I could have put a picture of Alli here. But, then it might seem too close to home. For the record, we have no ghosts… yet!

I’ve known our place is haunted since the day we moved in and the top box of cups and mugs tumbled off the bottom box of pots and pans, rattling its (well padded) contents.
“That’s weird,” I said.

“What’s weird?” Susan asked as she was unpacking a box of dishes

“That box just fell off the other box there,” I said pointing to it.

“Oh,” she said turning and regarding the fallen box. “I thought you just dropped it.”

“Nope.”

“Maybe you stacked it off balance?”

“No, it was stacked on there perfectly.”

“Hmm,” Susan said regarding the box on its side. Then she looked at me looking at the box. Then back at the box. “Well,” she said turning back to the plate box, “I guess it must be ghosts.”

She was kidding…. But she was right.

A few days later we were watching television when a cabinet in the kitchen opened and slammed closed.

“Amy?” Susan asked.

“Yeah?”

“That wasn’t you, right?”

“Did my arm move from around your shoulders?

“No.”

“Okay, yeah, couldn’t have been me.”

“Well, it wasn’t me….”

“Ghosts,” I said. And the cabinet opened and slammed closed again. A few minutes later, bang!

Susan paused the show. “What are we going to do?”

“Hey ghost,” I yelled over my shoulder towards the kitchen. “We recognize you’re here. Hello, how are you? I’m Amy, that’s Susan, you probably already knew that… But we’re watching something here. Do you mind giving us a little peace? Slam twice if you understand.”

Bang. Bang.

“Oh shit,” Susan said. “You just communicated with a ghost!”

“Well, it was doing a pretty aggravating job communicating with us.” And true to its word, it waited until the credits rolled before, bang!

“Thanks ghost!” I called into the kitchen as we got up and headed to the room.

It was like that for months. Lights would turn on or off at will. I lost my Airpods for a week until I asked the ghost to put them back… at which time I found them in the fridge (I did not leave them there. I know that). It did that kind of things with keys, too. There was more banging of cabinets. Doors opening and closing on their own. It never felt malevolent, though. If anything, it seemed like it was acting out because it was…

“Bored,” Susan said. “It’s bored.”

“Excuse me?”

“It makes sense, Amy. Think about it: it’s like if you got a dog–”

“I’ve never had a dog. My mom was allergic.”

“Okay, it’s like if you had a hypothetical dog. If you can’t spend adequate time with it then they get bored and act out – poop on the floor or eat your favorite slippers.”

“Great, you’re saying I’m going to step in some ghost poop?”

“Not literally, silly,” she rolled her eyes.

“Well, then what? Do we put an ad in Craigslist for a play ghost to keep ours company?”

Susan ignored my well-thought-out question. “Hey, why don’t we get a dog?”

“Are you serious?”

“Why not?”

“I mean… it is our house. It’s not like we have to ask anyone’s permission, right?”

As I mentioned, I’d never had a dog. Susan said she had a dog growing up, but I realized she meant when she was too young to participate in the care of said canine. So, well… we pretty quickly realized we picked the wrong dog. See, we wanted a nice, gentle trainer dog. What we got was a pro-level, all-manual, turned-up-to-eleven puppy.

I took Elliot – yes, we named him Elliot – running with me in the mornings. Even though I was tired by the end of the five-mile loop, Elliot acted like he just woke up.

Dropping onto the bed, moaned, “What have we done?”

“We, uh, we got a dog.”

“Hmwff.”

“What?”

I lifted my head from the pillow and repeated, “Why?”

“Bet you haven’t thought about the ghost since Elliot showed up.”

I furrowed my brow in thought. “You’re right!”

Just then Elliot barked and came galloping back into the room with a well-chewed ball in his mouth.

“Did he pick that up on your run?” Susan asked eying the ball.

“No…” I said. “I haven’t seen that ball before…”

“Yeah, me either…”

“Well, you did say I hadn’t thought about the ghost in a while. Susan, I’m thinking about the ghost now…”

The first day we both had to work and we left Elliot home alone I stopped in at lunch to check on the beast to see what he’d destroyed in the few hours we’d left him. When I got there, though, Elliot was asleep in his crate. I went to the computer and logged in to our Furbo treat-dispensing camera – yes, of course we got the treat-dispensing camera for our new puppy. Who did you think we were?

Anyway, I scrolled through the morning’s footage and… first there was a lot of motion. I watched as the ball bounced down the hallway into the family room. In bounded Elliot, scooped up the ball in his mouth and then jogged back down the hallway and out of sight. A moment later, the ball came bouncing into the family room again, and there was Elliot racing after it. I put the replay on double speed and watched that scene repeat itself scores of times until Elliot had walked into the frame to retrieve the ball and then finally he walked in and fell over like a tipped cow.

I grabbed my cell phone. “Susan?”

“Yeah, what’s up? How’s Elliot? What’d he destroy?”

“Nothing. He’s fine. He’s asleep.”

“Wait, what? That devil-spawn is asleep? How can that be?”

“Well,” I said watching the video of Elliot asleep until the ball bounced into frame again and bounced of him, causing him to jump up and chase the ball again. “I think we have ourselves a built in dogsitter…”