Ghost in the Machine
Numerous people have asked about my weird list. I can’t explain my aversion to chocolate and coffee, but I can come clean on the fourth item dealing with the paranormal. So for Susi and the others, here you go.We moved into our 35-year-old house on the edge of a canyon four years ago this month. Like the rest of my suburb, the land used to be part of newspaper magnet E.W. Scripp's Miramar Ranch. Occasionally I’d wake in the middle of the night and sense a body next to me, only to turn and find myself alone in bed. Other times, our electronics would go haywire in the house. Sure, it’s spooky, especially when the computer monitor turns itself on despite the computer power being off, casting the entire house in an odd nocturnal glow. But I always rationalized these events because, despite what you might think, I’m really a sensible gal.
Then around the holidays, things got really weird. Late one night I woke to the sensation of light movement swirling around my head, and gaining force. With it was a raspy voice mumbling something about a “beach” or a “bitch.” It was starting to get intense, so I opened my eyes and turned to confront my husband, convinced he was breathing down my neck and talking in his sleep. But he wasn’t there. He’d fallen asleep in the living room, so his side of the bed remained undisturbed. Wish I could say the same for me.
Over the next two days I obsessed over what had happened, reading web sites and trying to piece together past events. More than once our PC monitor has turned on by itself in the middle of the night. In each instance, the computer and the monitor itself were turned off; I had to unplug the entire system from the power strip to get rid of the glow. Our house phone’s battery keeps draining quickly, too. These seemingly innocuous events and others I ended up relating in earnest e-mail exchanges with a kind woman who leads a team of paranormal investigators. They do this for donations only.
She neither suggested nor dismissed that we had a ghost. She said only that what I told her was consistent with what some others had experienced. She didn’t press for her team to come out, though she did ask me to consider it. She understood my own ambivalence and shifting attitudes, and she didn’t seem insulted when I asked in all sincerity: “So, does your team identify more with the movie Ghostbusters or Poltergeist?”
We left with me saying I’d think about it. And, trust me, I have. Did I dream all of this, as my husband truly believes? Or is our computer monitor possessed? Are awful secrets buried beneath this house? And did that damn ghost actually call me a bitch?! For all I know, the answers to these and many other questions may lie at the bottom of that bottle of bubbly water I can’t seem to get rid of in the fridge.
