I don’t believe in ghosts.
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I believe in an afterlife, but don’t think you hang around here waiting for whatever issues you need to workout. Yet, I really, really love ghost stories, and all kinds of those gothic haunted tales. Creepy “haunted” places are so much fun to visit, and explore. I love hearing the stories employees tell about encountering the resident spooks at historic places.
I know I’m not the only one, as “real ghost” encounter and paranormal shows are still popular on channels like History, Shudder or Syfy. There’s even a new Discovery+ streaming series that begin this month, presented by Eli Roth of course, A Ghost Ruined My Life. This show goes beyond the casual ghostly encounter, and lets survivors of some pretty mean-spirited spirits tell their stories. Sounds like a fun watch, but even as I enjoy a health dose of faith, I haven’t personally seen a ghost.
Now, that being said, let me tell you briefly about the time a ghost inconvenienced my life.
Growing up in a Ghost-Inclusive Home
I grew up in a family with a pretty healthy and dark sense of humor. We lived in a pretty old house with a creaky demeanor and creepy basement that no dog we ever owned would dare to go down. We figured they must know something we didn’t know. We ascertained it had to be our family ghost. My brother named him “Adrien.” Adrien got the blame for everything that went wrong. He also gave us a few opportunities to jump scare each other.
One time my brother had a sleepover before a camping trip. Three or four teenage boys were camped out on the front room floor. They were all trying to out-scare each other with ghost stories. When it was lights out and they all started yelling goodnight to each other one yelled, “Good night, Adrien,” and all the doors in the front area of the house slammed.
It was a draft, I’m sure, but that didn’t stop a bunch of tough athletes from screaming like little girls.
My dad was the worst offender at trying scare everyone. On my 16th birthday, they took me to this beautiful restaurant in an old historic home in Mesilla, the Double Eagle. It was known for being haunted by a young rich man an his maid lover, who were both killed by a disapproving mom. I guess the house was too pretty to leave, because they are all still there haunting it. You can even eat in the “ghost room” where two chairs no one sits in keep needing to be reupholstered. He reserved the ghost room and spent most of the night tossing napkins or ice cubes past my head to try and scare me. When I went up to use the ladies’ room, I came back to find both the chairs turned towards the wall, and my dad acting like the ghosts did it. He continued to claim the ghosts did it, and I claimed he was going to get us kicked out for messing with the antique furniture.
That is how I grew up, so ghost stories and spooky silliness were a part of life.
There were only two times I could even come close to admitting a strong “maybe” in the debate of the existence of ghosts.
The first one was a small incident. My husband and I were doing a freelance job for a local arts paper, and I interviewed a well-known painter living in the nearby town of San Elizario. My husband came along to take photos of him and his showpiece of a home. When we got to one room in the front, the artist said this was the haunted room. He gave us the usual “some people feel a presence” story and other examples, but we didn’t think anything of it until my husband went in to take photos. His camera just “shut down.” Nothing would work from the flash to the shutter. He figured it was batteries, and stepped out of the room to try it out. It worked perfectly. He entered the room to try again, and it did the same thing. We gave up on the room, and the camera worked fine the rest of the interview.
It must have been the weird lighting in the old home. At least that’s the story we use.
The latest, however, left my whole family wondering.
The Thomas Incident
A few Octobers ago, we went on a big family night out to a cool speakeasy style Italian restaurant in town. The owner was a former Universal set guy, so it was decorated like a Little Italy theme park, complete with themed rooms. The atmosphere was great, the food was excellent, and, you guessed it…it is haunted.
It was even the subject of a 2015 episode of Syfy’s Paranormal Witness, which they didn’t even film at the restaurant. Sad, because it is an amazing looking place. Anyways, we asked the waitress about the ghosties.
When the restaurant owners purchased the home next door to expand their business, they uncovered some eerie items and documents in a “hidden room.”
That’s when all the weirdness really increased for them. A pan of lasagna was tossed at an employee’s head, one assistant got trapped in a bathroom with a ghostly figure, shadows roamed the halls, candles kept relighting, eerie arms reached from doors. There were a few occurrences when the original section of the restaurant was opened, including one where a construction worker witnessed a terrifying eyeless figure. He refused to go back into the building.
The source? The items uncovered were part of an old Spiritualist Church that occupied the house where the restaurant was expanding. The items were put there to “close the portal” that séances the church was holding had opened. Long story short, a local psychic cleansed the entire place, and the items were re-buried by the owner.
“That means these things may be buried somewhere near us,” my husband said, causing all of us to look around as if we would somehow see the evidence of where this re-burial site could be.
There are just a few minor instances still occurring now.
Most of the ghosts, our waitress said, were just playing.
“Except for Thomas,” she added. He was the one with a violent mean streak.
Even when you know in your heart nothing is going to happen, when you hear about something “that happened in this very room,” you get that weird little involuntary chill up your spine. That cold, eerie presence that makes you a bit apprehensive to turn around, even if there is nothing there.
This is why we love ghost stories, and getting to be inside of one when All Hallows’ Eve approaches is especially exciting.
The fear of any ghostly presence was soon forgotten, as we were enjoying our cozy Italian meal, surrounded by families conversing and laughing and the smells of homemade bread and garlic. Our family drive was filled with fun and eerie conversations, and my youngest daughter said she hoped the ghosts, especially Thomas, weren’t following us.
She said they might be angry with us for not taking them seriously. I told her I’m no paranormal expert, but I think “ghosts like to stay around the places they haunt.”
They have no desire to follow us anywhere. I mean why would they?
Right then, our car “hit something.” It felt like driving over a large piece of cardboard or sheet metal, but none of us saw it coming and we couldn’t find what it was anywhere in the road afterward. The vehicle behaved sluggishly on the way home, and since we obviously “didn’t hit anything,” it must be a costly gear or transmission problem.
We took it to the repair shop expecting the worst. A couple of days later the mechanic said it was just some wires and other parts of the vehicle’s underside ripped free from “whatever big thing it was we hit.” He was able to put everything back together with a very minor cost. Logically, there were plenty of construction materials we could have gone over that weren’t noticeable, but for the life of us, not one of us could remember seeing anything in the road.
My husband said maybe it was the ghosts after all.
“Dang it, Thomas!” I said.
Stupid ghost was insulted enough to leave us without a second car for a bit. Nothing life ruining, but certainly inconvenient.
I still have no idea what our car possibly hit, but there had to be something we didn’t see, certainly not a cranky poltergeist.
No, I don’t believe in ghosts, but I sure as hell ain’t telling that to Thomas.