"Hey, I tried to teach you how to handle comics in the sixth grade, but oh no. You wanted to play little league." - Brodie, Mallrats

Denali at dawn. The dark line was really there, and not just something the camera caught - I'm thinking it's a function of altitude. Unless it was a ghost. Regardless, this clicks to a larger version that's certified Mountainlicious!

It’s spring, and in spring a young man’s fancy turns to . . . ghosts?

The Boy is five, and fascinated by life. He bounces around and asks questions at a rapid pace, voracious to learn about everything. Unfortunately, his recall is good, so I’ve got to be consistent.

His latest passion is . . . ghosts. Ghosthunters is a show on the Science Fiction channel where (I am not making this up) two plumbers from Rhode Island and their friends look for ghosts in allegedly haunted places. It’s reality TV, and it can be enjoyable. I’m impressed that the leaders of the group are fairly hard to convince that a haunting is taking place. If you can convince honest to God plumbers that ghosts are real, well, who am I to argue? (A corollary question: is ghost-hunting part of the plumber’s apprentice program on the East Coast? My plumber in Alaska doesn’t really know much about ghosts, so I’m concerned he might not be qualified to work on a sink.)

The Boy is fascinated by all of it. When Ghosthunters is on, he is in rapt attention, watching the show and soaking up the story, relishing each new detail. For The Boy to sit still during anything is amazing. To watch him sit still for an hour? Nirvana.

The concern I’ve had is whether or not he should be watching content like that. Is it healthy for someone who doesn’t know how to tie his own shoes to know about EVP (electronic voice phenomena)? Is it right that someone who has yet to master the intricacy of the toilet flush knob to understand what an infrared camera does (okay, he knows how to flush, just refuses to, and The Mrs. says his aim is horrible)?

I’m probably not a good judge of that, and here’s why:

He and I sat down last night and read a comic book.

(I know that comic books were thought to be the bane of western civilization when I was young. It’s a shame that generation, wasted on Archie, X-Men, The Haunted Tank, and Swamp Thing only managed to create the Internet, the personal computer, the cell phone, land men on the moon, and defeat the Soviet threat. Imagine what they could have done if only they never seen those hideous comic books!)

Anyway, he and I read through the comic book, a reprint of an old (1950’s) “Weird Science.” I was shocked to see that the first story was one that had been reprinted in my youth in the 1970’s, and that I read as a young boy. I can recall looking for haunted places when I was his age. The cycle of life is complete. Hakuna Matata. He can watch Ghosthunters.

After a Ghosthunter episode, I guess to relax and unwind from watching ghost-hunting, he likes to hunt ghosts. Since our house is relatively free of supernatural phenomena (our beer keeps mysteriously disappearing), in reality he just wanders about with a flashlight, a digital camera, and his drawings of what he thinks ghost-hunting equipment would look like. His most recent problem is one that is Alaskan by nature.

When is the best time to hunt for ghosts? At night. In the dark.

He’ll have to wait about ninety days or so ‘til the next time that he’s up when the Sun is down. Until then, unless he finds a good dark place, he can hunt ghosts all he wants. In the brightly lit rooms of our house. Or maybe in the garage. Or maybe in the ancient native burial ground that our house was built on.