Kenopsiaken-op-see-uh

n. The eeriness of places left behind. You sense it when you move out of a house—noticing just how empty a place can feel. Walking through a school hallway in the evening, an unlit office on a weekend, fairgrounds out of season. Usually bustling with life but now abandoned and quiet.

It's easy to forget that most of your memories happened in places still around, the walls unchanged, carrying on in your absence. But the world you once knew has long since moved on.

If you spend enough time in a place, it becomes infused with certain meaning, memories soaked into every corner. Soon there will come a day when you walk through your house one last time—and it feels not just empty but hyper-empty, its inhabitants so absent they glow like neon signs. A day after you leave, it'll become someone else's home. A blank canvas for their own memories.

Maybe that's why we want to believe in ghosts. We just want to mark our time here, to keep the memories alive.