When I was seven, my father died on Halloween night. I have this vividly clear memory of waking up, looking at the clock by my bedside and noting the time (2:11). I then looked down at the foot of my bed and saw what was clearly an apparition of my father standing there. He was translucent, gleamed faintly, and just wasn't at all solid the way that physical things are.
He didn't scare me at all.
Once he realized that I'd seen him, he said, "I have to go now. But I want you to remember that I love you, and I didn't want to leave." And then he was gone. I went back to sleep, and the next morning, my mother came to me to tell me that my father was dead. I remember looking up at her when she said that, and saying back, "I know," because I did.
***********
Was it really the spirit of my father standing at the foot of my bed? I don't know. It could have been something that I just conjured up in my seven-year-old head to make me feel better. The memory feels right; it has all the fuzziness and clarity of all my other memories. I know that my response to my mother was "I know" because she remembers that as well. And even if it was something that my head conjured up out of thin air -- well, isn't that sort of the definition of a ghost?
I don't think that hauntings and ghosts are as common as a lot of True Believers think they are, but I do believe that there are things we can't explain. I don't think that science has come anywhere close to explaining the world, and somewhere in that unexplained area, I leave open the possibility of things stranger than ghosts.
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I'm not sure if this is a proper ghost story or not.
Date: 2007-10-29 10:32 pm (UTC)He didn't scare me at all.
Once he realized that I'd seen him, he said, "I have to go now. But I want you to remember that I love you, and I didn't want to leave." And then he was gone. I went back to sleep, and the next morning, my mother came to me to tell me that my father was dead. I remember looking up at her when she said that, and saying back, "I know," because I did.
***********
Was it really the spirit of my father standing at the foot of my bed? I don't know. It could have been something that I just conjured up in my seven-year-old head to make me feel better. The memory feels right; it has all the fuzziness and clarity of all my other memories. I know that my response to my mother was "I know" because she remembers that as well. And even if it was something that my head conjured up out of thin air -- well, isn't that sort of the definition of a ghost?
I don't think that hauntings and ghosts are as common as a lot of True Believers think they are, but I do believe that there are things we can't explain. I don't think that science has come anywhere close to explaining the world, and somewhere in that unexplained area, I leave open the possibility of things stranger than ghosts.