Who You Gonna Call?

Two nights ago, my laptop turned itself on, full volume, at 3 a.m. Strange, no? Considering i keep it set on mute, and the only other computer user in our household was in bed beside me sound asleep.

I looked at the digital clock on my nightstand, hoping to discover there'd been a power outage, but there had not. Which left only one rational explanation: a malign spirit was using my computer to send messages from the other side of the veil.

"Did you hear that?" I called into my husband's sleeping face.

"Yes."

"What was that?"

"The computer starting up."

"Yes. Thank you," I whispered. "What I meant to say is OH GOD PLEASE WHY? WHY IS THERE A GHOST IN OUR LIVING ROOM TOUCHING MY LAPTOP WITH HIS EVIL GHOST FINGERS?"

My husband didn't answer, because my husband doesn't believe in ghosts. It's one of the things I love best about him. So brave! A fountain pen could float up to his face in the middle of the night and scratch the sign of the devil directly into his forehead, and he'd be all, "That was the wind."

On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are people who get downright giddy about ghosts. My grandmother loves them. Loves the look on my face when she tells me about them. "And when I looked out the window," she'll say, "the pale old woman gathered up her skirts with her long fingers and curtseyed to the Civil War soldier standing on my front lawn," and I'm all LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THE SOUND OF MYSELF WANTING TO CALL THE POLICE.

I have a friend who periodically finds her young son--a famously fitful sleeper--tucked in tight like a mummy, stock still and sound asleep in a bed that has clearly been made up around him. "I think it's the woman who died in this house," my friend says, shrugging. "For some reason, she keeps tucking him in." AND TOUCHING YOUR SEETS! AND LOOKING AT YOUR SLEEPING SON WITH HER MILKY EYES!

How do these people sleep at night?

Another couple I know was forced to share their house with its original owner--a man who'd died 50 years prior. When it got cold, the ghost man would leave wood by the fire. The fire that he built himself. In their fireplace! In their living room i their house in their neighborhood in which they continued to reside for the obvious reason that THEY ARE CRAZY. "What?" they said. "At least he's thoughtful."

Dead people are not supposed to be thoughtful! They aren't supposed to have thoughts at all! They're supposed to have ... I don't know what they're supposed to have, but I wish they would mind their own business.

As far as I'm concerned, there is nothing super about the supernatural. Dead people need to just take it easy. They need to hang out in their world and do dead people things. If they want to drop in and visit from time to time in the form of a rainbow or a friendly butterfly, so be it. But they have no business rearranging our canned goods or sending messages through the steam on our bathroom mirrors. It's mean.

Of course, I', probably getting myself worked up over nothing. I don't really believe a ghost turned on my computer the other night. It was probably the result of a power surge. Or a glitch with the computer's battery. Or maybe a mouse!

A fun-loving mouse called Nigel who likes shopping on eBay.

Yep.

That's the spirit.

Originally published in Her Nashville Magazine, November 2009

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