I like to watch videos on the Internet. I spend an hour or two late at night doing that. The range of subjects I follow varies, almost randomly, over a kind of vast array of things. A lot of politics. Hockey. Discoveries of statues on Mars, supposed evidence of time travel, what Ancient Rome really looked like, and history. Lots of history. Videos of great musicians and of animal rescues. And Got Talent shows.
Recently, I’ve been bitten by the ghost-hunter craze, because scaring myself half to death in the middle of the night while I sit all alone seems like a reasonable thing to do. I saw one of the creepiest ones I’ve ever seen the other night where the spirit explorer was going through an old haunted house. He came up to a door to a room and someone was obviously, frantically, trying to open that door from inside the room, turning the knob and pulling on it. The brave ghost hunter ran to the door and flung it open. There was no one inside the room.
So, I went outside for a breath of fresh air and to collect my frazzled thoughts and darned if there weren’t ghosts running around all over our backyard. I dashed back to the safety of my couch.
It was exactly midnight.
Suddenly, there was a knock on our front door. It was a persistent knock but not a loud one. Almost as if whoever was knocking didn’t really want the occupants of the house to hear it.
But then the doorbell rang. Followed by several more knocks, a bit louder now and more insistent. Then more doorbell.
I don’t mind sharing that I was freaking right out by this time. In a panic, I woke up another family member and the two of us went to the door. To find a police officer there.
As it turned out, he was seeking a suspicious character and he saw someone in our backyard. Could he have a look back there.
I told him it was I who had been behind the house just then.
I forgot to tell him I had been busy back there fighting off a bunch of scary ghosts.
And how they all looked like suspicious characters to me.
©2023 Jim Hagarty
