I do believe in them. I understand if you don’t, I don’t think less of you for it.
When my sister and I were kids, we lived in a nice apartment while our mom went to college. It was a duplex, we lived on the lower floor. The building was older. It sort of looked like it might have been one whole house originally, but had been divided up into two apartments at some point. Given the upstairs and downstairs were virtually identical, it may always have been intended as a duplex; I was a kid so I don’t know for sure.
When we moved into the apartment, I remember my mom talking to the landlord about how he came to own the property. It had been owned and lived in by an old lady before he purchased it, and when she passed away, her family sold it. My 7-year-old ears perked up at the words “when she died.”
“She died here?” I demanded.
“Not in the house,” my mom said, in that too-quick way that means the adult is lying to you. “At the hospital.”
“He said she died here,” I insisted, but my mom was sticking by what I knew was a lie and I knew she wouldn’t budge on it. And I wanted to believe no one had actually died in my home. I let it drop.
That house always creeped me out just a little. It was a nice apartment, clean, the landlord was a good guy who kept it fixed up and let us have a cat. But when the sun went down, it just felt — uneasy.
I told my mom I thought it was haunted. She said, “Oh, Melody, there’s no such thing as ghosts.”
One night, and I don’t recall exactly how old I was, I woke up in the middle of the night. We used the light in the closet as a night-light, and it was on with the closet door propped mostly shut. I woke up, looked at the closet light, and watched it go out. Not flicker, not blink, not fade, just, boom. Out. I figured the bulb might have burned out right at that moment, so I got out of bed and went to pull the cord and see if the light came back on.
It came back on. The bulb was fine. Someone had to have pulled the cord and shut it off.
I skittered back to bed and threw the covers over my head so fast.
That happened at least three times that I recall.
Another night, I woke up and was lying in bed looking around our room, when one of the little child-sized rocking chairs we had slid across the floor. Not an inch or two, a couple feet. Sideways. I jumped out of bed and ran to my mom’s room as fast as I could. She said that couldn’t have happened, but let me sleep with her anyway.
My sister tells the story of watching the little rocking chairs rock by themselves at night. I never saw that, just the one slide across the room.
My grandma gave me a peace lily for my birthday one year. One day I was playing in my room alone and I noticed it needed watering — they droop when they need water, they’re very dramatic. I was in the middle of something, so I decided I would take care of it when I was done.
Suddenly I heard a soft clattering sound. I looked up and watched my peace lily — pot and all — shaking on the table by the window. I stared at it for several seconds, wondering if I was imagining it, but the plant and pot kept shaking, making a little clattering sound. It shook as if a big truck or train was going by right outside the house. But there was no truck or train, and nothing else in my room shook. I got up, went to get a cup of water, and watered the plant. The clattering stopped. After that, any time I forgot to water it and it started to droop, it would begin to shake.
“No such thing as ghosts,” my mom repeated.
We moved out the year I turned eleven. Mom was expecting my other sister, Annie, and nice as the place was, it was a little small for all of us. The new apartment was not haunted.
One day, as adults, my middle sister and I were telling each other spooky stories from the white house we lived in as kids.
“Where?” our mom said as she walked into the room.
“Charles street,” my sister said.
“Oh, that house was so haunted!” my mom exclaimed. “The old lady that died there never left.”
“You said she didn’t die in the house!” I shouted. “You said there was no such thing as ghosts!”
“Oh, yeah, she died right in that front bedroom.”
“You mean OUR bedroom?” my sister demanded.
“Yeah,” my mom said.
“No such thing as ghosts,” I said sarcastically.
“You were already so freaked out, what was I supposed to tell you? That your bedroom was totally haunted by the lady that died in there? You would never have come back inside!”
I had to admit she had a point. I would have high-tailed it out into the yard so fast, and nothing could have persuaded me back in. Maybe a thunderstorm.
So yes, I do believe in ghosts. These days they don’t scare me so much as fascinate me. I actually like to go looking for ghosts.
Maybe I’ll tell you about some other times I found some . . . next Halloween.
