Velocity and height have never been my cup of tea, and I am still reluctant to go on anything but the most harmless thrill rides. For as long as I can remember, ghost trains have been my favorite fairground attraction. You are carried along at an even, temperate speed on a fixed track while scenes emerge and disappear, often only very briefly.

These scenes are difficult to grasp. They suggest events through gory or gothic fragments, light, and timing, without ever presenting them fully. Their ridiculous artificiality is a large part of the appeal. Riding a ghost train keeps you in a constant state of anticipation, expecting a jump scare at any moment, while at the same time observing more or less successful attempts at producing a sense of fear.

On a classic fairground ghost train, and those are the best, there is often a moment when the train leaves the inner tunnels and briefly crosses an open balcony before returning into the entrails of the ride. The sudden confrontation between the very present reality of the fairground, with its sounds, lights, and smells, and the stripped-down fragments inside, telling an incoherent story, is strangely disorienting.

In this way, a ghost train is not entirely unlike life. We are often faced with multiple realities at once. Rarely are we present at the moment something actually unfolds. Usually, the decisive moment has already passed, and what we encounter are fragments, accounts, and aftermaths. Much of what we know, in everyday life as well as in fields such as the judicial system and history, is based on this condition.

Conclusions still have to be drawn.

As I write this, it is Easter week. This morning, I was listening to the St John Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach. It ends with Christ’s body being laid to rest in a tomb in a garden, the stone rolled in front and sealed.

Arriving early on Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene finds the stone removed from the entrance. The tomb is open, the body gone. What remains are the linens, marking the place where the body had lain.

The man outside she mistakes for the gardener.

Confusion reigns. The event itself was not seen. What is encountered is its consequence. Everything is visible, but nothing explains itself.

Dic nobis Maria,
quid vidisti in via?
Sepulcrum Christi viventis.

Tell us, Mary,
what did you see on your way?
The tomb of the living Christ.

(from the Easter sequence Victimae paschali laudes)