Into the room the . . . come and go

(In the opinion of one) I’m a certified crackpot. Sitting on my dock with some friends the other day, one asked me how long the lake had been there. I said at least a couple of centuries. When I first moved into my house, I had some spooky experiences, the kind you read about in books. Lights would go on and off without my touching them. I felt a presence in the rooms, especially in my living room. Then one night when I was lying in bed, just before going to sleep, I saw a figure float into the room. It was a young girl, around eighteen, in a long wedding dress, with a large bouquet of flowers (dead, of course). She was eerily transparent, obviously not substantial. I sat up in bed and said, very loudly: “What are you doing here?” and she left. Never returned. Before the houses around here were built, mostly in the past fifteen years, this land was woods; no one lived here for a long time, several centuries.

Then I told my friends about the ghosts I saw when we lived in Richmond, Virginia. Thinking back on it, they must have been from the Civil War. Always at night. I would see a long line of ghostly figures, mostly just bones, walk into my bedroom in single file, over and over, for what seemed like hours. I never told anyone. Just watched in terror. It was only much later that I thought about them as ghosts, lost, disembodied spirits.

Of course, one of my friends didn’t think these were stories a rational, grounded person would relate (or experience). He told his partner later that he liked me, respected me, but couldn’t accept that I saw ghosts. So I am now labeled a kook. But this was my experience, the ghosts, that is. I don’t believe or not believe in ghosts. It just happened. I didn’t ask for it; I didn’t look for it. And I don’t mind being considered a crackpot. I know I’m okay.