A couple of months ago, Nate mentioned that sometimes when he's down there playing XBox and he's completely focused, he'll get that tingling sensation on the back of his neck as if someone is standing behind him. He turns, but no one is there. Sophia reported the same thing. I clucked my tongue at them and told them that the power of suggestion is exactly that - powerful.
Then, a couple of days ago, I was alone in the house and I heard sounds coming from the basement. "It's the washing machine," I told myself and went about typing whatever it was that I was working on. A couple of minutes later, it occurred to me, because I'm quick like that, that I hadn't done any laundry. My heart raced a little bit.
"Oh, maybe it's that stray cat that gets into the garage sometimes." I thought, trying again to convince myself to ignore the occasional sounds coming from below me. Finally, I got up and did a head count of the cats to see if it was one of ours who'd gotten down there without my knowledge. Nope. All cats were present and accounted for.
As if in answer to my questioning, that faint knocking sound came again from the basement.
"All right then. You can drive yourself crazy with wondering or you can go see what that is." I had now moved to the talking aloud to myself stage of agitation.
I went to the basement door, took a deep breath, admonished myself for being so ridiculous, turned the knob and pulled. My heart was knocking against my ribcage. There was nothing there. Holding my breath, I went down the short flight of stairs and looked around, poised to flee like some kind of frightened rabbit. Still nothing. I opened the laundry room door. Nothing. Chloe's bedroom, the bathroom. More nothing. Just the hint of vinegar and green apples still penetrating the air from my last batch of homemade fabric softener.
"Such a dumbass." I said to my inner ten year old.
I started back up the stairs and heard two sharp knocks coming from the laundry room. I froze. Did I really hear something? I waited, but no more sound came.
"Okay, then. Well, if you're here, let's all just get along, okay? Stop scaring the kids." I said shakily to the empty rooms. There was no response. "And while you're in there, toss in a load of laundry, will ya?" False bravado and corny jokes. Ghosts really respond to that.
I calmly walked up the stairs, opened the door, closed it behind me and then ran up the next flight of stairs, into my office and locked the door where I remained for the next hour and a half, experiencing no more weirdness other than what can be found on the internet. Which is quite a lot.
Tales of otherwordly doings? Let's hear them.
