Of course someone will watch the kitties while I travel. Should I tell them the house may be haunted? When I was still married, we kept an antique cash register on a bureau beside the front door. My husband's dad had actually used it in his diner. I'd never met the man; he'd died of emphysema. But one day I was sitting on the floor lacing my shoes for a walk and farting. Suddenly I recognized him from photos. There he stood, tall and debonair in a jaunty contrapposto, with his elbow on the cash register (like a horcrux in Harry Potter!)
Since I get embarrassed by farting, I said, "Excuse me!"
Then he disappeared.
Months later, I was in bed waiting for my husband to come in from TV in the living room when I found myself choked by thick cigarette smoke. The smoke was unearthly. I thought it might be the ghost's work: my dead father-in-law had been a chain smoker all his life.
My husband told me his dad had always been interested in the occult. The man had looked cocky when I saw him standing there at the cash register, as if proud of himself for achieving visible spectrehood. I had to call the house-sitter we'd hired months previously and say, "Remember you said you couldn't stay your last night because you could smell the cigarette smoke you thought was from a peeping Tom?" I told her about the ghost. Then she told me that, the night before she left for good, she'd been in our bed and felt a disembodied hand touch her shoulder.
At any rate, "You may have help," I might say enigmatically to the latest cat-sitter. "Also, there may be a cougar in the garden."
VC Bestor
FangedWilds.org
Fanged Wilds and Women Program is a 501c3 Tax-Exempt Organization
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