haunted

are there ghosts among us?

since moving to an old house (it was built in 1898), we find ourselves in conversations with people about haunted houses. despite actually hoping this house is haunted, it hasn't thus far shown any sign of it, unless that sense of irritation i sometimes feel overwhelmed by when i'm working in the kitchen isn't caused by missing my smeg stove and refrigerator from the old house but by a dissatisfied spirit instead. maybe one who, like me, has good taste in kitchen appliances.

there's a guy in the neighborhood who told me about one evening when he was watching t.v. and felt a weight on his shoulder. he thought the dog had come up behind him and laid his chin there, but when he turned, the dog wasn't there. the same dog raises its hackles and growls at thin air, so he's pretty sure that his house is haunted. he says occasionally all of the pictures on the wall are suddenly hanging crooked. i love such stories, they give me goosebumps in a very good way.

we had friends to dinner last evening and they live in an old farmhouse as well. they've traced the origins of their place to 1600-something and in one of the barns found evidence of a stone floor from that original building. their project is even bigger than ours and they actually think our kitchen is nice in comparison to the condition of theirs. (i haven't seen theirs yet, but find it hard to imagine how bad it must be if ours looks good in comparison).

the first night they slept in their house last summer, they had a strong feeling that they were unwelcome. it freaked them out so much they actually got up in the middle of the night and drove back to their old apartment to sleep. regularly, they wake up in the night and the humidity has shot up to 75%, from a normal 60%. they actually got a humidity detector (what's one of those called?) and documented it. they wake up from it and then within minutes it dissipates and goes back down to the normal 60%. they've tried to trace it to the furnace and such, but can't find any physical reason for the humidity swing (and they're both engineers, so they should be able to). one night, after it happened, they could hear their dog down at the bottom of the stairs, wagging his tail and greeting someone, as if it was one of them going down the stairs. they regularly hear footsteps overhead when they're watching t.v. and have combed the attic, looking for evidence of an animal, but there is none.

they also have both seen a blueish male figure passing through a wall and crossing the room. the lights flicker when he's there. they took a closer look at the wall where he passes through and realized that there had once been a door there but it is now covered up. they were both in the room and they turned to one another and one said, "did you see.." "...the blue man," finished the other. they had both individually seen him and not said anything.

i get the most delicious creepy sense when talking about such things. i get completely covered in goosebumps, but i feel it in a very thrilling way and i don't feel frightened by it. in all honesty, i totally have ghost envy. i want one too, but i 'm not sure you can wish your way to one.

husband and i laid awake talking about it last night (that's what you get for drinking coffee at 11 p.m.). husband, thinks it's flashes of access to another dimension. one that we don't normally see or feel. we recently saw the others, a 2001 film with nicole kidman (who i normally hate), where you realize at the end that she and her children and the servants are dead and still living in a big house that a family has moved into. it's a well-done film and raises that question of whether when we die we just move to another plane, but still hang out in the surroundings where we were. if so, think of the layers upon layers in an old house. i do wish i had access to the ones here.