I’m aware my house is haunted.

There have been quite a few unexplained creaks and sounds at various times, and footsteps in the dead of night. Occasionally an item will go missing and then show up again somewhere else I or my husband couldn’t have placed it – my car keys balanced precariously atop the closet pole in the guest room, for example.

Our washer and dryer are in the basement. If you’re not imagining how creepy the basement of a house that’s obviously haunted above ground is, then you, dear reader, lack imagination and should probably just stop reading right now.

Usually, it’s just innocuous things like I’ll be downstairs folding laundry and the door leading upstairs closes on its own with a slam. Or the light gets switched off and the creepy basement is plunged into terrifying darkness. Once, it did all the above at the same time – door slam, lights out, and – oh yeah – menacing laughter. What the ghost or ghosts didn’t factor in, though, was I was having a truly awful day and what was clearly meant to make me quiver in terror just pissed me off.

“Ghost!” I bellowed. “I do not have time for your shit. Knock it the hell off!”

Instantly the lights came back on and I heard the door to the upstairs creak open.

At least that proved the ghost is mischievous and not malevolent.

From then on the ghost backed off a little bit – it’d still do the items individually, but never all at once. And it seemed to get better at reading my mood, remaining quiescent when I’ve had a bad day.

One thing that stayed constant, however, was mismatched socks.

No matter how diligent I was making sure matched pairs went into the washer and were transferred to the dryer, when I pulled the laundry and started folding it, inevitably most of the socks were missing their mates.

I was folding the laundry one evening and lamenting the sad, sad state of our mismatched socks when I heard a giggle from the corner of the basement behind a support pillar. I eyed the dark corner and listened. There was a swooshing like fabric being moved back and forth. I set down the mismatched pair of socks and slowly, stealthily moved towards the dark corner. I heard the giggle again and I stepped closer, and closer. I popped my head around the pillar and froze.

Staring back at me was a translucent ghost draped in dozens of mismatched socks! The sock-covered ghost squeaked and then flew towards the far wall, disappearing straight through it while the socks it slapped against the wall and fell to the floor.

“Hey Phil!” I called to my husband – he had to hear this!

I explained what I had just witnessed and he inspected the wall the ghost disappeared into, tapping the wood here and there. At a particularly hollow knock, he crooked an eyebrow and experimentally knocked a few more times close by. Then he shocked me by suddenly rearing back and kicking the wall. His foot punched through the thin veneer. He pulled back his work-booted foot and shone a flashlight into the hole he had just made. He looked back at me and shook his head.

“What?” I asked.

He reached into the hole and pulled out huge fistful after fistful of mismatched socks.

“Ghost!” I called out, “I’m getting sock and tired of this!”

Phil groaned and somewhere an unseen voice groaned so loudly the whole house shook.

But we never lost another sock!