casper, the friendly ghost

Do you believe in ghosts? I mean really believe in your head and in your gut that ghosts exist. Well, I am on the verge of having to say yes.

Of course, like every california baby boomer, I observed the various "spiritual movements", and would describe myself as being spiritually conscious. I believe in "higher power", and know that it comes in many forms, from the traditional GOD to an ancestor we talk to. I have even seen pictures of ghosts and basically believe it to be so. But REALLY believe? That's a leap of faith I have managed to resist until now.

My girlfriend is a witch, and her 100 year-old house is filled with "spirits"….the dead. We talk about them all the time, but in 12 years, she had never seen one. Her son started seeing them when he was practically a toddler.

I have lived places before that I "felt" were haunted, but I never saw anything. When I lived in Puerto Rico, I stayed in a rooming house, and I had the sensation that the room was haunted. A Cuban friend came over, and after I said that I thought the room was haunted, she said she had seen an old man sitting in the chair. The landlady confirmed that an old man had died in that room.

But actually SEE one!

Last summer, I helped d. clean her studio in the attic, where the spirits like to hang out. We worked for hours and threw away boxes and boxes of stuff. We scrubbed the table tops with chisels. We cleaned. At one point, we were near the closet, and we heard banging to a quite irregular beat. We looked at each other, and both knew what it was. There was just no other explanation.

Occasionally, this one friend of d's comes over and talks about which spirits she is seeing. I usually leave the room during this line of discussion, and my level of nervousness about getting up in the nite increases dramatically.

The other nite, d. came in and said she had just seen a ghost. I said, "Don't tell me about it", and she said she had to share what she had seen. She said it was like a white wisp that floated by into the front room. She said "it was like…it was like" and I said "like Casper". We laughed.

As they say, all stereotypes come from somewhere.

To be continued…………..