My House is Haunted

I'm a major skeptic, I just want to start out by saying that. I'm not now, nor have I ever been, delusional. I am not prone to a highly active imagination (okay, I lied, I am.) I believe that 99.9% of so-called hauntings can be explained away, and are almost always due to a mind easily influenced by suggestion.

Still, I'm fairly certain my house is haunted, by a guy who got smooshed in my front lawn a couple years ago.

Actually, two guys got smooshed, a young guy and an old guy. My house is on a dangerous corner - you know those rural corners where a stop sign suddenly shows up out of nowhere, after miles and miles of traveling at high speed? It's that type of corner, and numerous people have had their guts and brains and hair all out in my front lawn. It's real cute.

But anyway, there's only one guy haunting my house, and I can't remember his name, but I know its him, because he showed up here a couple days after he died. And he's the only smooshed up person who had children. The others were all teenagers, including the one who hit him and was also killed two Augusts ago. And I think a friendly ghost in a house full of children would have to like children, or they would drive him insane.

Our ghost is helpful and tries not to scare us. He's slightly mischeivious; many times small objects, especially pacifiers, will go missing, only to show up in the middle of the room a few minutes later. I'm not kidding. One particular incident sticks in my mind. I was looking everywhere for Beastie's pink paci. It had been right in the middle of the living room, under the glass cocktail table, but two minutes later it was gone. Now up until this point I didn't suspect that a ghost had been stealing the pacifiers. But it was just too weird. I was crawling on my hands and knees, looking for the thing under the couch and the loveseat and the entertainment center. The older kids were in their room, and The Babe was sitting his swing. I was so frustrated. I knew that pacifier had been right there just a minute ago, and I was getting really irritated. Finally I grumbled, "Where the frig is that paci?" and when I turned around, there it was, under the cocktail table, from where it had gone missing just a few minutes earlier.

I wish I could tell you some scary stuff about our ghost. Like maybe he shows up in the mirrors and when you look at him, blood runs out of his eyes, and if you don't say "Hail Mary, Queen of Scots" six times, he gets you. But he doesn't. He just moves pacifiers.

Wouldn't it be scary if you came home and saw someone peeking out your window at you? I thought that happened, actually. I came home, and it was dark outside, and the lights were on in the house. (Not turned on by a ghost, but left on by an absent-minded mom.) I swear, swear, I saw someone peeking out the window, and I was getting a little nervous, but when I got in the house, turned out it was just my loveseat. I never realized a little corner of it sits in front of the window.

Not related to my haunted house, but something that scares me - wouldn't you shit your pants if you were driving along at night and a killer popped out of the backseat and got you? Or if you got home from somewhere and there was a guy hiding in the closet, and he axed you? Or if you took a picture of someone and when you looked at it later there was a shadow looking like it would slit their throat?

(I guess I should point out here that I watch way too much tv. In case you couldn't tell.)

Anyway, my house is haunted, and I don't care. It's not scary. It steals pacifiers, but it gives them back, and it makes lights flicker. I can verify that the ghost does the flickering, because I thought it was a short and had an electrical inspection, but it came back clean. Oh, and once I saw a person standing by my mailbox, just a glance as I walked by the window, and when I looked back it was gone. But that could have been my imagination, and my house is a good four hundred feet off the road and up a hill, so it could have been nothing.

But, you know, so long as this ghost doesn't scare my kids or watch me go to the bathroom, then I don't care if he's here. Come on in, ghost. It's probably warmer in here than out in my lawn anyway.