Normally I would not put in an extra post, but seeing as it’s October and that I had the weirdest experience early this morning…well, I just had to share.

Most of you who know me, know I believe in ghosts.  And not just because I am Wiccan, but because I have seen or experienced them, all my life.  Since childhood, I have seen some extremely odd things in the various houses I grew up in, and to my parents’ credit I was never pooh-poohed when I reported these things to them.

Why no one else saw these things, I have no idea.  And only one of my children has experienced activity, and I know this because we were together at the time (along with my downstairs neighbor).  That incident happened where I am living now, about 2 years ago.

I’m going to tell it just so you know that other people can vouch for this particular instance, so maybe you will believe what happened to me this morning.

I was watching TV with one of my (adult) kids, about 3 am, when we both heard footsteps on the stairs.  My house is laid out in such a way that, in order to get to my apartment upstairs, you have to get in the front door downstairs, which is always locked.

The only other person in the house was my downstairs neighbor, who was in her apartment, also watching something on TV.

Anyway, I looked over at my kid and said, “Do you hear that?”  And he acknowledged that he, indeed, heard footsteps on the stairs.  His reaction was someone had broken in or used a key somehow, and was coming to our apartment.

I waited until I heard the footsteps stop, near my apartment door, and flung the door open….

…yep, no one there.  I went downstairs.  No one.  I checked the front door.  Still locked.

The next day, my neighbor wanted to know why my kid had been “stomping up the stairs” in the middle of the night.  To her credit, she didn’t even bat an eye when I told her what I had experienced.  She’s pretty unflappable, which is one reason I like her.

I have also had a door close and latch on me, in my bedroom; heard footsteps in the attic (cats also heard them, as they were looking upwards as if they did); heard crashing in the kitchen when no one was in there, and found nothing amiss; have had a locked door fly open; and other miscellaneous stunts.

It seems to have a thing for doors, and for being generally annoying.

That brings us to this morning, around 5 am.  I was up because my cats were badgering me for treats, which I am out of until Thursday.  Besides meowing, pawing at boxes (makes noise, I guess), and jumping on the bed to stare in my face, one of them decided to get on top of my dresser and push things off.

I ignored it the first time.  The second time it happened, I banished both cats to the livingroom, and closed the bedroom door.

I was just getting to sleep when…CRASH!

I jumped out of bed, turned on the light, and there were the contents of the top of my dresser, all over the floor!  Some were way under the bed, and some were pretty far from the dresser – indicating some amount of force required.

Sleepily I thought, “Well, clearly I didn’t get both cats out of the bedroom.”  So I went over to my door, which was closed and latched, and opened it.  There, on the other side of the door, just sitting…

…were my two cats.  Clearly, whatever sent my things flying wasn’t a feline.

Honestly, I don’t know what to think when these things happen.  I mean, what’s the point, other than annoying the heck out of me?  So I said out loud, “If you are so intent on moving things, why don’t you make yourself useful and clean the kitchen?”

That would be so cool, having a ghost for a housekeeper.  Too bad it doesn’t work that way, as my kitchen still needed tidying up when I woke up later in the morning.  Lazy ghost!

So, take it as you see it, but if I was going to write a fictitious ghost story, I would have made it a lot scarier, and a lot longer.  These incidents happen few and far between, and, as most ghost hunters will tell you, they do not happen on command.  And they do not happen often enough to drive me out of my apartment.

They are startling, yes, but not scary.

Life is strange, oh yes it is.