“Okay, if you could have dinner with anyone who ever lived, who would it be?”
Samantha looked pained as she thought about the question. “That’s such a hard question because… I mean… well…,” she hesitated and then offered, “Top 5?”
Isaac sighed but acquiesced, “Fine – top 5.”
“Okay,” she said, holding up her hand and ticking the names off with each finger. “Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr., Ghandhi, Amelia Earhart, and… ooh, Freddie Mercury!”
“The first four we already sent invitations to – America Earhart was a maybe, the rest were busy. But I like the Freddie Mercury addition!” he started jotting the name down in his notebook.
Samantha buried her head in her hands in frustration. “Ugh, this is worse than when we compiled our guest list for our first marriage! Why do we have to do this again?!”
Isaac took a deep breath and gave her a patient smile. “Because when we got married the first time there was that little clause in there that said ‘Til death do us part’. And, Sam, we’re dead.”
“I know we’re dead, but can’t we just, I don’t know… I guess we can’t live in sin, haunt in sin?”
“Sam, you’re the one who wanted a big wedding…”
“I know, I know…” she said. “Ooh, Aunt Linda – did we invite my Aunt Linda?”
Isaac flipped a page back in the journal. “Aunt Linda, Aunt Linda…,” he traced his finger down the list of names. “Aunt Linda, yes,” he paused and looked up. We already tried to invite her, but she’s still alive.
“She’s still alive? The last time we saw here before the accident she looked like she had one foot in the grave already!”
“I remember!” Isaac said. “Be that as it may, she’s still alive and kicking.”
“She’s half dead but alive, and I’m all dead but more alive than she’s been in, what? Fifty years? Makes me want to haunt her out of spite!”
“Come on, Sam… let’s focus.”
Samantha scowled. “How many ‘yes’s do we have so far?”
“Two… thousand thirty six.”
“Wow,” she said. “Can’t we just elope?”
“Honey, we’re ghosts. Where are we going to elope to?”
“Haunted Mansion? Catacombs of Paris? New Orleans? I don’t know – I think we’d fit in at those places!”
Isaac gave her another practiced patient smile.
“Okay, I give up – I don’t want a big wedding after all. When the guest list could be literally anyone not living… that’s a lot of folks to choose from. Besides, can you imagine an open bar for two thousand people?
“Two thousand thirty six,” Isaac corrected.
“Whatever,” she said. “Let’s just be you and me and the officiant.”
He stepped closer and took Samantha in his arms. “Are you sure? You’re not going to regret not having a big second wedding?”
Samantha wrapped her arms around his neck. “I’m sure. I just want to be with you in the afterlife, too. Besides, more time to haunt!”
When I was laying out 31 Ghosts: Volume 2 I noticed a lot of these editorials for the last two years focused on how busy I was and “this is going to be short because I have a long day” or “splitting this into a thousand entries because I’m working another gig this weekend.” I’ve deliberately tried not to do that this year. But by not mentioning it, I noticed I’ve not really said anything ahead of some of these stories and that doesn’t feel right either! So, okay, It’s Saturday night and I’m exhausted because I worked a 9-hour gig at a wedding which followed a 14-hour day Friday and Thursday, and Tuesday. Despite that, I’ve been trying hard to put in good, normal-sized stories. Tonight, though, the week is catching up to me. I feel this ghost right now.
Edit: I wrote the above fully expecting this to be a really short entry. It turned out to be more normal-sized than I expected. And now I’m going to sleep.
“Is he there?” the voice came through the radio.
I turned on the camera and focused it on the old wrought iron bed frame. Despite the lack of mattress and the rusty springs, through the lens of the camera a figure clearly lay on its side on the bed. Looking at the figure, though, it became immediately apparent that the figure wasn’t solid – you could see the far side of the bed through its prone body.
“Yep,” I said assembling the tripod and fixing the camera looking at the figure, “he’s still here.”
“You sure you want to do this?”
The last time I made my way up to this bedroom in the deteriorating house I noticed a wooden chair mostly intact on its side in the corner. I set it upright and sat slowly, testing my weight to make sure the ancient thing wouldn’t shatter. It held and I let out a sigh of relief, “I am. I’ve got a comfortable chair here. I’ll be good.”
“It’s an hour until morning…”
“I’m three Red Bulls in,” I laughed. “I think I’m good.”
“I’ll check in periodically,” the voice came back.
I smiled, “Thanks, Dan.”
When I say this is a “deteriorating” house, I’m being kind. It’s one of a number of places that dot the hills of West Virginia, abandoned and slowly being reclaimed by nature. Dan and I started exploring the Appalachian hills at night looking for ghosts. Despite some seriously spooky discoveries, we never thought we’d come across something like this.
This location was a rare two-story house that once must have had a commanding view of the valley below. But the road up here washed out decades ago – we had to park on one side of the missing road and pack our equipment the remaining couple miles to the place. When we got here, it was further gone than we expected when we spotted it from in the valley – the face of the house with the amazing overlook still looked impressive, but like a sick patient who tries to put his best face on when he goes out in public even though his illness has consumed his body – that’s this place. Half the roof had fallen in, tearing the staircase down with it.
That’s why Dan is on the radio – he’s safely on the first floor. I’m the idiot who clambered up to the second floor on our first visit. But that first visit was also when I carefully made my way into the master bedroom, my foot plunging through the rotting floor once on the way. But there the figure was, laying on its side.
At first, I thought it was the homeowner still inhabiting house and almost ran out, but then I realized that, no, no one had been in this place for a long time – it was a hell of a thing climbing up to the second floor. Who would do that on a regular basis? No, this resident wasn’t living.
After getting over my initial terror, I started getting curious. It helped that the figure just seemed to be… sleeping. I mean, you expect ghosts to terrorize you – and most do! But this one… I mean, it kind of snored a little sometimes.
I tried to wake it up. I know, not the greatest idea – let sleeping ghosts lie, right? But we found a ghost! I guess we wanted it to… I don’t know… perform. I shouted at it to no avail. I even reached out to shake it awake. It’s a ghost, so you can imagine how well that went.
Dan had the idea at first. “Maybe, I don’t know, the ghost wakes up when morning comes?” he said as we ate in the Waffle House in Charles Town as the sun started to rise after the first visit.
“A ghost waking up? Ghosts come out at night, everyone knows that!”
“Do we? I mean, yeah, we always think of ghosts coming out at night, you know – haunting dark corridors and all that shit. But, we’ve both read about encounters that occur in daytime.”
“Right, but just because there are ghosts during daylight, that doesn’t mean ghosts sleep.”
“Why not?” Dan took a long sip of his Diet Coke.
“Why would ghosts sleep? I mean, that’s the whole thing, right? They’re not resting in peace.”
“Maybe,” he agreed. “But it’s worth trying, isn’t it?”
It was worth trying. We made plans for another visit later in the night so we could stay and see if the ghost woke up.
That’s why sat in the chair watching the translucent figure ostensibly sleeping with an unhealthy amount of energy drink coursing through my body.
It had been getting gradually lighter and the pre-dawn glow illuminated the interior of the house Dan and I had just seen by flashlight to this point. What previously looked creepy now just looked… sad. As the first rays of the morning shone through the broken eastern-facing windows, I stared around at the peeling wallpaper and thought about how people lived here and left for some reason – it’s one thing to ghost hunt in abandoned places, but it’s another to see the tragically sad reality in the literal light of day.
Dan’s voice on the radio pulled me out of my reverie. “Hey, Ali,” the radio crackled to life. “Looks like your ghost is waking up!”
I turned back to the figure and, sure enough, it looked like it was turning over and… stretching? Yawning?
The ghost sat up. I could see now that it was an elderly man, sparse white hair on his head had the look of bedhead. I could make out that he wore a faded and torn blue and white sleep shirt. He looked at me and froze.
Our eyes locked and now I was afraid.
“Why are you in my house?” the ghost demanded, accusingly.
“Umm,” I stammered – what a brave ghost hunter I was! “I, uh, we were exploring abandoned houses and found you sleeping here.”
He scowled and the sight was immediately terrifying… until an enormous yawn interrupted his scowl. Seemingly aware his scare wasn’t so scary after the yawn he said in a more regular voice, “Okay, sure, that makes sense.” Then, more seriously, “But no one likes being watched when they’re sleeping! That’s creepy! And I’m a ghost! Nothing should be creepy to me!”
“So, you know you’re a ghost?” I asked surprised.
“Well, of course I know I’m a ghost – I’m dead, aren’t I? And I’m still here, so…” he gestured to himself, “ghost.”
“Why are you here then?”
He took a deep breath and started, “Sonny, I lived a very successful life.” He looked around the room and scowled, but it looked more sad than scary now. “It doesn’t look like much now, I suppose, but this was a pretty grand place when I was alive.” He smiled at a memory, “June loved this place…”
“Your wife?”
He nodded sadly. “She was, yes.”
“Don’t you want to go to her in… you know…” I gestured wildly, “In the great beyond or whatever? Go into the light?”
“Well, I don’t know she wants to me there. See, I was very successful because I worked all the time. ‘Married to my job,’ she’d say.” He smiled wryly, “She wasn’t wrong. I came home one day and she was gone. Left a note saying she wanted to live and not just wait around for me. She was a wonderful woman – I couldn’t blame her. I told myself I would go find her, but… work.”
“Okay,” I said, “but just because she may not want to see you, isn’t the Other Side like, I don’t know, big? You don’t have to see her right? Why not just go towards the light?”
“You want the truth, sonny?”
“I do!” I said, leaning forward in my chair.
“I’d work late into the night. June would sometimes come downstairs and admonish me to get some sleep. I always said the same thing – ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead.’” He smiled broadly, “So, here I am!”
When Alan saw the antique full-length mirror on the side of the road he stopped immediately, looked around for its owner, and then put it in the back of his truck.
“I know how much you love this old stuff,” he said tapping the end of the mirror protruding from the bed of his Tacoma.
He was right. Surprising me with old furniture is my love language.
And the mirror was amazing! It stood a full six feet tall, the bronze-colored wooden frame was so ornately carved that I wondered if we should get it appraised first. No, that didn’t feel right. It needed its place.
I helped Alan haul it inside. I knew exactly where it belonged – our bedroom, just to the side of the closet. Not in line with the bed – that’s bad feng shui – but still nearby so I could check out my outfit in the morning. Once in its place, it felt right, calm. I patted the intricate frame and was surprised that it felt warm to the touch – not warm like it just came in from sitting in the sun in the truck bed, but almost hot, like body temperature.
Almost immediately I noticed something so weird I thought it was a flaw in the glass or my mind playing tricks on me. When I looked at myself in the mirror, my reflection would be just a little bit off – not in a fun-house way, distorting my proportions, but like I would move my hands to pull my hair up and my image seemed be just a moment behind my physical movements. It felt like a lag of some kind.
Everyone has encountered lag when dealing with online meetings and such – this was similar, but it was a mirror, not some trick of a network. I stood and walked towards the bathroom and watched my reflection stand and retreat towards the bathroom… I shouldn’t have been able to discern a lag, right?
When I talked to Alan about it he dismissed me as just out of it. We both stood in front of the mirror and gesticulated wildly – there was no lag whatsoever.
“See, Trish? It’s fine,” he said and walked out of the room. I stared at his retreating figure in the mirror and saw my image smirk just a little out of the corner of my eye. I looked directly at my image and the smirk was gone – it was just me looking surprised and a little pale.
I didn’t see my image look any differently again, but the delay was there – sometimes a full second or two behind, sometimes barely any lag at all. But something was wrong with the mirror.
One night when Alan was away on business I was getting ready for bed and my peripheral vision picked up the delay of my image in the mirror and it started getting to my head. I draped a sheet over the mirror, finished getting ready for bed, and then went to sleep. When I woke in the morning, the mirror sat uncovered, the sheet balled up on the opposite side of the room – the sheet would have had to have passed over the foot of our bed.
I was wary of the mirror after that. I tried not to stare directly at my image and, if I could avoid it, I wouldn’t look at my image at all. I tried to move it, turn it towards the wall, but I couldn’t budge it. I thought about asking Alan to help, but what would I tell him? The mirror has lag? It smirked at me? I just did my best to ignore it.
One Saturday morning, though, I caught my reflection in the mirror as I walked towards the closet. Again, my image seemed just behind my actual movements. But as I was about to turn past the mirror, a motion in the mirror caught my eye. I turned towards it and my image was waving at me. I actually looked at my own hand to make sure it wasn’t moving of its own accord – no, it was just the hand in the mirror that moved. As if to confirm my conclusion, my image smiled and nodded.
I waved back, hesitantly.
My image stared into my eyes, and it reached out its hand towards me. My heart raced and I don’t know why, but I extended my arm towards the mirror. Just as my fingers were about to touch the fingers in the mirror, my image’s smile turned predatory.
