A ghost was seen in my house. Honest. My neice-in-law, who is only slightly prone to exaggeration saw a black shape scurry across one wall and then disappear down a hallway. Her shrieks at seeing this ghost, almost woke the dead. And her sighting has lead to a number of ghost stories told by similarly honest members of my wife's family.
"Stop laughing," my wife would invariably say as I cackled away each time her sister or aunt would tell a new story. She's right. Ghosts are no laughing matter.
In fact, I once almost came face to face with a ghost... It's a terrifying tale, so I'd suggest you gather together with your loved once before reading on.
It happened once upon a time, when I was, uncharacteristically sprawled across a sofa watching something enlightening on the television. I heard a noise behind me that almost made me choke on my cheerios. There was a sawing sound that seemed to be coming closer and closer.
Once commercial time came, I rushed to see where the sound was coming from- but it had disappeared.
I returned to watching the TV and began to reassemble my lap top and dinner plate in the right configuration, when the sound came again. I leapt up from the couch, but couldn't quite tell where the sound was coming from. Could it be the backyard?
I went to the garage for a suitably big stick, but when I returned the sound was gone again. I then proceeded to walk the perimeter of my house listening for the sound and looking for anything suspicious.
"What the heck are you doing," asked my wife when she arrived to see me stalking around the yard in my underwear, brandishing a pool cue. I explained about the sound. She just rolled her eyes.
As it turned out, that sawing sound was a mouse gnawing on the pipes. (I'll detail his capture later- lets just say that he became a ghost.) But, for a while, it could have been explained as a ghost.
I think a ton of ghost sitings are explainable by normal phenomena mixed with an overactive imagination.
My father has, I believe, the best approach to ghosts that I've seen. He once heard people playing on an old family pool table in the middle of the night. He reasoned that since it was unlikely that a robber would play pool that it must be a ghost. Thus comforted, he went to sleep.
My wife's family doesn't take the same attitude towards ghosts. Her niece ran when she saw the black shape on the wall. Other family members shivered upon hearing of the sighting and gave their own ghost stories.
I tend to be unafraid of ghosts, like my father, but to play it safe, I leave a light on downstairs so the black shape can find its way around...
No reason not to be polite to the ghosts among us.
