In the lead-up to Ghosts’ Season 4 premiere on the 2024 TV schedule, I found myself wondering about the Puritan ghost who was stuck in the dirt named Patience. Primarily, I’ve been curious about what she’s been up to down there for hundreds of years. Well, while the show hasn’t answered that question in detail yet, I did get to ask Mary Holland, who plays the ghost, that question.
During an interview with CinemaBlend, I spoke with Mary Holland about Patience's history and lore, honing in on what she’s been up to since she got separated from the ghosts in the dirt all those years ago. The actress answered the question by explaining just how devout her spirit was when she was alive, and how that has continued in death:
She was banished from this Puritan community for being too severe and too judgmental. She vowed to go start her own community. I think she did do that. And so I think in death, when she's in the dirt, I think she's doing a lot of what she did in life, which is tending to the dirt, like, maybe trying to build a home and a life for herself there.
After Patience kidnapped Isaac, we got to see what was likely her home as he was taken to her hole in the ground. So, we have witnessed how she’s been “tending to the dirt” in some ways. We also know that she definitely hasn’t left the dirt in a long time, because modern life in the manor – and I say this with so much emphasis – is not her jam.
To that point, Holland told me how she thinks Patience has spent her time in the ground, noting that it probably isn’t all that different from how she lived when she was alive:
And I think she goes through the same motions of: she has her prayers, she does everything that she did in life, because she is so devout and so committed to her faith. And so I think for her, there was really no difference between life and death in that way.
As we’ve seen, this newest spirit in the Ghosts cast is the most extreme and stuck in her ways. She’s ultra-religious, was outcast by her community and she’s quite judgmental. So, I get why she didn’t leave the dirt, it sounds like she was able to live how she pleased down there.
However, it’s extremely fun to see her totally out of her element and learning about the modern world now that she’s not literally six feet under.
Now, I can’t wait to see how she reacts to Halloween…when Ghosts' special spooky episode airs on CBS tomorrow, October 31, at 8:30 p.m. ET, or if you have “PATIENCE!” you can stream it with a Paramount+ subscription the next day.
