. These great shots capture the vastness of the West and the life between giant spines of mountains. These are where my ghosts live, too. 

I suffer from my mind making up meanings that don’t do anything but make it harder for me to relate to others. I can dismiss other people’s beliefs or feel superior to my own, but I do a great job creating a wall around me. One of those beliefs is that I shouldn’t be here. It has seeped into many of my beliefs and morals while trying not to be lonely anymore.

I become convinced I don’t deserve nice things or friendly people. I don’t believe they can relate to me. I become unique. All these beliefs do is create isolation and loneliness. It’s not like I want to be special or so unique that I am cut off from others. 

SPOILER ALERT: at the end of the movie, after some of the town people follow the tracks of Mary from the carnival out into the salt flats and the tracks stop, we see the car from the beginning of the movie being fished out of the river and Mary is dead along with the two other girls. I think about how I sometimes fetishize death because of my guilt. I’m not suicidal, but I do think about death and dying a lot. Along with losing so many people in my life to addiction, crime, and suicide, I suffered from cancer, which haunts me almost more than the ghosts of my past do. I wear death as a thin gossamer kimono. 

The answer to this survival guide is to try to help others. I know that when I was helped, I felt less alone and hopeful. I didn’t have that feeling that I was wrong in this world. I didn’t feel like I was outliving myself. I feel a purpose when I think about being nice to others and helping them. When I am trying to understand someone, I am not isolated. When I am being compassionate, I am not unique anymore. 

I remember when a friend of mine died when I was still 17, and an older guy who was ‘cool’ and I looked up to told me to get ready and to get used to people dying. I needed to embody that for my sanity and to be cool. Thirty years later, I am not used to it, and it saddens me every time, but I would rather be sad than so cool that I can’t feel anything anymore because I want to protect myself from being hurt. The problem with protecting myself from being hurt is I am also keeping myself from living with others. 

Go out there, ignore the ghosts, and live life. Get hurt. Be sad when someone leaves your life. Get your heartbroken. Cry. Be alive and know that you belong here now. The Carnival of Souls wants to separate you from everyone. Love like your life depends on it because it does.

And watch the movie Carnival of Souls, it’s excellent.