The Story Behind Ghosts I Made Up

I didn’t mean to write a book about ghosts.

Not the kind that rattle chains in the dark or whisper in old houses — but the quieter ones. The ones that live in the backs of closets, in the soft hum of fluorescent lights, in the smell of laundry detergent and shame. The ones you carry with you because they’ve stitched themselves into your skin.

Ghosts I Made Up started as a series of private breakdowns. Scribbled lines on the backs of receipts, midnight notes tapped into my phone while crying in the bathroom, half-formed thoughts about memory, body, and survival. I kept telling myself these ghosts weren’t real. That what happened wasn’t that bad. That I was being dramatic. But they kept showing up — louder, angrier, softer — asking to be named. So I named them.

These poems are messy. They’re furious and fractured, sometimes childlike, sometimes ancient. They don’t always make sense — because trauma rarely does. But they are honest. Every word in this book was written by someone trying desperately to survive. Sometimes I was a child. Sometimes I was a liar. Sometimes I was a god, burning down my own temples just to feel something.

This is not a neat collection. There’s no redemptive arc or clean moral. But there is love here — the stubborn kind. The kind that returns to the ruins and tries to plant something anyway.

I wrote Ghosts I Made Up to tell the truth I couldn’t say out loud. And maybe, just maybe, to help someone else feel a little less haunted.

— Harper Hartwell