With All The Lights Still On (Ghost Story, repost)

This is an old story from 2009 that I am reposting for a dear, sweet friend! The story still stands, but ages and life are way different 🙂

 

With All The Lights Still On

There is a dead bird on my front porch and I firmly believe that FedEx has avoided leaving my much-awaited package because of it.

My front door is surrounded by glass windows, the one above the door being the widest. It is this window that birds, it seems, cannot refuse smashing into, often causing them to die and burdening me with a fresh carcass at my door. Birds are all fancy feathers and songs till they’re lying dead at the entrance to your home. Then they’re just a nuisance; just stupid flying rats.

The sound created by birds hitting my window has never made it onto my list of dismissable house noises. It is loud, firm, and I confuse it with the sound of my front door shutting. And – if you couldn’t see this coming from ten miles away- I usually physically freeze, stop breathing and chalk it up to, yes…

a ghost.

If you know me, you’d think me silly for stories’ sake. If you know me well, you know I am deathly afraid of ghosts. Though I’ve never seen one, heard one, talked to one, or received any infinitesimal confirmation that ghosts exist, I am completely convinced that I am on the continuous verge of being haunted. Sure, who hasn’t slept for a week after watching The Grudge or refused to return a scary movie because the cover art is visibly ‘uninviting’? Who hasn’t, in their adulthood, slept at the foot of their parents’ bed after being unforeseeably subjected to a commercial for Mothman Prophecies? And really, when wasn’t the last time you made your mom and best friend come over to your house while you moved because-you claimed- a ghost was using your keyless entry to repeatedly lock you out of your car? (Yes, this is a true story. Happened over the summer. And, yes, my shame runs ocean-deep.)

I may not fear short skirts, competition, public speaking or public drunkenness, saying how I REALLY feel, admitting mistakes, falling off the bar or karaoke. But ghosts? Just.. Plain. Frightening.

On our recent trip to North Carolina I forced my sister and son to hear countless episodes of my favorite radio program This American Life. One episode, titled Fake Science, featured a story on amateur ghost hunters as well as audio of what they claimed were ghostly voices. In the back of my mind the bell of probable indecency rang being that I had a six-year-old in the car, but, really, I thought, Are you ever too young to be terrified? I have this horrible habit of considering my son adult-like, like me, forgetting that I myself am not much tougher than any average, dopey little girl.

For the entire duration of the program I reconfirmed with my son that he was not scared. No, he said, and asked even that I replay the audio. Here is when it’s a good thing that world leaders don’t call on me in times of national crises, because if my answer isn’t, “Fuck it! Let’s drink!” my default resolution is going to be, “Paralyzing fear is no excuse!” In other words: Despite anyone else’s presence, I can’t resist anything that interests me.

So we listened and discussed and reached our own unworldly conclusions. Then, so I thought, we dropped it.

My son instantly changed in the dark. That night he cowered at shadows and harbored tears of terror in the corners of his eyes which skewed his perceptions and caused him not to leave my side. Finally I told him it was time to take a shower. In the storm of refusal that set in, my son screamed, cried, even clawed his way out of the shower and gripped me with the finality of rigor mortis. “Please don’t leave me,” he begged, screaming. “Pleeeeeease!!!” My initial anger was broken by his desperate action. As I held my son in all his vulnerability, my heart broke, and, still holding him, I stepped into the shower. I was fully clothed: jeans, tennis shoes, t shirt, hat even. I stood with him for(what seemed like)ever, reassuring him over and over and over that “There are NO such things as ghosts,” and in that very breath seeing my arms full of goosebumps and resisting the urge to look over my shoulder to perhaps see some phantasmal figure shaking its head at my hypocrisy.

How is it, I questioned myself, that I got here like this? What course of action ultimately led me to be standing fully clothed in a shower, washing a crying six year old, claiming that the very thing I am ultimately, completely, and unequivocally afraid of does not, in any way, exist?

Aiden and I stood across from each other on the bathroom floor, each pitiable in our own respect. “You’re all wet, Mommy,” he said with a look that showed he knew I had just endured something unpleasant and unnecessary and may be on the verge of snapping into complete hysterics. The truth is: I was angry. I was angry at me because I do so many things I know better than to do, I do them with little thought, and my doing them causes upset in other people and reverts much more heartache back onto me. I was angry at me because I had to stand there in all my cowardice and explain to my son that I am scared too, that I have to choose to be brave, explaining to him in a web of words that I’m something simply stuck inbetween a woman and a child.

My best conclusion- my punishment of sorts- was dripping wet clothes and a bit tongue. Perhaps it is my own unwillingness to face my own fears, perhaps it is my complete disregard for other people on the fatuous premise that a little raunch never hurt anyone. But I do know this above that: You can’t cause a problem and blame anyone else for yourself being showered in its consequence.

I went into my room alone and laid in bed barely-breathing still with all the lights on, checking the hallway for any ghosts that may happen to pass by.

I don’t want to step on anyone’s beliefs… but here we go:

I wonder if the B side is full of evil messages.

So, the other day I went to see a psychic.  I told all my friends I was going as a joke, but really I was super, for-real curious to know the future.  Having undergone some huge life changes this past year, I’m simply exhausted from shedding my old life and am ready to embark on a new adventure.  Having too many equal-weighted next-step options,  I can’t decide which path to choose. I thought about making one of those Pros and Cons lists, but that seems like too much evaluating. I thought about drawing options out of a hat, but I would be ashamed to tell people that’s how I chose my next career. 

So I decided to do pay a complete stranger $20 to tell me what is up.

So, I called up this lady whose name was given to me by an acquaintance, who told me she predicted his divorce.  Seeming like good enough credentials, I booked my appointment and drove to the psychic’s home.

When I go to see a psychic, I want her to fit the profile.  I want for her to be dressed in velvet robes and have crazy light-socket hair and jars full of frog parts. I want the doorbell to ring in a funeral march and gargoyles in the front yard and to see stacks of books bound in animal skin. I want her to drive a hearse or at least ride a weird bicycle that might possibly fly.

Maybe I’m just describing witches…

Were she a true psychic, she may have cleaned up a little better, predicting that I am a highly judgmental individual with complete disdain for people who leave their dishes out all over the counter (…like I do).  The house was a little musty, slightly stinky… just normally gross, not riddled with crystals or chicken claws or other evidences of mysticisms and voodoos.  Disappointing.  The psychic herself resembled more of a hobbit than the expected photo-worthy gypsy, and in my five-inch heels I towered over her.  To put the spectacle into perspective, if we were cast in the movie Twins, I would be like Arnold Schwartzeneger and she would have been Danny Devito.  Strange sort of mismatch.

So, the psychic lead me into this little side room sparsely furnished with a table, chairs, a jar of mints, a cassette player, and –BINGO!- a crystal ball.  I had to suffocate my inner desire to die from laughing, even though it was everything I had hoped for.  Please please please look into it, I pleaded silently as she reached for a set of tarot cards.

She asked me to shuffle the cards to put my “energy” into them, and while I did she prayed to God.  This was unexpected, as I would have thought she would have done some chanting or humming or arm-flailing… something befittingly weird. But, as it was, she said a prayer and asked for God not to show her Death.

That was a yikes moment.

As I continued my card shuffling, the psychic reached into a basket and pulled out a brand new cassette tape. I knew that the antiquated was about to happen: she was going to use the cassette player to record, on cassette, my session. My first thought was:  Great, now I can’t talk because I HATE the sound of my own voice, followed by: How the fuck am I going to replay this??!!  I don’t have a cassette player.  I live in This Modern Day, lady, with the rest of the cool, cool world.  She explained: “The cassette is 30 minutes long, and when it clicks off that’s how I know the session is over.”  Or use a clock, but everyone has their preferences.

So, as usual, I went with the flow and got on with it.

I handed her the deck of cards and she flipped them over, erupting  in delight. “Oh these are good, very good, lots of good things coming your way…”  My eyes widened and I all but began panting, sitting there like an eager puppy awaiting a treat. “You have three paths before you, I see,” she continued, “Do you have your passport?”

Why yes I do, and, surprisingly I had it with me as I recently got a DUI and am using it as identification. I pulled it out of my purse, like a complete gaywad, to prove it. Sometimes, even in the minutest ways, I’m just too eager to please.

“Good,” she says, “I see you travelling to, hmmm, errrr, whhmmm….. um Europe!! Yes, Europe, somewhere near London. You will go with two people and there you will find what you want to do for the rest of your life. But this will happen at 38.”

Ok. I wasn’t sure why I needed my passport ready for something that will happen in 10 years.

“Also, you will travel to South America and hmmm… ohhh….the third one I’m not seeing, but it will come, just wait….”

So she moves on to the unprovoked subject of Love. “You will meet a man around next June –no- by next May and your romance will be very quick…”  

Knowing my own history, I could have told her that. I hate mankind and generally don’t want it around for long. This past year I have experienced a series of especially unimaginably bad men after dabbling in the psychologically disordered crapshoot of Match.com.  I joined because I was lonely for a little while, and loneliness is quite a veil for logic.

“… and you will be planning your wedding within a month of knowing each other.”

Whoa, Nelly. Within a month?  I may be spontaneous and emotionally driven, but I’ve watched enough television to know that it takes longer than a month to find out if someone has a history of wife-murdering or made their money through dummy corporation insurance scams.  I mean, I’m reckless to an extent, but I’m not going to hitch my wagon to a man that might fake his own death to avoid prosecution.

“Brad- Bradley. That is a good name for you. His name will be either Bradley or Brad, or Bradley or Brad will introduce you to him… John…. Joe or Joey….oh, Don- Donnie… He will have a friend named Don or Donnie and Donnie will be the signal that you will recognize….”

Now she was just going through all the New Kids on The Block. I fully expected for her to follow with, “You will know because he will have the right stuff. Babay.”

But she didn’t. 

The rest of the session was filled with the type of ass-kissing and affectionate praise one would get from a proud mother. And, while it seems outlandish that in 8 months  I will marry a rich man who, she claimed, is “wonderful and unlike any other I’ve ever met”, travel the world, and find the job of my dreams, that affection, the positivity of this woman… that was comforting. Who doesn’t want to be told for 30 straight minutes that their life is getting ready to be awesome? Her unabashed excitement for me, as a complete stranger who just wanted a push in any direction, that made me leave with a smile.  And that, for my time, is worth $20.

I even have the cassette tape to prove it.