Household Word: House of Spirits

Before we had kids, when my husband and I were first married, the two of us lived in a cozy, one-bedroom apartment. Weird things never happened there. We never found Silly Putty® stuffed into the bathtub drain or bungee cords hanging from the dining room chandelier. Entire boxes of popsicles never disappeared from the freezer.

There were no unexplained phenomena. Stuff stayed where we put it and the place remained relatively clean. We never found graham crackers inserted into the VCR, action figures in our bed, or the cordless phone dangling from a tree in the back yard. It wasn’t until we had three kids and moved to this house in the suburbs that such paranormal activity became commonplace.

The only explanation is ghosts. There’s no other answer. Because I’ve asked my children, “Who poured bubble bath into the toilet tank?” Nobody knows. There are no witnesses.

“What’s that green stuff melted inside the microwave?” I probe. It’s a mystery. No one saw anything. No one can identify a culprit. “Not me, not me, not me,” they all chime.

Mischievous Phantoms
The house must be haunted. But these are not phantoms bent on evil, just mischievous spirits determined to make my life slightly more annoying.

The ghosts in our house empty the pencil sharpener and leave the shavings on the floor. They draw superheroes on the backs of bills and will use a roll of 37-cent postage stamps if they can’t find the tape. They take the batteries out of the kitchen clock and put them into the GameBoy™.