My Theoretical Haunting

A number of people have blogged lately about hauntings, some talking about TV shows, some about RL experiences. So why not tell mine?

It was about two years ago. We'd moved into this apartment from three floors up just a few months before. Let me preface this by saying that the oldest daughter had been a bit freaky as a kid; we'd find her randomly sitting up in the dark of night, having a conversation with herself; she'd recognize religious objects for no apparent reason. Nothing like "THEY'RE HERE," just enough to occasionally shake the head and say, "Freaky."

So this day about a year back, then-wife, her best friend and the kid are at the table, I'm in the kitchen taking care of some dishes or something. We'd just had hot wings and beer (except the kid), had a great time, were just thinking, "this is a really great night." Then the kids comes in and doesn't say anything; I look up at her and she's looking next to me with this weird, puzzled half-smile. She says. "That's strange. I never had a dream while I was awake before!"

Que? "What do you mean?" I asked.

"I never had a dream while I was awake," she repeated.

"What dream?"

"I dreamed there was a person right there..." pointing a few feet behind me.

Blink. "What person?"

"I don't know. He was standing right there eating something."

At about this point I decided to walk the kid out to the table where the others were sitting, and have her tell them. "What did the person look like," I asked as nonchallantly as possible. We got a detailed description of a short, dark-skinned person with short brown hair and a blue shirt with buttons, eating from a plate.

Now, the kid has been a storyteller since shortly after she could talk. She could go on for an hour-long narration off the top of her head in any subject, with a significant cast. But she'd never done this kind of detail regarding physical appearance, especially without giving it any thought. It creeped us sufficiently to take a walk outside to discuss it.

Just so you know, I'm a skeptic. But I'm an equal-opportunity skeptic. So I don't believe in ghosts, but I don't believe people who say there are none, either. I am Mr. Open-Minded. I've seen some weird stuff over the years. And I've yelled "You idiot!" at enough horror movie characters making clichéed mistakes to decide then and there that I was going to do exactly the opposite of what was done in horror movies.

Step 1: Listen to the kid.

9 times out of 10, it starts the same. The little kid warns everyone there's something up, and everyone says, "Oh, what an active imagination! yuk yuk!" or "::sigh:: Timmy's not handling the move well, he'll say anything to get us to just go back home!" A week later they're crawling in undead flies. Not me.

So as we're walking around, we're casually pumping the kid for details on what she'd "dreamed." We're casual, but she's a bright kid, and starts to realize something's up, and soon doesn't want to talk about it anymore.

Wife's best friend by now is saying all the "logical explanation" things the best friend usually does at this point in the movies. For some balance, I call my best friend.

"Mike. I need your advice on a supernatural problem."

"I'm afraid of the supernatural."

"Exactly! So..." I explained. His advice is, find out about the history of the place, confirming my thoughts.

So we co home and all go in together, turning on lots of lights. Seems less spooky now. On the way in we passed Hamilton, our sort-of-super (He does the work since the actual super moved out). I figure, he'll know. I ask him if anyone ever died in our apartment. He doesn't know, he only moved in a two years before we did. So he asks why.

Step 2: Be open about what's going on.

When they finally realize in the second half that the kid was on to something, everyone tries to cover their interest as a "history project," "research for property value reasons", or "story for the newspaper," or some such.

I considered this, and hesitated only a moment before telling Hamilton in brief what the kid said she saw. he frowns, nods and says "Yeah. Same thing happened when we moved in."

I paused, somehow not entirely surprised. See what happens if you're honest? 15 minutes and we're further along than most movies are after an hour and a half. I ask, "Like what?"

::shrug:: "Oh, you know. You're watching TV and someone walks past..."

He might have been saying "Oh, you know. You forget to wash out the microwave and the stuff gets caked on..."

He continued, "This place was built in, what the 20s? That kinda stuff's that's bound to happen in all that time."

So what did he do? "My wife said a prayer. We told 'em, ::shrug:: this is our place now. You have to go."

I thanked Hamilton, went inside and related this story to the other adults. Wife's best friend couldn't seem to grasp what he'd said, kept saying, "WHAT???" Well, for theological reasons, I did not say a prayer (prayers aren't magical spells in my book, and to use them as such is disrespectful at the very least), but I did make a general announcement to whatever entities might be present that we meant no disrespect, but we were living there now and they were welcome to stay as long as they meant no harm.

Seemed like a fair arrangement to me.

No incidents since.

Well, a minor one. A few weeks later, we were rearranging the closets and the kid looks into the hall behind mom and me with a similar quizzical smile. I ask "What are you looking at?" as casually as possible.

This time, she looked warily at me, seemed to calculate for a second, and said "Oh. I just thought I saw a mouse over there."

Fine.

Except that she'd been looking about three feet off the ground.

I let it go.