In David Lowery’s 2017 masterpiece A Ghost Story, a ghost dressed as a Charlie Brown-esque sheet ghost lingers in the dark, quiet moments of the house he shared with his wife. Despite the film’s somber, heartbreaking tone of grief (this is a spirit yearning for his wife, whom he can never touch), there is something comforting about the portrayal of the central ghost, a deep solace in the personal tragedy that befalls the bereaved. The film tells the audience that the people lost still exist, and they still matter. But as the film progresses, the wife is forced to move on from her grief and leave the house she shared with her husband (and his ghost), a space in which he will spend his entire life.
There are some misconceptions about ghosts.
Fantagraphics
Laura Pérez’s Oculus, released this week by Fantagraphics, features two short stories that recall the tragic comfort of A Ghost Story. In “Prey,” a young pregnant woman begins to feel like she is not alone in her house. She notices small objects out of place, she thinks she senses presences and hears voices. As she washes dishes at the kitchen sink, her hair is playfully (perhaps intimately) tossed back, and she turns to see that she is the only one in the room. She believes the birth of a son will quiet the spirit; instead, the child has inherited the playful ghost. There is no partner in the picture (nor another parent to share the woman’s bed), so the boy’s ghost is likely a presence that would otherwise be denied existence.
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In “Pation 19,” a similarly lonely older woman feels a similar presence. “At first it scared me,” the caption box reads, but then, soon after, it “gave me a strange sense of security.” She grows accustomed to the invisible, somehow dependent on it. When it’s gone, she finds its absence far more haunting than its presence.
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Ocultos is packed with supernatural and occult occurrences: surreal and sublime dream visitations, an owl-guided hallucinatory exploration, and even three UFO lights seen by one boy alone. There is much more than a pleasant presence within the pages of this book, but it never touches on the concept of fear. The unknown and unknowable are never seen as malevolent. As with the ghostly phenomena in A Ghost Story, the uncanny feels more necessary and transformative than awakening. There seems to be something deeper to these brief experiences.
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A comic book equivalent to literary flash fiction or prose poetry, Ocultos is best read in bite-sized chunks rather than in one go. Readers are best off immersing themselves in four or five ghostly pages before zipping on to the next. Each piece seeks to awaken the reader, if not transformatively, than necessary.
Ocultos does not intend to help the reader understand its ghostly phenomena, but it does linger in the reader’s mind: these ghostly phenomena are important.
There’s a tragic comfort in “Ocultos”
Oculus
Quiet and thoughtful, Ocultos offers a flash-fiction ghost and tone-poem visitation that seems to carry great emotional weight.
Beautifully presented.
It’s moving quietly.
