On Ghosting

My dearest incurable humanist,

It finally feels like autumn in New York! I love the crisp fall air, the pumpkin obsession, the coziness, and the introspection it brings when going on a long walk through the foliage. Autumn in New York feels like the homonymous song, autumn in New York feels like When Harry Met Sally, autumn in New York feels well, perfect. October also equals spooky season. I must confess I have never been a fan of Halloween; I don’t enjoy costumes and all the charades. But anyway, the other day I was in a group conversation where someone mentioned that the worst feeling is when you have a friend, are dating someone, or have a job, and one day everything seems fine, only to have them disappear without leaving any trace. We discussed how this hurts so much because, at least when there’s a falling out, you know what it was about. This leaves you alone with your thoughts, having to decipher what went wrong. Interestingly, this person didn’t know that nowadays there’s a term for this: ‘ghosting.’ And so I thought, well, it’s almost like they died… sort of. Is ghosting its own kind of grief? I think it is.

This idea haunted me (pun very much intended), so I decided to conduct some research (aka, text my friends). I asked them to dig up their skeletons and share their most terrifying ghosting tales, and they delivered. Here are the stories that prove reality is scarier than fiction:

Note: All names and identifying details have been changed for privacy.

Tale #1: The Beyoncé Story

Once upon a very deceiving Friday night in Manhattan, my friend, let’s call her Abigail, was out with the girls, minding her own pasta, when fate (and an untrained waitress) intervened. Houdini was at the next table, doing that bold New York thing: full eye contact, no smile, as if they were already in a situationship. Then the universe decided to have a little fun: the waitress mixed up their drinks. A perfect meet-cute. They laughed, swapped cocktails, and suddenly they were sharing sips. By the end of the night, he asked her out for a martini, and she thought, “Finally. My New York love story begins.” And for two months, it did. Weekly dates, midnight phone calls, playlist exchanges. Houdini was charming, attentive, and casually revealing trauma in a weirdly sexy way. Then, one night in a cab on their way to a birthday party, he invited her to a Beyoncé concert. He said he couldn’t wait to take her because he knew how much she loved Beyoncé. At the party, he told everyone her friends, strangers, and even the coat check guy. “We’re going to see Beyoncé on Saturday.” Abigail played it cool, but in her head, she was thinking of how she would flirt with him when she performed Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It). The following week, they Facetimed and texted constantly. On Thursday, they had dinner. She was falling hard. Then Saturday came. She woke up, went to SoulCycle, and then went straight to the nail salon, followed by a hair appointment. She walked home, almost dancing, playing Beyoncé on her headphones. It was noon, and she hadn’t heard a word from him. But she was having so much fun getting ready that she hadn’t thought about it. Before she took a shower, she texted: “Hiii! What time should we meet?” assuming that when she came out, he would have responded with the details. But she was wrong. Time started to pass. She texted again, she called, she DMd him. There was no way to get to him. Beyoncé herself was more reachable. She paced. She restarted her phone 100 times. By late afternoon, she was beyond anxious. That night, completely heartbroken, she dragged herself to a friend’s dinner party. The door opened to shock: “Wait. What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be at Beyoncé!?” She sat down and stared at her glass of wine, trying to find an answer, thinking about the lyrics of If I Were a Boy like a mantra, “If I were a boy, I think I could understand…”

Tale #2: The Irish Goodbye

Jim and Paula had been friends since middle school. They knew everything about each other. They grew up together in Brooklyn and somehow managed to stay close. They both went to NYU. They both dated other people. But their friendship was the constant. They were as thick as thieves. They traveled the world together, spent holidays together, and showed up for each other in a way that made everyone else suspicious. People always assumed they must be sleeping together, at least. No one believed the “just friends” story, not after so many years. Their significant others hated it. It caused fights, breakups, and drama. But that’s what they were: just friends.

One Saturday, they went out for lunch. Paula told Jim she’d gotten a job offer to move to Dublin, and she was taking it. Jim congratulated her. They spent the day together as they always did, went to the movies, then to a pub where they got a Guinness to celebrate her new adventure. The next day, Jim called Paula. She didn’t answer. He figured she was busy. But as days started to pass, there was still nothing. A week became two. Two became a month. Then one day, he saw a post on Instagram: Paula in Dublin, smiling in front of some cobblestone street. He reacted to her story. She didn’t reply. Then she blocked him. He didn’t understand. He replayed that last day in his mind a thousand times, searching for what he’d missed. What had he said? What had he done? Nothing out of the ordinary had happened. At this point in their lives, they didn’t even have mutual friends anymore. They’d studied different things in college, and you know how adulthood works. Their friendship had become its own thing. So there was no one to ask. He ran into old school friends. “How’s Paula?” they asked. He didn’t know what to say. Another time, he saw Paula’s parents on the street. They saw him, too. Then they crossed to the other side of the block and entered a store, avoiding him. It’s been four years now, and he still hasn’t heard from Paula. Jim is now engaged and happier than ever. Yet, now and then, he sees something that reminds him of Paula and still gets the chills. People say she pulled an Irish goodbye. Jim says she pulled a full-on Brexit.

Tale #3: Facade

My friend Olympia had been job hunting for months after graduation. Rejection after rejection, failed interview after failed interview. She was running out of hope and patience, so she decided to expand her search beyond Boston. Through a former professor, she was connected to a man named William Gahr, who offered what seemed like a ‘too good to be true’ opportunity with a six-figure salary at a company called Facade in Miami. She went through five rounds of interviews. She prepped, she did trial work, she put in real time and effort. Something felt a little off, but she couldn’t place what it was. So she continued the process. Finally, they sent her an offer, and she moved. They told her to arrive two weeks before her start date so she’d have time to handle paperwork and find an apartment. She secured a place and got settled. She wanted to visit the office before her first day, but they kept delaying it. “We’re renovating,” they said. “Let’s wait until your start date.” When her start date finally came, there was no office to go to. She started calling her alleged boss, William Gahr. No response. She sent emails. They bounced back with delivery failures. She reached out to people in her network in Miami, asking if anyone had heard of this company, but no one had. She searched for the company registration, but it didn’t exist. She tried to pull up the website that had looked so professional during her interview process. It had a sleek design and testimonials; the “Meet Our Team” page had William Gahr’s smiling headshot. The site was wiped from the internet. She tried to track down William Gahr with no luck. LinkedIn? Deleted. Email? Dead. Phone? Disconnected. It was like he’d vanished into thin air, or maybe, more accurately, like he’d never existed at all. She did everything in her power to find answers. Finally, she called her professor in Boston (the one who’d connected her to this ‘opportunity’). “Wow, that’s so strange,” he told her. “I’m so sorry you’re going through this. I knew this guy from Boston, but not very closely, so I don’t know...”.

In hindsight, Olympia believes this was a lesson to trust her gut and that sometimes, what looks real… can be nothing but a facade.

As humorous as these stories have become with time, being ghosted is its own form of grief. When someone is gone but not quite. They’re just...living a life in which you no longer exist. I believe this could fall under what Psychologist Pauline Boss calls ambiguous loss (learn more about this in my previous essay).

And yet, we tell these stories and we laugh. Because we have to. Without humor, we’d spiral searching for answers we’ll never find. People vanish for reasons we may never know. Ghosts have their stories, too.

Happy Halloween!

Until next week.

(Read by the author. Theme song, The Incurable Humanist, by Carlos Escalona Cruz. All Rights Reserved 2025.)