That’s not to say I don’t believe in the afterlife. I know when my aunt passed away in 2000, after being in a coma for several weeks, I was told she had a smile on her face, thus proving to me where her spirit went. That is provided you believe that upon death and having lived a good Christian life, your eternal award awaits you in Heaven.
On the flip side, I don’t believe the story my grandfather told me a few years ago. He said he awoke early one morning to see his bedroom completely illuminated with a very bright white light lasting several minutes.
No lamps were on, he said. He told me he thought it was my late grandmother trying to tell him something. Still say it was probably a porch light from next door that shined through the bathroom window from across the hall to the bedroom.
I have, however, experienced a few strange things at work while alone. But in the three years there, the occurrences haven’t bothered me to the point I think the place is haunted. A couple of coworkers have told me that when they’re alone working in the building, they’ve felt like they heard voices.
I can explain every occurrence that’s happened. The ticking noise I hear coming from one side of the office sometimes is probably a computer or alarm system resetting itself. The reason I heard a loud bang, which was my manager’s metallic name tag hitting the floor one night, was because the plastic clip holding it broke on its own.
I could not find what fell on one coworker’s desk one Saturday afternoon, since my cubicle s in the opposite end of the office. I assumed whatever it was rolled under the desk somewhere. I wasn’t about to go looking for it. I am not maintenance.
I am certain the sounds I hear on the roof at night are either squirrels or raccoons or just the building settling. The wasps I have seen buzzing around sometimes are not something out of the “The Amityville Horror” (1979) where masses of flies milled around a bedroom window. The wasps either go in through the vents or got nests inside. God help them should they see me.
Granted, when I am in the men’s restroom, I have sometimes heard the women’s restroom door open like someone was in the building. I continue to assume security was there at the time and used the restroom before leaving, though I never bothered to see if their police car was parked outside.
Even if I had learned there was no one in the building at the time and that door opened on its own, I still wouldn’t believe the place is haunted. I can understand, though, how some could make that assumption. My dad did on Nov. 1, 2009. The incident happened one month after my grandfather passed away.
My dad awoke to find the living room is disarray like maybe the house had been robbed. The lounge chair my grandfather sat in when he came over was in an upright position as though someone was there facing the television. The television set was to a Christian cable station my grandfather watched in the early morning hours. Several pictures were lying face down while in the kitchen one of the chairs my grandfather sat in was on the table similar to that kitchen scene in “Poltergeist” (1982). The cabinet doors were also opened.
My dad was convinced at that moment my grandfather had come back as a spirit and was trying to tell him something. He even spoke to the parish priest at the church he attends about the “supposed” supernatural occurrences he saw that weekend. The priest gave him sage leaves spiritualists use to cleanse “haunted” homes of ghosts and/or negative energy.
I could not keep a straight face when my parents questioned me about whether I had something to do with it. After all, it’s always the quiet ones people most suspect.
To quote Conal Cochran, the Irish toymaker in “Halloween III: Season of the Witch” (1982), “I do love a good joke, and this is the best ever.”
I admitted to everything my dad wrote on a notepad of the different “occurrences” he noticed during those two days with the exception of two things he listed. He wrote the cabinet doors in the bathroom were left open and the soap was moved.
I didn’t do that. Perhaps it was my grandfather who as a spirit saw what I was doing and decided to join in the fun. Not that I believe that sort of thing.
To this day, whenever I see my sister’s in-laws on the holidays for dinner, they dare me to put the dining room chairs on the table before my parents get there and blame it on a “ghost.”
©10/27/09
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