Ghostly Word Art

I recently joined a Facebook group that shares True Scary Ghost Stories and started thinking about my own real ghost experiences, and I posted this account on the group page.

Whenever I’m asked if I’ve seen a ghost, I always think ‘No, of course I haven’t seen a ghost‘ and the conversation dies or moves on to something else, or both. But later, sometimes hours, sometimes days, I’ll start remembering the weird things that happened that could well have been ghosts. Its a bit like when someone asks if you know any jokes and your mind goes blank.

This morning I remembered something that happened over twenty years ago in the student house I shared with six other students. It was a big old terrace, with three floors and a cellar, and a yellow door.

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At the time, I was having a bit of a personal problem with one of the house mates, a storm in a tea cup really, and I was in the kitchen discussing it with one of the others. Everyone else was out and my house mate was preparing a lunch to take to campus while we chatted. He finished making his packed lunch and left the house for the university, leaving me in the house by my self.

I was very cross that day and used the large colourful magnetic letters on the fridge to leave a hurtful message for my troublesome roomie. Pleased with my mean comment, I made myself a coffee, but when I turned back to the fridge, just moments later, I saw that my cutting words had been scrambled.

I can still feel the way that the hairs on my head, arms and legs stood on end as I saw that my message on the fridge had changed. The magnetic letters been pushed to the edges and formed a thick band around the two words in the center of the fridge door. Its simply said “No Mike“.

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The house was definitely empty. The kitchen was at the end of a long narrow hall, impossible to get to without being heard. The house itself was big and lofty, but every door and floorboard in the ancient building made its own identifying sound and betrayed the location of any one moving around the house. It was impossible to not know if someone else was home, you could even hear the neighbours on either side at times, coughing, laughing, or closing a door. The silence of the house during the daytime, when everyone else was out was deafening, and the sound of the fridge, grumbling and gurgling alone in the kitchen, seemed all the louder for it. No person could have changed those words, no one was there.

The problem with the roomie soon resolved itself, as these thing usually do, and I am grateful for what ever force intervened in my quarrel that day, as somethings are best left unsaid.