About Ghosts

Summer (along with the heat) has arrived, and it's time for a fun beach read. I have one: Ghost Writer.  It is a virtual trip to Laguna Beach, California--complete with a charming and annoying ghost. Here's a little bit about it--and ghosts.

From ghoulies and ghosties

And long-leggedy beasties

And things that go bump in the night,

Good Lord, deliver us!

~ Old Cornish Prayer ~

“I don’t believe in ghosts.” This is how Ghost Writer begins. My character, Nan Burton, adamantly insists she doesn’t believe. That is, until she's confronted with the noisy one living in her house.

I, on the other hand, do believe in ghosts. We had one living in our first house. Not a person, however. Ours was a cat.

Shortly after we moved in, I woke up on occasion with the sense of something walking across the foot of our bed. It felt like a small animal. I’d never owned a cat, but this didn’t feel like a dog, so I suspected a beastie of the feline persuasion.

After a couple of months, Larry and I both woke at the same time.

“It’s the strangest thing,” I started. “It felt like a cat has been walking across the bed during the night.”

“I’ve felt it, too,” was his matter-of-fact reply.

“Thank God! I thought I was going crazy.”

We speculated for some time about the cat, but he (or she) continued the nightly rounds.

Several months later, the woman who had grown up in the house stopped by. We showed her what we’d done to the house. She was very complimentary and told us stories about growing up there.

Just before she left, she asked, “Have you seen a cat around?” She went on to describe the cat, including what he like to do and where he liked to hide in the house. She mentioned that he’d patrol the house at night, his route taking him across each of their beds. Unfortunately we had to tell her that we hadn’t seen any animals resembling hers in the neighborhood.

“He disappeared the day my folks were moving. We came back and left food and left our contact information with all the neighbors, but we never found him.”

Her parents were the original owners and had lived there for seventeen years. The house had been on the market nearly a year before we bought it. So, any chance of locating the cat seemed pretty remote by that time.

We assured her that we’d keep an eye out, and she left.

A few weeks later, we realized that we no longer felt the cat walking across the bed.

“I wonder if it was the former owners’ pet. Maybe he was just waiting for them to come back before he could move on,” I told Larry.

“Hmm, maybe.”

A couple of years later, we adopted a stray kitten who appeared on our front porch. Like our ghost, our cat was nocturnal and roamed the house at night. We always kept our bedroom door closed, but in the morning when our daughter opened it, he’d take a stroll across the bed. And it felt just like the ghost cat.

How about you? Do you believe in ghosts? Have you seen any? Felt any? Sensed their presence? I’d like to hear your experiences.