Daily Discovery: Haunted Like Human Deliver Haunting Words of Wisdom on “Ghost Towns”

For those who leave their hometowns to return to them, it can feel surreal, even disconcerting. Perhaps there are people whose faces they no longer want to see. Perhaps there are memories still lingering in the convenience stores or in the parks where first kisses turned to first heartbreaks. Or perhaps, as a result of commerce, the town has grown or diminished. Maybe it’s become a wasteland, doors hanging off hinges, cars rusted and solemn. This possibility is the subject, both metaphorical and literal, in the new single, “Ghost Towns,” by Nashville-based duo, Haunted Like Human—which is premiering today on American Songwriter before its official release tomorrow. 

“Going back to the town I grew up in,” says Dale Chapman, lead singer, and lyricist for the duo, “it feels wrong to be there sometimes. The person that called that place home was so different from the person that I am today, and I can feel that dissonance when I’m there.”

It’s an odd feeling when home is the round hole that your diamond-shaped peg can no longer fit smoothly therein. Yet, one must sort out the reality, navigate the nuance. And, with new experience, decide what to keep and what to move beyond. These are the seeds and roots of “Ghost Town.” For a heart can feel changed, even like a ghost town sometimes, too. 

“This is very much a song,” says the Georgia-born Chapman, “about clinging to the things that you need to leave behind. We play with the images of both a ghost town, an empty place that has been lost to memory, and also a town full of ghosts, people lingering in a place they don’t belong to anymore. It’s about people stuck in ruts, sticking to familiar patterns even if it’s detrimental.” 

To face the unknown is scary. New parents will tell you that one of the hardest aspects of raising a child is the “transition,” or changing settings or activities. Even as infants, human beings fear change. Yet, it’s necessary for growth, for moving past stagnation and stasis. If anything, movement is the sign of life. So, one must move; get busy being born or get busy dying. There are new things to do, new people to encounter.

“Connecting with people is probably the most rewarding part of songwriting,” says the band’s multi-instrumentalist, Cody Clark. “We tell these stories through our music, and there is nothing like having somebody tell you that they connected to it, they related to it, they felt less alone.”

The chilling-yet-angelic song, “Ghost Towns,” which will be on the band’s forthcoming release, Tall Tales & Fables, out October 15, resembles the wisdom a grey sparrow might sing you after it lands on a fence from a long flight north. It offers the song as wisdom as the creature catches its breath before moving on again. “How do I set you free when the lost don’t want to be found?” it might whistle. “There’s nothing left here for you now.”

“I feel like this is the prettiest song we’ve ever written,” says the Oregon-born Clark. “It’s so delicate and lush all at once. The lightness of the melody and instrumentation up against the weight of the lyrics really adds a dimension that I love.”

While the song is both delightful and vulnerable, Chapman notes that that’s not why it succeeds, necessarily. Instead, it’s about the members’ personal connection to the subject, their real care for a soul’s preservation. And for the band, whose members met in 2017 in a coffee shop as randomly as two electrons colliding in space, it’s about presenting these ideas in a sharp story. 

“Storytelling is at the heart of our songwriting,” Clark says. 

“The right words aren’t always the prettiest words,” Chapman says. “When I was first trying to figure myself out as a songwriter, I kept wanting to write things that ‘sounded good,’ instead of the words that felt the most true or right for the moment. Sometimes it’s the ugliness in something that makes a song beautiful.”

Photos by Caroline Voisine