A Ghost Story

By: Elizabeth Redhead Kriston

Imagine sitting in a circle in the darkest part of night where the only light comes from the campfire and the flashlight illuminating the face of your camp counselor, causing it to look disfigured and ghostly. You sit mesmerized by the story she is telling you as you unknowingly clutch the hand of the girl beside you whose gaping mouth barely breathes as she is frozen with fear, just like you.

The counselor uses the creepy atmosphere and perfectly placed pauses to expertly retell The Golden Arm. This tale was made famous by Mark Twain nearly 120 years ago in his book How to Tell a Story.     

The Golden Arm was not the only story used to add an element of fear to my childhood. A favorite game which I played with my cousins was “Mary Worth.” This was an equally terrifying myth that involved being visited by a bloody ghost. Once, immediately after completing the required chant of “I believe in Mary Worth” three times, we heard an ominous scratching at the door.

Screaming, we huddled together in a trembling frightened cluster. After much coaxing and daring, the bravest of us eventually opened the door to determine if Bloody Mary herself had left her signature claw marks in the door panels. My cousin slowly pulled the door open with trembling hands as we watched from afar still huddled with our eyes squinched nearly shut. 

As the door slowly swung open we all jumped back in surprise as we saw it right in front of our unbelieving eyes. The cat sat at the door wagging its tail and licking its paw waiting for us to let her in for dinner. The only scratches left behind were the imperceptible ones of the cat’s claws.

Though they were just silly games and folk tales, these childhood experiences with the supernatural opened my mind up to the notion that ghosts exist. They introduced the idea of a spirit world and that some of those spirits dwell beside us,and even make themselves known to us.

Fast forward many years later, I am now an adult and I still believe in ghosts. Many experiences across the course of my life brought me to the realization that ghosts are real. The most personal and tangible of these experiences were the encounters I had with the ghost that resides in my mother’s house.

I am not particularly brave, but for some reason her ghost has never frightened me. He is a scamp. He is a juvenile delinquent performing childish pranks. He is annoying but harmless. I refer to this ghost as “he” because in my mind a girl would never perform such trivial pranks.

Sears Kit Home Similar to Mom's

This ghost, who seems to live in the second floor cubby holes of my Mom’s bungalow, preferred to visit me at night. I have awoken to him tickling or blowing air into my face. I have awoken to mysterious beeping sounds that did not go away after unplugging every single thing in the room. Our latest encounter happened in the morning as I showered. He turned off the hot water in the middle of my shower and somehow made the cold water the temperature of ice. These are aggravating shenanigans, but not particularly scary or impressive.

My first encounter with this ghost was a bit more haunting. I had recently returned home from my three year stint living in California and my mother let me move back into my old room until I got back on my feet and figured out what I was doing with my life. It was my first night home sleeping in my old bed. Sometime in the middle of the night I was awoken to some strange sensation. I knew I was not alone, but could not figure out who was in the room. I saw no one, nothing.

Previously, I had heard my mother mention some strange happenings in her home like the cat being fed or the steam being wiped away from the bathroom mirror. The most common occurrence was finding the painting of a little boy she had hanging on her dining room wall on the floor, daily. The ghost clearly did not like that painting. Once my mom replaced it with another on the same nail, it never fell.

On my first night home, the presence in my room took the opportunity to get to know me. As I lay in bed on my back fully awake I felt an odd sensation. Much like the child being eaten by the Boa Constrictor in the Shel Silverstein poem, the feeling started in the bottom of my feet and slowly traveled through my body.  It was a warm not painful electric-like current that traveled the length of my body until exiting from the crown of my head. The entire time I lay paralyzed unable to move or speak. It felt like I was being explored internally. It was the oddest experience of my life.

Even more unexplainable was my reaction. Rather than screaming in fear and racing out of the room and then the house filled with terror, I fell asleep. I was not scared in the least. That ghost had no nefarious intentions. It just wanted to know who I was and I, for some odd reason, was fine with it.

I do not expect you to believe me. My own mother did not believe me when I mentioned it to her and she believed the ghost resided in her house. I know it is true and that is all that matters. So during this spookiest of months, remember that we really do reside next to spirits and like Casper the Friendly Ghost, most are just silly pranksters.