Halloween has got us reflecting on the most sapphic, spooky, and scary things we’ve ever encountered: the toxic yet alluring lesbian vampire, your obsessive ex-girlfriend, unreturned drunk texts to that girl you met at Henrietta Hudson.
But perhaps the most terrifying queer entity haunting us all is the lesbian ghost. I myself have ghosted and been ghosted by many lesbians on Tinder. Though rejection is soul-crushing, souls themselves cannot be vanquished by being crushed alone. I’m talking about real-ass ghosts: the souls of the lesbians departed, forever haunting us in the halls of our shoebox apartments, local barber shops, and gay bars. You ask, shaking with fright: Who are these lesbian ghosts? Where are they now? Who are they haunting? We’re so glad you asked.
We present to you on this gay AF Halloween afternoon, all the lesbian ghosts that are out to play today.
1. Jenny Schecter: lives in Bette and Tina’s pool, haunts Shane
Yes, WHO KILLED JENNY?
Given that she died in Bette and Tina’s pool, she’s definitely doing some creepy-The-Grudge-type-shit in there. I shudder to think of little Angelica coming of age near that pool.
Maybe God Herself decided to transfer the crumpled up dish towel Jenny called a “soul” into the vessel of one of those buttplugs with a rat’s tail on the end. She does work in mysterious ways. But, it’s also possible that Shane is haunted by Jenny’s freaky little banal demon spirit. Jenny was, after all, the archetypical “controlling bitch girlfriend” towards the end of her life. I totally get the vibe that Shane is, like, “not alone” during her sexual liaisons anyway. Jenny is always there, looming, haunting… waiting.
2. Helena Ravenclaw, The Grey Lady: lives in Hogwarts, has found lesbian love
We all know how J.K. Rowling loves to randomly reveal a character is gay when her Instagram followers are low. I mean, aren’t we all guilty of such vanity? However, there is one gay bitch at Hogwarts that JK is definitely sleeping on.
Helena Ravenclaw, bonafide dyke, haunts the corridors of the house of her alma mater and completely loses her shit on anyone who brings up Voldemort or her mother’s diadem. Which makes total sense given that lots of lesbians have issues with their mothers. But, what’s she up to now that Ole’ Volvo is dead and Harry Potter destroyed her mom’s diadem?
In the interest of creating positive media stories surrounding queer recovery, I say she went on a fearless moral journey and found closure with her mother’s memory and the trauma inflicted by Voldemort’s reign of terror. She found healthy ways to cope within an online support group for ghosts and she is now happily a work in progress.
She also found love! Straight up 100 percent gay love! With Professor Trelawney. Their courtship began over DM after matching on Tinder. They now have three beautiful hallucinations together and an adopted Thestral (it’s a rescue!). True love is out there, people!
3. Dana Fairbanks: stuck in purgatory, still being boring and playing tennis
Remember that weird scene on The L Word where Dana’s ghost showed up because Alice didn’t want to go to Tasha’s going away party? Well, Dana was basically just on furlough from Purgatory. They don’t typically let people be ghosts once they’re in there but Dana is really good at filing paperwork so they let her go on a technicality.
Since she didn’t really have much personality on Earth, she’s presumably somewhere constantly training and playing tennis and thinking of low-fat recipes for raw broccoli.
4. Cat MacKenzie from Lip Service: too in love with her ex to possess her
Sadly, as is typical of the lesbian paradigm, Cat has never moved on from being wayyyy too into Frankie.
Frankie’s constant betrayal and unavailability only served to move Cat closer and closer to her spirit as the years went by. I would like to say that she’s gotten up the courage to at least manage to possess Frankie but Cat loved Frankie too much to ever truly want her to change.
It’s really unfortunate because she was the most my type of all the characters in Lip Service. *cries in white cis-lesbian* But, she also dated a cop so… *wipes tears away in Black queer femme pansexual migrant*.
5. Martha Dobie from The Children’s Hour: free to be extremely gay in gay heaven
You’d be hard pressed to find a more archetypical representation of lesbian first love than Martha Dobie’s love for Karen Wright in The Children’s Hour. Passionate, confusing, and constrained; Martha’s depth of feeling for Karen in the 1950’s boarding school they built together was too painful to bear. It’s also just par for the course when one kills oneself from the weight of a lamented unrequited love that, the person is bound to the legacy of that interaction. This is especially true when the context of that love was inside of an unforgiving and judgmental society who shamed the one for loving the other. It’s fair enough to predict that The Dobie Wright School for Girls was a very haunted place for a very long time.
Gay Heaven for Martha Dobie is a place where she can love Karen Wright without shame. It’s probably a place where she can find love with a person (or several people, possibly at the same time) who love(s) her back and isn’t complicit in the societal norms that caused her suicide. She’s in Gay Heaven and is happy AF.
6. Lexa from The 100: haunting Clarke
Known for killing without caring and dying without fear, Lexa was the half-sentient computer program/half black-blooded mutant-human hybrid and full-on lesbian commander of TreeKrew, a nation of primitive survivors, on what was left of Earth after a nuclear apocalypse. That may be a mouthful but lesbians are suckers for complicated backstories.
Given that a piece of the computer chip of Lexa’s spirit was surgically inserted into Clarke’s neck for a short time (WTF?), it’s safe to infer that Lexa “haunted” Clarke. Lexa’s spirit is a robot capable of burrowing under the skin. Burrowing in the neck of your still-living lover? Sounds pretty gay to me.
All in all, whether you’re literally a lesbian ghost or you’re just a lesbian ghosting other lesbians, there’s a place for you somewhere in the world this Halloween. Some of these ghosts may have started out in pretty rough spots in their afterlives — but many of them made the most of what they had and turned out pretty great. Go forth into this Hallow’s Eve and prosper. As the veil from the other side is lifted and the spirits mingle with the mortal world, remember where and who you came from.
What Do You Think?