Childhood Ghost Story: Proof of Supernatural

(image via wikimedia)

I didn’t obsess over the ghost as much as some people might have.  Don’t get me wrong; the ghost still ruined my night whenever it showed up.  I felt weird with some strange old guy with a night cap staring at me while I was in bed.

Not being able to talk about made it worse.  Even back then, I knew adults weren’t going to listen to a 5th grade kid who complained about a ghost.  In order to talk about the ghost, I felt that I needed some proof.  Before I could prove it to others, though, I needed to prove it to myself.

I decided to conduct a ghost experiment.  This had nothing to do with science, which was good because science was my weak subject in school.  Even though I liked science fiction and reading in general, I’ve struggled to retain anything I learned in any science class throughout my life.

My science experiments in class were always a disaster.  I swear I could measure chemicals precisely and still cause an explosion.  Some students were scared to be my lab partner.  A few brave peers liked being my partner because something crazy always happened.  I think there’s something chemically wrong with me.

Even today, I can’t boost a car battery without causing sparks.  I’ve had experts watch me attach the booster cables properly, and the battery still sparks.  Nobody can figure it out.  Maybe the ghost knew about my baffling spark power and I just haven’t thought of that until now.

Anyway, I knew that my ghost experiment required  something measurable, predictable, and repeatable.  I probably couldn’t measure a ghost, but maybe I could predict it and repeat it.

The key was my hound dog, who always stayed in my room at night.  She followed me everywhere, including to the bathroom in the middle of the night.  Whenever the ghost showed up in my doorway, though, the hound dog would be gone.

“Where do you go?” I’d ask her the next morning.  “Did that ghost scare you off?”

I’ve always talked to dogs like they’re rational humans.  I’ve never used high-pitched voices for pet mumbo-jumbo.  I just say stuff like, “It’s good to see you again, you fine beast.”  Sometimes I sing to pets, though.  I never sing to humans.

“Do you leave before the ghost gets here?” I’d ask.  “Or do you run when the ghost shows up?”

“I really hope the ghost isn’t your former owner,” I said to her once.  I didn’t like that idea, so I’ve never repeated it until now.

The problem was that all this ghost-to-dog activity would happen when I was asleep.  Nowadays, I could set up a camera every night and watch what had happened, but back in the 1970s, that wasn’t possible for a family like mine to do.  And even if it had been, I would have had to confess that I thought there was a ghost in our house.

Still, I had my plan.  If I knew for sure that the ghost scared off my dog, then I could at least be confident that something supernatural natural was going on.

A lot happened over the next couple years while I conducted my ghost experiment.  My older brother graduated high school and moved out of the house to go to college.  My dad was trying to quit drinking, and work was keeping him from being home, but when he was home, his mood could still be unpredictable.  My older sister was getting into trouble all the time, so there was constant arguing until she ran away.  Then, it was kind of quiet most of the time, but we were worried about where she was, and that was tense.  This was the 1970s; you heard stories about runaway girls getting murdered, but you didn’t have an internet to make it so obvious.

It wasn’t the ghost possessing my family to cause all the turmoil, I was certain.  Things had been crazy before we’d moved into this house.  If anything, my family’s loud conflicts had probably kept the ghost from hanging out with us more often.

After a couple years, I was pretty sure we had a a ghost.  The ghost had shown up 14 times in two years, and my dog had disappeared each time.  The only other time when my dog had left the room was once to barf in the hallway, and then she’d cowered in a corner because (we think) a previous owner had beaten her for stuff like that.

That was a good dog.  Today I have a dog who pukes indiscriminately.  And a cat who pukes exclusively on hard-to-clean fabrics and then looks at me defiantly afterward.  That cat and my hound dog’s previous owner probably deserve each other.

At any rate, I had my evidence.  It would never stand up in court.  It might not even convince my family and friends.  But it convinced me.  By that time, I was in 7th grade, and I knew I had a ghost in my house.  I knew it.  Unfortunately, I still knew nobody would believe me.

To be continued!

Or you can start at the beginning with Childhood Ghost Story- The Prologue .