The Ghost in the House

My wife is convinced our house is haunted.

Not in a Poltergeist/Exorcist fashion, but haunted none-the-less.

I should start out by mentioning that she is not prone to a strong belief in the supernatural or occult. You won't catch her bragging about being abducted by UFO's - in fact, she's so anti-those things that she despises any form of Sci-fi as garbage.

But she believes our house is haunted.

She's reported hearing footsteps when no one is upstairs, heard whispers in her ear while in the living room, and been exposed to mysterious bumps and noises around the house. Her Mom agrees and provided some of her own evidence to back her up.

I don't agree with their assessment. I don't disbelieve in ghosts per se, although I view their 'existence' as contradictory to not only Christianity, but atheism and most religions - and personally I reject them because I hate the idea that any God would make you spend eternity rattling chains in an attic..

I chalk up the noises to the creaks and moans of an old house and reckon the whispers were a rare figment of her imagination.

But I suppose our home suits itself to a haunting, if such things are real. It's 115 years old and at a minimum two people have died there (both my great-grandparents on my maternal grandma's side).

I'm going to cling to the notion that if the ghost exists, it's benign. After all, my ancestors would have no cause to wish me harm.. . except, you know, for tearing apart and remodeling their house.

I'll admit, I myself have heard the mysterious bumps in the night (isolated, it seems, to the Northwest corner of the house, which would seem to provide a clue to a terrestrial explanation of some sort).

You're sitting there, minding your own business, and boom. It sounds, for all intents and purposes, like one of the kids was screwing around and dumped something off their dresser.

But, uh, their all sitting there watching Spongebob with you. And when you go upstairs, nothings amiss.

I should also mention one genuinely terrifying moment. About 2 am one night my wife woke up screaming, saying that someone was in the bedroom. In about 2/10ths of a second I was out of bed and, scared out of my mind, ready for anything. I saw something streak across my vision and I went to the doorway to intercept it, but there was nothing there.

Sure, it was spooky and intense. But . . .

My explanation: my wife often holds entire, non-sensiscal conversations in her sleep. I think she woke up mid-sentence and in that horrifying twilight between dreams and reality, mistook one for the other.

The streak I saw was very light, possibly white - which just happens to be the color of AngelCakes, our cat, who often comes to rest in our room or YaYa's. She could easily have been startled by our reactions. Lord knows she could avoid me and slink off to other parts of the house in a second. In my half-awake state I probably wouldn't have noticed.

So is the house haunted? No way to answer that, it's all subjective. If it is, here's hoping they keep to their own realm.

On this subject at least, I'd prefer to be kept in the dark.

Tags: ghosts, Nostalgia Avenue