OOP: Professor Binns

[Cindy L Wells]

No: HPFGUIDX 60228

Marie wrote:

>That said, I do think Kelly has an intriguing theory.  JK has said
>there's a reason some people become ghosts and others don't, and that
>the happiest people don't.  (Obviously, folks like Myrtle aren't too
>happy.)  But we've never seen anything that suggests Binns is
>unhappy; he enjoys teaching enough that his death didn't faze him or
>keep him from continuing.  He might have some other secret sadness
>(or maybe he's gotten over it because he's been a ghost for a long
>time).  Then again, I think Nearly Headless Nick's lack of happiness
>may be partly due to his decapitation, so I think it's possible that
>cause of death made Binns into a ghost, too.  If he's a "new" enough
>ghost to have died during the Riddle years, Kelly's suggestion has a
>lot of merit in my mind.

Actually the suggestion by Kelly that really seemed important to me was not
the AK curse, but the simple idea that Professor Binns didn't know that he
had died. Goodness knows how much of ghost hunter lore (whether real or
deluded) has stated that much of the process of getting ghosts to "move on"
has to do with convincing them that they're actually dead (no, it's not just
the "go into the light" clichs.:-P) The other ghosts in the castle know
they're dead, in part because of the violence of their death, which also
provides their reason for not moving on. Binns really had no shocking event
to make it clear to him that he had passed on, and this might explain the
lack of traumatic events playing a determining role.

The other thing in ghostie lore that seems to keep ghosts around is
unfinished business, but it is not always of an emotional resolution nature
(like Moaning Myrtle wanting to get revenge on Olive.)  Sometimes it's just
simply because they are so attached to the fact that they need to go out and
get the groceries that they're not about to let dying stop them. Maybe when
Binns died he was so caught up in plans of "must plan next lesson, must
grade test scores, must revise next lecture," that any potential of leaving
cleanly was passed on (pardon the pun).

Still, I certainly leave a large amount of room open for new revelations
about Professor Binns, and certainly you would think that one of the other
professors would've tapped him on his ectoplasmic shoulder and let him in on
the fact that he's dead. Maybe the pay is too good, and he wants to keep his
tenure . . .

Cindy W