It’s happened to everybody: You’re up late one night, perhaps drinking wine and watching a foreign film about anguished bullfighters, when a girlish black-and-white spirit comes floating into your living room. She has doe eyes, Cupid’s bow lips, and she was brutally murdered in the prime of her life. But cohabitation with your dead starlet can be easy if you know how to keep her happy. Here’s how to make peace with the ghost of that murdered ingénue living in your house:
Ask Her About Her Hobbies
In the dark times before aesthetic blogs and unboxing videos, people had to fill up their time with something, like snorting cocaine or flagpole sitting. Throw some word salad at your ingénue and you’re bound to hit on one of her favorite now-irrelevant pastimes. Examples: Sewing a carpet out of banana peels and attempting to tap dance on it, making hats out of flamingo toes and pinwheels, and competitive penny swallowing. This will help keep the ghostly howls to a minimum and let you sleep through the night.
Make Her Feel Safe By Dressing Up Like a Bellhop
In her day, your ingénue would have waited around in a fancy hotel lobby before going up to a penthouse suite to be sexually harassed by studio execs, but before that she would be comforted by a friendly young bellhop who would offer a cigarette and a smile. Since she refuses to leave this earthly realm for some reason, make her feel more comfortable by dressing as a bellhop and offering sips from the flask you stole from Errol Flynn. This is all about making her feel safe!
Promise To Solve Her Murder
Nothing will help to stop the persistent nightly rumblings like promising to solve her 90-year-old cold case. Spend a week or two sticking newspaper clippings to your wall, stringing red yard between them, and then pin her murder on one of the Barrymores. The odds are it was actually one of the Barrymores, so hopefully she’ll appreciate your honesty and leave you alone for awhile.
Don’t Bring Up Mary Pickford
Sure, you want to talk to your murdered silent film ingénue ghost about something she knows. But the last thing she wants to hear about is Pickford when she got knocked off before her debut as “Courtesan #3” was even released.
Don’t Show Her Off
Everybody wants to show off their ghost of a murdered silent film ingénue, but after living in a time where even the average man wore pomade and a tailored three-piece suit, the sight of a twenty-first-century guy will scare her witless, and you’ll be back to square one. Be consistent and you may finally convince her to stop lurking in your parlor when you have guests over.
Keep your ghost of a murdered silent film ingénue happy and she’ll soon forget she was taken out during the brightest years of her life and enter the underworld for good this time!
