I’m not really sure if there are any ghosts in my house. There are a few incidences that seem ghostly, on first sniff, but can be explained away. And some I just don’t know.

For example, the upstairs bathroom door will always slam shut if the window in the bathroom is open and the wind is just right. But that’s just an issue of air pressure.

The one window on the far right of the living room, which with its companion on the left both flank a larger picture window, will sometimes crack itself open. But this is a combination, I think, of the constant flow of traffic driving by plus the spring mechanism of the window. As long as the window is not locked, the street vibrations do something to the spring, making the window slowly open up.

There’s an edge of the kitchen countertop close to the stove that is pitched so the front of it is higher than the back. I learned this once when I was cleaning it, and sprayed it with a cleaner that wet the surface. For some reason, I put the cap from a can of non-stick spray on the counter and watched as it slid back, as if moved by unseen hands. It was a bit of a shock to see, at first. But likely more about the wonky counter levels in an old house than a ghost.

I also have an old boom box set up in the living room, along the wall that’s across from the haunted window. It’s from the 1990s and has a cassette player on it, as well as a CD player, but the only thing I use it for these days is to listen to public radio while I’m cleaning the house on Saturdays. It has a simple on/off button that sometimes just shuts off on its own. I know that earlier in the day that I’m writing this post it shut off two times by itself. This one is a little odd because you do have to press on the button to turn it on or off – I do it myself all the time. In fact, as I write this the radio is off and I didn’t shut it off today. It shut itself off.

Is it just an old boom box that’s crapping out on me, or is some ghostly entity that’s not liking public radio?

Last New Year’s Eve, a friend stayed over and slept on the living room couch. He said that he woke up during the night and thought he saw a black cat on the top of the couch, and that it jumped from the couch and crawled under the Christmas tree, which is a very cat thing to do. But we don’t have a black cat. He also said that my cat Otis (rest in peace) saw this cat, and when it ran out from under the tree and away from his line of sight, Otis chased after it. I don’t know if that cat was a harbinger of something or the ghost of my other cat, Saffron, who for reasons I won’t go into, would be a natural choice for haunting that room.

What’s funny is that before he told me that story, I had two sightings of a small, dark cat running from the hallway into my kitchen, and from a guest bedroom into my bedroom. Just out of the corner of my eye experiences, but the size was about Saffron size, and she and I were very attached to each other.

And…it’s alleged that a woman died in this house, which was once the parsonage of the Lutheran church in town. She was sick and being taken care of by parishioners, and died in the room that all of this weird stuff happens in. I can’t confirm if this is true.

And also…I’ve been told that a woman who was living in the house across the street (which may have been a brothel at one point) killed herself by lying in the road and waiting for a car to come along and hit her. This is super far-fetched, but who knows?