Ghost in My Machine

I’m super excited to have been invited to join a blog group alongside three talented bloggers.  Each week, one of us chooses a topic and we all post a blog entry on that topic, usually on Thursdays.   

Here are the links to the other fabulous blogs:

Merryland Girl

Froggie

Moma Rock  

            It’s my turn this week, and I asked my co-bloggers to write about:  Ghosts.           

            My vagueness was purposeful, as ghosts can suggest myriad things other than a supernatural being:  a memory, a lost chance, some event or person that just haunts you.  I was curious which path my fellow bloggers would choose, what ghosts “haunt” them.

            But I?  Am going with the classic, spooky, Halloween kind of specter.

            I kind of believe in ghosts.  I qualify this because I don’t really believe in an afterlife.  Or, I should say, I don’t know whether there is an afterlife, but I’ve no supporting evidence, which makes me tend not to believe.  And, yet, I believe in ghosts.  I know my logic is totally flawed – and this kills me, because I’m wired to be logical (thank you law school).  But I have an excuse:  I blame my confusion on the fact that, when I was a kid, my parents’ house was haunted.

            My parents bought the two-story frame bungalow when I was just a year old.  They purchased it from the original owners, one of whom I was told passed away in the home.  This in no way deterred my parents; people regularly died at home back then (hell, my Dad was born at home, on the kitchen table).  When my parents moved into the house, they found remnants of the past owner, a few abandoned items that included a box of old tobacco pipes in the dirt under the back porch.  Non(pipe)smokers, my parents hung the pipes just outside their bedroom for a decorative touch. 

            It was then the weirdness began.

            I was probably about six when we first noticed the noises.  Every night around 8:00, my parents’ bed would squeak as if someone jumped upon it.  At first, I was blamed (of course) – until they realized I was lying on the shag-carpeted living room floor and not jumping on the bed.  We’d check the bedroom, but nothing seemed amiss.  We shrugged; we couldn’t explain it.  It didn’t really weird us out that much, and eventually we just got used to it.  The same was true for the smell of percolating coffee that wafted through the house from time to time.  A lingering scent from breakfast?  Nope.  My parents didn’t own a coffee pot; Mom drank tea, and Dad opted for instant coffee (and even that was rare).  We’d sniff and look at each other and go back to watching TV.  “Must be the ghost,” we’d say, unrattled.  And when we started to smell tobacco pipe smoke, it seemed almost undeniable:  whomever had lived here before had decided to stick around awhile.

            He (I always assumed the ghost a he) was a peaceful ghost, and he never scared us.  We co-existed without incident.  I can’t say the dogs were big fans, and they’d often stop in their tracks, perk up their ears, and stare at something we couldn’t see.  But we accepted the ghost as part of the family, a member of the home.  In a weird way, it was comforting:  a supernatural presence perhaps keeping an eye on things in a way we simply could not.  We were okay with the ghost, and he with us.

            Except my Grandpa.

            My Dad’s parents lived about a mile away, and my Grandpa was a frequent visitor to our home.  He spent the bulk of his visits in the kitchen, sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, a lit Kent, and the Tribune crossword.  My Grandpa was soft-spoken, a true gentleman (his middle name was Generoso, and it fit him well).  And yet, the ghost was not a fan.

            At some point during my childhood, my parents bought a new kitchen clock that hung high up on a wall above the oven.  It was electric, with batteries snapped neatly in the back.  It showed the time and the month, day, and year (pretty cool back then).  One day, Grandpa was standing below the clock, just a few feet over, toward the middle of the small kitchen.  Suddenly, the clock fell from the wall.  Actually, it more “leapt” from the wall, toward my Grandpa.  From what I know of physics, that clock should have fallen straight down onto the counter, but it didn’t.  It kind of shot from the wall, straight at Grandpa’s head. 

            Thankfully, it missed.  My Dad re-hung the unit back on the wall, but it never again kept correct time.  It was always off a few minutes, or even a day.  Eventually, my parents remodeled the kitchen, and cabinets were hung where the clock once stood.  On that same wall, my parents installed a built-in oven, one with a built-in clock.

            And hell if that clock didn’t work.  Ever.  It didn’t try to kill my Grandfather, but it refused to ever tell correct time.  It would work fine, then stop, for days.  We’d reset it, but it was futile.  So we wrote it off to the ghost.

            Eventually, the ghostly sounds and smells went away.  The bed stopped squeaking, the even newer built in oven clock began keeping time.  I assume to ghost is gone, that he left for wherever it is ghosts go when they are done here.  Grandpa is gone, too; he died shortly after I graduated college in 1990.  I miss him, and sometimes I wish he’d haunt me, just so I could see him again.  His “ghost” stays with me.  In my mind, I can still feel his bear hugs.  I can still smell him:  a sweet combination of fresh tobacco and Oil of Olay.  He’d always wanted one of his granddaughters to become a lawyer, and so the night of my law school graduation dinner, I raised a glass to him, wishing he could be there in body, hoping he was truly there in spirit.  I like to think he’s watching over me, which is hard, because I don’t know I really believe it.

            Obviously, I just don’t know what to believe.  So I push the boundaries and test the limits and try to find answers.  A few years ago, a good friend and I went to a psychic.  We were both going through some tumultuous times and we figured, “Why not?”  I’d gotten the referral to this particular psychic from another friend, who’d seen him and who was blown away by what he knew (or seemed to know) about her.

            The experience . . . well, it kind of blew my mind.  I had what is known as a “cold reading,” where all the psychic knew was my first name (in fact, I blocked my work number when I called, and my desk number wasn’t even traceable to my law firm).  We went in mid-December, and I was wearing an almost-casual sweater dress, leggings, and suede boots.  I did not look like a lawyer – but the first thing the psychic said was. “You’re a lawyer.”  He told me amazing things:  I was writing a book (I was).  I have a sister but we look nothing alike because our noses are totally different (I do, we don’t, they are).  He knew one of my daughter’s exact height, among other things he seemed to know about her.  At one point, he gave an exact name of someone in my life then causing a bit of a stir.  I was blown away.  I couldn’t explain it.  I still can’t. 

            But I think about it.  I watch shows like Long Island Medium and The Haunting of . . .  and search for mistakes . . . all the while hoping the ghosts are real.  But I also try to honor the other side:  the doubt, the skepticism.  I absolutely love Penn & Teller, the comedy/magic team known for trying to debunk psychics and mediums and other mystical showmen.  Funny enough, Penn Jillette, the tall, verbal half of the duo, is an outspoken atheist, and I know he’d likely chuckle at my ghost story and completely guffaw at my cold reading (he holds particular contempt for psychics).  But I love Penn, not because he doesn’t believe, but because he instead admits he just doesn’t know.  Ask him whether there is a god, and he says, simply, “I don’t know.”  And he will admit his lack of knowing leaves open the option that anything is possible – he just needs solid proof before he will believe anything is actual.

            I don’t know if ghosts exist.  I don’t know why my parents’ bed creaked, or why we could smell coffee and pipe smoke, or why a clock tried to concuss my beloved Grandpa.  I don’t know why I recently dreamt about an old, long-estranged family friend the night before my Mom called to tell me his obituary was in the newspaper.  And although I’m trained to rely on evidence and logic and actual proof, I’m okay without knowing the answers.  I don’t have to believe one way or another.  I know what I saw and smelled and felt and even dreamt.  I can’t explain it, nor do I need to.  I felt it.  In the moment, it was real, as real as those things in my house that I could touch.

            My fascination with ghosts might be nothing more than simple wishful thinking, the hope that we don’t just disappear when our bodies shut down.  My hope that I’ll see my dear Grandpa one more time, and we will laugh about the time the family ghost tried to knock him out with a kitchen clock, a time when he was tangible, when he could stretch his arms and give me a bear hug, just one more time.