I can’t believe it’s already Halloween! And with it, I can’t believe the 2019 run of 31 Ghosts is completed! Thank you, everyone, for coming along for this ride! If you’ve missed stories, I’m going to update the “Stories” tab at the top of the page with this year – things have been a little busy lately. I’m planning on keeping writing – I think I’m going to try my hand at NaNoWriMo this year. Yikes, that starts tomorrow! I hope to have more for y’all to read soon! Until then, not all ghosts are unwanted…

I’ve known our house was haunted since we moved in.

Footsteps in the attic, knocking on the walls, items disappearing and reappearing… we’ve had a little bit of everything. But it never felt menacing. Playful, maybe.

Once, we didn’t close the front door all the way and a gust of wind – legitimately, it was blowing like hell outside – pushed the front door open. Opie, my indoor-only cat saw his opportunity for a jail break and ran for the exit only to stop just inside the house, back arched, hair on end, hissing fiercely at something unseen in the doorway. I came out of the kitchen and saw Opie in the invisible standoff in front of the open door.

“Huh,” I said, and closed the door. “Thanks, Carl.”

Two knocks came from the wall behind me.

We have no idea where we got the name Carl, but it feels right. So, our ghost is Carl.

Recently, Carl has upped his tech game. First lights in rooms we were in would blink off…

“Carl, knock it off.”

… the light comes back on.

He’s taken to helpfully turning lights off when we’re not in a room anymore. Seriously, this ghost should be listed as a feature of this house! Not that we’re ready to move or anything.

Tom, my husband, was out of the country on a business trip. He’d been gone for almost a week. After we talked on the phone, he wished me a good night (I wished him a good morning) and I went to bed. A few hours later I heard footsteps downstairs and wondered what Carl was up to. I rolled over and went tried to go back to sleep, but the footsteps came to the foot of the stairs.

Slowly, step by step I could hear the footfalls on the steps. They reached the landing halfway and continued up slowly and steadily.

Annoyed that Carl was being particularly brazen, I got up, took two strides to the door and opened it.

I’ll never forget what I saw. The moment lasted a second but the details are still fixed clearly in my mind.

At the top of the stairs stood a man.

Not a ghost.

A man.

Dressed head to toe in black. The wood brown and chrome handle of a revolver jutted up from his waistband. A roll of silver duct tape in one black-gloved hand, a heavy black MagLite – turned off – in his other hand.

We both stood frozen for just a second.

Then his eyes hardened in annoyance that I was awake. He tensed to lunge at me.

And then something like an invisible bowling ball slammed into his midsection punching his breath out and knocking him backwards. He dropped the tape and the flashlight as his arms flailed uselessly. He fell back down the stairs and rolled down hard onto the landing, ricocheted off the wall and kept tumbling like a ragdoll down the rest of the stairs. He hit the ground with a thud.

Before I even had time to process what had just occurred, two things happened. First, red and blue flashing lights lit up the front yard. Second, the front door – which I locked, bolted and chained earlier – unlocked with audible clicks and opened.

Two officers came in with guns drawn.

“Are you okay, ma’am?”

“Yeah… yes, I… I am,” I stammered.

They pulled the gun from the unconscious man and started to handcuff him.

More police cars pulled up with sirens blaring.

“It’s good you called, ma’am,” one officer said to me.

“Call?” I said.

My phone rang on the nightstand. “Can I… get that?”

I grabbed it and it was Tom.

“Tom! How did you know to call? Oh my god,” the sound of his voice made everything sink in and I started to cry and hyperventilate.

“Whoa, whoa, Cindy, calm down,” he said. “Know to call? Honey, you called me.”

I sat down hard on the edge of the bed. “Thank you, Carl.”