Spooky

For the past few months, C has had trouble at night with bedtime. He's an anxious kid, anyway, and something about that time of night tends to exacerbate it. He usually needs someone to lie down with him - he used to come into our bed, but since GK showed up and has begun her all night nurse-a-thon in our bed, that's out of the question. So recently I've been lying with him on our enormous sectional sofa until he falls asleep...then I leave him there. Last night we were lying there and C got up to go to the bathroom. When he came back he was whimpering as though he were upset. "What's wrong?" I asked, a bit perturbed now because it was getting ever later. "When I was in the bathroom I thought I saw something walk past the door." Well, this was crazy because everyone else in the house was asleep, so I assured him it was nothing and he calmed down immediately. But now I. Was. Freaked. Out. And now I'm lying there thinking about him seeing "something" walk past the door. While I was lying there, I thought I saw the lamp next to the couch light up. So I stared at it and, sure enough, it lit up again, then went out. I kept watching it and every 15 seconds or so it would light up again and then go right back out. It had the glow of a firefly so I pointed it out to C. We watched it a few times and then I had to get to the bottom of it so I turned on the lamp and we inspected the lamp and shade and, guess what, no firefly.

Now this is all pretty spooky if you're an irrational person, or if it's late and you're a tired person. But here's the thing, the other morning I was somewhere between sleep and waking when I heard some little feet on wood floors running into our room. This is no big deal in our house as you can imagine. I raised up to see which one it was but just heard giggling and the feet scampering away. I got up shortly after that to get ready for work and looked in on all the kids and they were all asleep. Sound asleep. There hadn't been time for them to run back to their beds and fall so soundly asleep, I was sure.

I'm not saying there are ghosts out in the world, much less in our house. And I'm not here to debate the existence of paranormal behavior and beings. But what I'm wondering is why a ghost would choose our house. I've divided the square footage of our home up evenly and I don't intend to do so any more, so this ghost better be content to hover near the ceiling, we're not using all of that space anyway. And if our house is haunted by some sort of spirit, I would respectfully ask that he or she or it fold the clothes in the dryer and load up the dishwasher. Nobody stays for free.