Ghost Story - Grandma's Visit

This last ghost story I have I may need to wait on publishing. Again, I feel like I've written about this one before, but I'm not quite sure where it is. I'm pretty sure I wrote about it the day or so after it occurred, so that version would be much more accurate than this. Though, I also have to think to myself, is it a real ghost story if it doesn't evolve in some way with the teller?

I wasn't very close with any of my grandparents growing up. I'm a little envious of those people I know who were, especially now that all my grandparents are gone. I didn't even particularly like my maternal grandmother. She was very religious, and it came off a little phony, especially when I was older. I mean, I knew her heart was in the right place, but I could only put up with her in small doses. Not like my Papa, her husband. He was a Pooh bear looking man, roly-poly with a big belly and charismatic with an easy laugh. He was religious too, but from him, well it didn't sound "preachy". My grandmother was "preachy".

Grandma Pieschke died just about a year after Papa. Before she did though, I had the opportunity to have this amazing morning with her. I guess it was the weekend of Papa's memorial service. Grandma wanted to go to church, and everyone was occupied with all the arrangements being made. She couldn't drive herself and to that point I had had no point in any arrangements. Feeling both like I wanted to help out and like I wanted a little time to be with my grandmother, I offered to take her.

Like I said, it was an amazing experience. I got to see both how much my grandmother meant to the people in her church, but also what grace that woman had. That's the best word for it, grace. She accepted everyone's wishes, introduced me around, and exuded this strength that was incredible. It was incredible because I knew how much she was hurting, even right underneath that tough exterior. It was also incredible because she was such a tiny, old woman and these other people were gaining strength from her. I was gaining strength from her.

Anyway, about a year and a half after Grandma passed I had this dream about her. As I wrote this post I came up with where I had initially wrote about it, about the dream, so I will post it here without any sort of enhancement. I have to say, though, that what I didn't mention at the time I wrote this was how real the dream was. This was one of those dreams that afterwards I had to ask myself whether it was real or not. Of course it wasn't. To this day, though, it feels as if the day in the dream were every bit as real as Grandma hanging on my arm as we left her church that morning.'

I will always have this feeling that she stepped over from death to remind me of what was really important. You really have to understand, though, how unusual the dream was... I don't think I can convey it. If it had been about my paternal grandmother it would have been something, because we were closer. Frankly, I liked her more. There's just no reason that my maternal grandmother would show up in a dream this way to me.

-- I had a dream last night that I spent the morning with my Grandma Pieschke, and then we went to lunch. Later in the day I went to the bank near our house and was surprised to find my grandmother working there. I talked to the other workers there, and they all said what a joy it was to work with her. Before I left the bank I remembered it was Grandma's birthday, but I stopped. She couldn't be here for me to wish her Happy Birthday because she had died last year.

Well, it must have been about quitting time because then Grandma and I were walking home together. I told here that I meant to tell her Happy Birthday, but I couldn't because, and here I paused and best I could said, "Because you're dead."

"I know," she answered.

"So I am just imagining this then?" She didn't answer that, just kept walking. "But what about the other tellers? I was talking to them about you, and they were talking about your baking. We were eating your peanut brittle." Still nothing. "Was I just imagining them or their reactions to me?"

"Does it really matter?" she finally said. "We got to spend the day together and have a marvelous lunch."

Ghost Story - The Books

I had to look back to see if I've blogged this before. I don't think I have. If I have, I guess it will be interesting to see how this version compares to how I remembered it before. This is a real ghost story, though. Real in the sense that it's true, at least it is true as I remember it. There is no fabrication here, but the story is only as factual as I can remember. And since I'm the one telling it, and there is really no way to check the facts of the story at this point, it is as true a story as it can possibly be. Just like any story is, really, ghost story or not.

So after my first divorce, I was still living in my house in Westminster, CO. I don't know if living there is really right. It was more like I was just occupying the house at 8882 Lowell Way while I was getting drunk and playing video games between going to work and going to the bar. I didn't have cable. Couldn't afford it. Well, I couldn't afford it and afford to go to the bar and get drunk, so I gave up cable. This conveniently also gave me a reason to go to the bar, to catch sports events on their t.v. Like I said I also played a lot of video games, XBox to be more explicit. I also watched a lot of movies from Netflix.

My drink of choice at the bar was Bud draft. My drink at home was bourbon, Jim Beam if I could afford it and Early Times if I couldn't. So there were a number of mornings that I would wake up in the morning on my living room floor and be in the 7th inning of a 3 game series in Major League Baseball and not remember how the first two games went or be at the home screen of a dvd movie that I had started and passed out halfway through.

In my living room was a little bookshelf, sort of near where I sat and played games. The amusing thing to me now is that little bookshelf was like a fold-up $15 thing that may have come from IKEA but on it were all my "nicest" hardcover books, some very old Dickens, some first editions from authors like Nabakov and Chuck Palahniuk. So, being as I wasn't exactly in my best mental state, I barely took notice when the books on its shelves would end up "put back wrong". If you have books, I mean, if you really "have books" that you love, then you know what I mean about being put back wrong. Why are these ones in a series out of order? Or why is this Dickens down here with Leon Uris? That sort of thing. But I began to notice. Then they were back upside down or backwards. Regardless of how drunk I was, why was I putting books back backwards? Plus I began to not drink as much, trying to pull myself up by bootstraps and actually making it upstairs to my bed at night.

There was a weird thing about this house. It was new-ish. It had been built only a couple years before Jessica and I bought it, but had actually never been lived in. It was one of the first built in our neighborhood immediately after the model home that the backyard backed up to. On eof those cookie-cutter KB homes that is a great starter home, but you begin to notice that the doorways aren't quite plumb after you live in it a while. That wasn't the weird thing though. That's pretty much normal now. The weird thing is that I felt this old woman there, like a ghost. I never saw her; I felt her. But also sometimes those things happened like the stereo or t.v. volume turning up on their own, lights that flickered, things that had some rational explanation, but just the feeling that they were caused by some old woman seeking attention.

The weirdest thing was this clock I had out the back door. It was something I had picked up for free or cheap, maybe I had brought it home from Sharper Image where I was working. It was this outdoor clock with a thermometer and some pictures of different birds on it. It was always an hour off. At first I thought it was just slow or that I had forgotten to reset it after daylight savings or something. But no matter what I reset it to or when, I don't remember it ever being something different than an hour slow of the real time. I swore the old lady was resetting it.

So one night, I was there playing video games and suddenly very annoyed by some books that were out of place, several of them upside down on the shelf. I sat and reordered the books, making sure they were all in some rational order and right-side up. I had never made a case study of the outdoor bird clock but I set about doing so with the bookcase that night. I had a couple drinks but still remember going up to bed, eager to come down and see what happened to the books the next day.

When I did come downstairs the next morning and looked - Every other book was upside down. They weren't in some different order nor put back with spines in. Simply every other book on the shelves was now upside down. Even now I have to laugh at how clever it was - It didn't just take off all the books into a pile. It didn't just move a few books and put a couple back upside down as if to keep me guessing. That old woman said to me, "Oh, you want to know if I'm real or not? How's this?" and left behind a sign that was completely unmistakable.

A Ghost Story

I only did a short run last night. The day had been hot, and I had already run almost every day this week. Also, I was on call for work. Technically I'm not supposed to be more than 15 minutes from being able to get online in response to some technical issue with Nordstrom's credit card application system. Normally, this isn't a big deal. In the absence of some new software being pushed out, we don't get many issues, and the ones that do occur are usually resolved quickly by rebooting a server. However, we are in the midst of our biggest days of the year in terms of credit applications, as these are the days leading up to our yearly "Anniversary Sale", and we had already had issues over the past couple days because of the significant increase in traffic. So a short run made sense all around.

It was twilight when I started my audio book going in my headphones, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Murakami, stepped off the porch and started the timer on my phone. To be very technical about it, it was more like civil twilight when I went out. The sun had gone down below the mountains way off to the west, and even then would probably be below the horizon had the mountains not been there. There was no sun, but still some residual light and the air was still pretty warm. I went a mile and then a little more before turning around at the park by the local elementary school. This stretched out my short run a bit beyond the two miles I had done recently. I was running in my Vibram Five Finger shoes, minimal "barefoot" shoes. You can't just suddenly do long distances in them - your calves will be screaming the next day. You need to gradually build up the distance in them. I have only recently really started rebuilding the foundation of my running as a whole lately.

Just after the voice in my headphones told me I had gone a mile and a half I swore I heard a dog. I'm always a little wary about dogs when running in our neighborhood. People work out in their garages, even at night, and for some reason their dog will just sit and watch when a stranger comes running by in the dark. I've had to deal with dogs coming out and aggressively defending their territory on runs. It's never been a problem for me, though. I just stop and wheel around on them and shout, "Go home!" Every dog I've dealt with like this has been incredibly surprised. Every dog but one, a cute, skinny pit bull pup that just wanted to run along with me. Your results wheeling around on aggressive dogs may vary, but it works for me. 

Anyway, dogs aren't unusual, but I must have just been hearing things because there was no dog there. Dogs that aren't there aren't unusual for me either. It sounds weird, but on a number of times I've felt that I was being followed by a dog, just somewhere behind me. Just an eerie feeling. One time I had the feeling though, and there was a coyote loping along with me, maybe 30 yards off into the undeveloped field. No dogs and no coyotes were with me tonight, not even the eerie feeling I was being followed, just the thought I heard something, a thought that came and left.

Like I said, the air was still warm when I left. It was now "nautical" or maybe even "astronomical" twilight when I turned the corner back onto our street. Nightfall. Still enough light to see the bats circling above feasting on mosquitoes, but you could also see the first stars, Venus anyway. It was still a warm night but upon stopping I realized I was drenched in sweat, the night air feeling good on my back and forehead but still warm enough that I didn't have a chill.

I gave myself a few moments to sit on our porch swing and cool off. Then I went into the house, poured myself a glass of ice water, and took another few minutes to let myself cool off before heading to the shower.

As I stepped out of the shower I heard a drawer open in the kitchen, or shut I guess, because I only heard the sound once. No one was home though, were they? I listened closely now and heard a light switch click off and someone walk, I presumed, from the kitchen to the family room. Just as the footsteps stopped, our dog Bear launched a series of barks. Actually, it sounded like they walked the other way, from the family room to the kitchen. That didn't jibe though with the sequence of the light switch and then the walking.There is a regular light switch in the kitchen, but in the family room is a lamp with a switch on the neck as well as a dimmer switch on the wall for the overhead light. Neither sounds like what I distinctly heard as a light switch being flipped. I must have just heard the footsteps wrong.  Jen must have come home early while I was in the shower, had made herself something to eat and had now settled into the couch.  I waited for the television to come on, but it didn't. She's sitting on the couch with her nose in her iPad checking Facebook until I come out. I was going to go to bed, but maybe she'll convince me to stay up and watch the Game of Thrones season premiere. 

I almost called out "Hi!" but just figured I'd walk out and say, "I'm glad you are home." And then when she said, "You are?", I'd say, "Yeah because it would have been very strange if I heard someone walking around and came out of the bathroom and it wasn't you."

I toweled off pretty well, slid on the athletic shorts I've been using to sleep in and walked out of the bathroom. The lights in the house were still off. Jen usually turns on a bunch of lights when she gets home. I had heard her flip the kitchen light back off, so maybe she's happy just to sit in the almost dark. There was no glow from an iPad when I poked my head around the corner to look in the family room. I was a bit perplexed as I walked to the front room to check out the front window for her car in the driveway. Wasn't there. Had she come in and left again, maybe to run to the store? Maybe she was getting popcorn for the GoT premiere. No, I would have heard the door for sure.

At this point, I have to admit I half-hoped she was playing some relatively elaborate prank on me and was going to jump out of a dark corner to scare me. I played back the last few minutes in my mind. I had heard the drawer. Our drawers are old. There is this distinct sound they make. Even if I had misheard that, I had definitely stopped to listen and heard the light switch and the footsteps. I had heard those right? Maybe it was the dog? No, I had heard the light switch, and then the clearly human footsteps, because it was only after those that I heard the dog bark and then clearly a different sound of the dog pattering across the floor.

I texted her, just in case there was some small chance this was still some ruse. "Remind me to tell you about my ghost story," I texted. "Oooh yes! Can't wait!" Jen responded. She was still at work. She wouldn't be home for several hours yet.