Letters to Maop: Living with a Ghost as Therapeutic Experience

Abstract

AbstractIn post‐tsunami Aceh, an Indonesian province where prolonged armed conflict has already disrupted the lives of the Acehnese people for decades, ghost stories are common. But in what ways ghosts appear, how they are addressed when the border of what is real and what is spectral is subverted, and what kind of role they play in the political and social life of the Acehnese remains to be written. This article is addressed through the author's personal account and reflects that in a certain period of his life living with a ghost can be both a therapeutic process and a meaningful experience.