A Haunting.....

So, my friend calls me the other day and tells me that her house is haunted. She tells me this like she would tell me that she was having car trouble. No warning, no "I have something to tell you, and you'd better sit down." So, I reply in the spirit the news was delivered. I say: "Oh yeah - I thought our house was haunted once too. But it was only mice." (Which is totally true. I am a city girl - I had no way of knowing that mice would squirrel cat food away into plastic bins in the basement until PC told me. I of course insisted that he was wrong and that we needed to sell the house immediately before Bella got sucked into the telvision by a poltergeist. PC bought a few mousetraps. Ghosts must be TERRIFIED of mousetraps because they haven't been back since.)

Well, it turns out that my pal does not have a rodent problem. Nope - she has a ghost problem. An honest-to-goodness poltergeist problem. Now, let me preface this story by saying, right off the bat, that my pal is not some sort of hippy-dippy, pot-smoking, looney-liberal let's-all-run-naked-in-the-woods kind of gal. (As these are the types of people I would assume would have bat-shit crazy stuff like haunted houses associated with them.) She's not someone with crystals all over her house. She doesn't commune with nature. She's normal! She belongs to a book club, she drinks expensive wine, she has a few well-adjusted, extremely smart kids, she's a professional woman - highly regarded in her field I will have you know. And she happens to have a gang of ghouls squatting in her house!

At first, she says, she thought that she had some sort of electrical issues in her house. Lights would flicker on and off. Lightbulbs would explode when you turned them on - the sort of stuff most of us would chalk off to electrical or wiring issues - as she did. But then - the books began to fall. Books that she was sure she had put on their shelves would magically appear back on the floor. At first she thought that she was just forgetting things or the house was shifting or the earth was quaking or something was causing these books, that by this time she KNEW she had put back on their shelves, to continually tumble to the floor. And then, the "dreams" started.

The "dreams" started, as most bad dreams do, with a hazy, day-after remembering of something vaugly unsettling about a dream the night before. An uncomfortable, kind of creepy feeling about the dream that you are able to shake off as you go about your day. Until it happens again. Only this time - the dream is a bit easier to remember. This time the dream is a bit more real - almost like it wasn't a dream at all. The dream starts off with my friend sleeping - as most dreams do- and then she gets a heavy or tight feeling in her chest. She is aware of this feeling as she sleeps and the feeling is so uncomfortable that it wakes her up. As she wakes up, she realizes what the feeling is - it is the realization that someone is in your bedroom, watching you sleep. And when she wakes up - a man is standing at the foot of her bed, staring at her. And according to her - it is so frightening- that she closes her eyes - to make him go away I guess- and when she reopens them - the man is gone. She starts having this dream over and over again and writes it off as a recurring nightmare. Many of us have recurring dreams. I have a recurring dream that I forgot to take a math class at Loyola and I have to go back to school to take the class and when I go back, I wander a labyrynth of hallways searching for this mysterious class and never find it. But, I digress.

So, the lights, the books and the dreams. What happens next you ask? What pushes my friend from thinking that she needs an electrician to thinking that she needs an excorcist? Well, my dear readers, some really spooky shit. First of all - the man "of her dreams"? Well, he appears when she's NOT dreaming - when she's wide awake and getting dressed. He appears and is so real that she thinks that somebody broke into her house. She screams - and the guy - I mean ghoul - disappears. (I know - shut the hell up right now!) So now, she's thinking - hmmm - what is going on here? And THEN - she sees a little boy run through her bathroom. And she knows that there is no little boy actually in the house, and seeing as the ghouly guy was all gaunt, and was sporting the sunken eye and cheek look and wearing clothing that could only be described as really, really old - like turn of the century old - she starts thinking that maybe, just maybe she has a problem of a different nature. HOWEVER - the clincher is when she overhears her kids talking about these "bad dreams" they've been having about a man watching them when they are asleep. And all of the kids describe the same guy - in the same clothing.

So, my pal decides to call her sister- for a sanity check. And she tells her that she and the kids have been having some "creepy" dreams. And, as if on cue, her sister says - "It's weird that you mention that. You know - the last time I was at your house, when I was sleeping in your room, I had this weird dream that this spooky guy was standing over the bed watching me. He was dressed in this old-fashioned type coat and his eyes were all sunken into his head. It was so vivid - it was like it was real. Isn't that weird?"

Weird indeed.

Now, I realize that this sounds like one of the stories we heard in girl scout sleep away camp. I really do. Only it's not one of those stories - it's real. It's really happening - to my friend and her family. And it's really frightening. What does one do in this situation? Well, apparently, one contacts a medium. A person who has a talent with making contact with those "on the other side". So - that's what my girl did. And guess what? This guy is not alone. Apparently - according to the medium - this guy is the father of a family of four. And basically, the medium told him that he needs to cross over to the other side with his family and leave my pal and her family alone because they are frightening them. And are you ready for this? The ghoul gang tells the medium: "Hell No! We won't go!" They LIKE it there. They LIKE my friend. They LIKE the sound of her voice when she reads aloud to the children. This is why they throw books on the floor. They throw books on the floor when they want to be read to. They throw books on the floor to voice their displeasure. They don't WANT to cross over.

WTF? Who doesn't want to cross over to the other side? Isn't it supposed to be the land of milk and honey? These people REALLY want to stay HERE? Are you telling me that THIS side is BETTER than the OTHER side? SERIOUSLY???? WTF? So NOW what does she do? This does NOT happen in the movies! The ghouls see the light and they cross over and everyone lives happily ever after. They DON'T EVER say - "Nah, been there, done that - we'd rather stay in Bel Air, Maryland. We like it better there. We like the pretty lady who reads Harry Potter every night"

What does she do now? Coexisit with these things? The kids have seen them. One of the kids has TRIPPED over one of the ghoul kids. One of the ghoul kids is a real trouble maker apparently - he likes to hide and trip people, slam closet doors and generally scare the crap out of them at any hour of the day or night. He sounds like a real charmer. I'm TERRIFIED to go over there. I don't want one of them to come home with me. Although - to be perfectly honest - no ghost would choose to stay here. Let's be real people. Jack and Bella could give any ghoul kid a run for his or her money. They'd be begging to cross into the light after an afternoon in Bella's room.

Of course, PC doesn't believe in ANY of this. PC thinks that she has some sort of carbon monoxide leak in her house and would be much better served by calling someone in to service her furnace than to burn sage and have a house cleansing. I believe it. I totally believe it. I wish I didn't, but I do. I think that this ghostly dude has some sort of unfinished business and cannot cross over to the light. I am afraid that he did something awful while he was alive and can't cross with his family and that is why they are all staying in this state of limbo. He's pretty adamant that he and his family aren't going anywhere.

So basically, My friend is up shit's creek. I mean I think I have it bad sometimes - but at least I do not have a bunch of unruly ghosts living in my house who throw books at me when I'm not pleasing them! So what should she do? Sell the house? Get the hell outta Dodge? My suggestion is that she stops reading to her kids and turns on Sponge Bob 24/7. If that dumbass doesn't scare those ghouls away, nothing will.