Do-Do-Do-Do...

Do you believe in ghosts?

With me, it's not so much believing as it is not being able to deny their existence.
I have seen and heard and even, once, touched them; what I can't figure out is, "Why me?"

I don't have any other claims to the supernatural: I'm not prescient or clairvoyant; I can't read palms, cards, or tea leaves; I don't have visions. But I do have ghosts.

The first one was my mother. I awoke one night to see her half-body hovering over my bed (I know this sounds crazy but it really happened)taking pictures of Tom who lay beside me. I was sceptical, figured it was a dream, but it felt so REAL. I pinched myself to be certain I was awake!? I was. Strangely, although I was sure it was my mother, the ghost looked nothing like her. Mom was classically American Indian with high cheekbones, flashing dark eyes, black hair and dark complexion; this woman was almost cherubic with blond hair and pink cheeks yet I felt certain who she was.

I only saw the top of her body; she was wearing a perfectly pink angora short-sleeved sweater.

I can hear you scoffing!

When she disappeared I woke Tom up excitedly and told him what I'd seen. He scoffed too and said it had to have been a dream. I came down from the high and had to agree. It couldn't have really happened the way I thought it did??

Morning came and the first thing I did was check the place I'd pinched myself. Sure enough, there was a bruise.

I went upstairs to wake my three daughters, they were 2-3-4 years old then, and as soon as I said, "Good morning," my middle daughter sat straight up in her bed. That surprised me immediately because usually Beckie was my little slug.

"Is she still here," she asked all a-flutter.

"Is who here, Beck?"

"The PINK LADY!! She said she would stay."

Our house in Detroit's East English Village was haunted with at least three ghosts who talked to us. My eldest daughter, Amy, was the first to broach the subject. She was living with us as an adult having returned to MI after teaching in FL for a number of years and asked if anyone besides her ever heard 'a voice' calling our names. She had; it happened more than once that she would hear her name called clear as a bell, would answer and get up to welcome whomever "it" was only to find no one there!?

At that point none of the rest of us had heard any such thing.

But after Amy left the voice started calling out to me, then to Tom, and finally to my youngest daughter Suzy. It was a friendly young adult man we heard.

Then a young woman started calling out to Tom. I did finally hear her too but for awhile she only spoke to him.

The first time my granddaughter Olivia slept over I heard a child call out to both of us.

The voices were pleasant but always held a question in their timbre.

Then a REALLY weird thing happened. Tom and I were in Florida visiting friends over Easter break when Suzy called with this story:
She was home sick from work. Had a horrible flu bug with a high temperature, chills, vomiting, the dire rear.... As she lay in bed a presence hovered over her rendering it impossible to move. It was an amorphous dark blob, like having a cloud inches from her face. Even though she was literally paralyzed she felt no fear. She watched the presence pass over her whole body very slowly from head to toe then disappear. Once gone, she could move again and, sitting up, realized her flu was gone as well! She went from being sick as the proverbial dog to feeling entirely A-OK!?

I too saw that presence late one night in our bedroom. I got up to use the lav and as I came around the end of the bed I literally ran smack dab into it! I jumped back like I'd touched fire though the cloud-like blob was cold as ice!? "What the f--- was THAT?" I shouted aloud and when I did it evaporated into thin air.

There are other examples like the ghosts sabotaging the sale of our home the first time we offered it, Amy's wedding pictures clearly showing two ghosts sharing the altar with her and Bill at their wedding, ghosts in the pictures at Tom's mother's 80th AND 90th birthday parties, ghosts in my classroom pictures from Highland Park and East Catholic High School....

When we finally decided to move to Florida and tried a second time to sell our house we assured the ghosts they were welcome to come to Florida with us. This time there were no other-worldly impediments to the sale and here we are.

We've been in this house for three and a half years, ghost-less. BUT, and there's always that big but, last night someone called out to me and it wasn't Suzy or her fiance Thom.

They're baaacckkkkk.