NETHER STOWFIELD —
A Nether Stowfield woman has received a reply to a message she sent in February, sources confirmed Monday, from a man who appears to believe it is still February.
Hannah Greaves, 30, had texted a man she met through a dating app asking whether he “fancied that pub quiz on Thursday.” She received no response for 211 days, during which she moved flat twice and was passed over for promotion by a man named Toby. On Sunday at 11:48pm, her phone lit up: “haha yeah could be good.”
“No apology, no explanation,” Greaves said. “Just ‘haha yeah’, like he’d stepped out to take a call. The pub quiz doesn’t exist anymore. The pub is a gym now. Everything moved on except him, and, apparently, me.”
Relationship experts say the behaviour, known as ghostlighting, is on the rise. “The ghost returns and behaves as though no time has passed,” explained Dr Imogen Saltash, author of the self-published book Seen, Left, Returned. “If you mention the gap, they make you feel strange for noticing. It is time travel, but rude, and only one of you ages.”
The man, saved in her phone as “Liam (Gym) 6ft,” followed up the next morning with a photo of a sandwich and the message “u up to much.” He was not asking. He was checking availability.
Greaves’s friends, briefed via a group chat now 900 messages long, are divided. Three recommend blocking him. One suggested replying “who is this.” Another proposed replying in seven months with “lol,” a strategy she called “poetic.” All five have since received a “haha yeah” from Liam, in the same week.
Greaves admitted she was tempted. “The worst part is he’s still got a really nice dog in his profile picture,” she said. “The dog didn’t ghost me. The dog has done nothing wrong. The dog isn’t his. I checked.”
Saltash urged caution. “A man who can disappear for seven months can disappear for eight,” she said. “They’re like comets. Lovely to look at, gone for years, back just long enough to ruin a night’s sleep.”
At press time, Greaves had typed and deleted “haha yeah” four times, and sent it on the fifth. Liam has not replied.
This article is satire. The people, places, quotes and studies described are fictional.