"I SEE DEAD PEOPLE"

At some point in the past two decades, I streamed The Sixth Sense. It must have been a dreary day, probably while I was living in isolation on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast. It’s not really my type of movie. What sticks with me is an image of teary, traumatized ten-year-old Haley Joel Osment saying, “I see dead people.”

 

Now, in 2026, I can say the same thing. I’m not sure if sixty-one-year-old me is any more composed.

 

Dang social media. My problem these days involves Facebook and Instagram. I’ve fallen into some irksome algorithm that gives me a daily dose of the deceased. 

At first, it was an AI novelty. Each day on Facebook, there would be images of the cast of a movie or TV show from decades ago. The “then” image of Little House on the Prairie’s Melissa Gilbert would be joined sitting on a bench alongside her “now” image. “Then” Melissa Sue Anderson would meet her “now” self. I would linger for the nostalgic stirrings linked to a ’70s series that I watched weekly during childhood, back when there were only three channels to choose from. I’d smile when Alison Arngrim appeared. She played the unlikable Nellie on Little House, but I’d sat a pew away from her at a pro-LGBTQ church in L.A. during the early ’90s. A good person, it seemed, in real life. I’d see then-and-now Matthew Labyorteaux who played adorable Albert. (Still adorable.) 

But then there would be Michael Landon, his “now” image appearing with white angel’s wings, followed by angel versions of Mr. and Mrs. Oleson. Landon died too soon, as we tend to say, at the age of fifty-four while Mr. and Mrs. Oleson (actors Richard Bull and Katherine MacGregor) lived until eighty-nine and ninety-three, respectively. 

 

The next day, it might be the cast of TV’s Knots Landing or Angie or the movie The Lost Boys. Usually, I’d pause and let the whole reel play, intrigued enough to see what Joan Van Ark and Michele Lee look like today and, yes, morbidly curious over who has died. There were surprises and sad reminders. Oh, how I loved Doris Roberts in Angie but so much more so in Everybody Loves Raymond.

 

I’d become tense during each reel, bracing for whose AI image would don angel wings. Being as I’d scroll through Facetime while I was groggy and still had bedhead, it was a downer of a way to begin the day. I knew I needed to shake off the sudden knowledge that Eight Is Enough’s Adam Rich, aka Nicholas Bradford, died in 2023 and the reminder that Malcolm-Jamal Warner from The Cosby Show died last year from accidental drowning, but somehow that felt disrespectful, too. How could I go out and grab an oat milk latte at a local café and write on as if these posts about celebrity deaths could be brushed off as some perverse form of entertainment?

Thankfully, my favourite series, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, never came up since everyone but Joyce Bulifant (Murray’s wife, Marie) and Lisa Gerritsen (Phyllis’ daughter, Bess) would have angel wings. Too much death even if it was a show that debuted fifty-six years ago.

 

This nostalgic novelty became too much for me. I’d scroll past and beg the algorithm to recognize how quickly I skipped over these posts. Please, no more angel-winged celebs in my daily feed! There was no benefit. Did I really need to see what Michael Gross, the dad from Family Ties, looks like today? (No angel wings…whew.) 

 

During the past couple of weeks, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter seem to have upped the posts regarding famous people who have died. Some of it may have been stoked by the fact Lindsey Graham and Sam Neill trended for days after their deaths. These social media platforms picked up on the fact that the public was curious about certain dead people, whether beloved or reviled. Suddenly, it seemed that other posts were being boosted regarding deaths of folks who’d had some time in the public eye…a band member from a group I’d never heard of, a player for the Blue Jays in the ’90s, TV and big screen actors whose time in the spotlight preceded my birth. 

 

I can see the operators of Facebook and Instagram frothing and running their hands together, back and forth. They want dead people…we’ll give them dead people!

 

But, gosh, please count me out. All this death gets me thinking of my own demise. It’s a terrible way to start the day, making me want to climb back up the stairs—I can still do that—and hide under the covers.

 

There are many days when I still feel like I’m in my thirties. Other days, that is but a wish. But whatever the sentiment of the day, I’d like to think I’m a couple of decades away from saying, “All of my friends are dead.” Maybe I’m kidding myself. By golly, I’ve already outlived Michael Landon, Malcolm-Jamal Warner and little Nicholas Bradford! Perhaps it’s a good time to update my will.

 

Three days ago, I got another Google Alert that another one of my namesakes had died. (That’s what I get for having a common name. I’ve died countless times and been arrested for heinous crimes.) 

 

Let death be off the table for this week. Let me scroll really, really fast past any announcements and tributes. Let the algorithm determine I’m a cold, heartless man who doesn’t want to mourn and has no propensity for nostalgic downturns. I know that, on average, 150,000 to 180,000 people in the world die each day—oh, dear, what will Googling that do to my social media feeds?!—but let me put my head in the sand, ignoring all that loss just like I’m ignoring the lingering pain in my right knee from Saturday morning’s jog. Let me be vibrant and alive. Let me pretend I’m thirty-four…or thirty-nine and a half. Let me spend the next seven days blissfully ignorant of any new activity in The Grim Reaper’s logbook. Bring back that video with a moose traipsing through a sprinkler! Show me more recipes with cottage cheese as a main ingredient in entrees (blech). Allow me to “like” my friend David’s new speedboat in peace.

 

Let me live without death seeming like it’s lurking everywhere.