On "Ghosting" and feeling haunted.

Two Dictionary Definitions of "Ghosting."
1) The appearance of multiple images, or ghosts (usually unwanted) on a television screen.
2) Identity theft of a person not commonly known to be dead.

The performance as public practice students in the theater department use the term "ghosting" too, usually to talk about performances, images or ideas that "haunt" another performance. The way they use it, it seems to mean that you always bring what you already know or have seen to a play -- that this is something a playwright can sometimes use to his or her advantage. We had some visual quotes in "The Psyche Project" that were referencing famous paintings or statues...is that an example of ghosting?

In last two days, I've had two experiences of "ghosting," or what I'm calling ghosting, until someone explains it to me better.

The first, at The Method Gun, the Rude Mech's new show. This is the third iteration of the show I've seen -- the first was over a year ago, in their home space, the second was at a huge arts center in Austin called the Long Center, the third, two nights ago, was in their home space again. Each time, the production changed and grew. Each production had moments that also appeared in previous performances.

It was the strangest thing to watch the production the other night; I felt like I wasn't watching the performance in front of me, but the ghosts of the two other performances. We'd hit a moment that had been in the other productions and suddenly I'd be seeing triple. It was interesting, but also distracting.

The second was yesterday in class. Marie, Melissa, Mark and Arianna did a short play based on the basement of our house -- the basement I didn't know existed until two nights ago, when I helped Marie take props from it. The props? Decades-old glass jars of preserves, littering the dirt floor of the basement like a mass grave.

The play started in 1930, with a man (Mark) digging a basement for his wife (Melissa) in which she could put her canned goods. This went on for several short scenes -- the course of a year. Then, just after he'd put her cans below, he died in the basement, out of sight. Cut to the present, when a young couple considers buying the house, finds the basement, and wonders what happened that there are all these abandoned jars. Melissa, the 1930s woman, is still onstage, canning. The man in the present (also Mark) reads a love note that the dead man (Mark) wrote his wife. It said what he never said while alive -- how much he loved his wife, and how he imagined their lives together, growing old together. The present-day couple decide to buy the house.

There were so many ghosts that they managed to create just within the performance itself -- the jars, Mark as those two characters, Melissa's continued presence. For me, there was also the knowledge that the basement does exist, that it's under my bedroom, that you access it from my closet. I also couldn't divorce what I was seeing from all that I know of Marie, Melissa, Mark as people, as friends I've performed with.

It was a hell of a ghost story.