Ghosts In My House~

So once upon a time an ex-boyfriend and I used to watch this cheesy ghost adventures show on tv and it was kind of a running joke that watching it at night was a good way to get me to spend the night because I hated watching something creepy and then going home to my dark house all alone. I'm not going to say that I am afraid of the dark, it is more that I am jittery about what might lurk IN the dark.

When Brad and I split, I lived on my own for the very first time and I was a slight basketcase. I can admit this and laugh now, but back then I hated being in the house at night alone. I would go through the house after dinner and close every window and put wooden dining room chairs under the doorknobs to the basement door and my bedroom door. I would sleep with the cordless phone on the pillow next to me and it took several weeks before I was able to fall asleep without lying there worrying over every creak of the house.

It has been years since I put a chair under a doorknob and I rarely bother to lift my head off the pillow for any noise anymore - I just assume it is one of my animals and nod back off - but tonight I swear that I kept seeing moving shadows. Not that I ever caught sight of anything specific, but I always felt like something was shifting in my peripheral vision. I had all the lights off while catching up on my DVR and probably about three times I was convinced that I saw movement in the shadows. I still wasn't worried enough to actually close a window or investigate, but I laughed at myself and briefly considered emailing my ex to tell him I was being stalked by a ghost. Briefly.

So at the end of the night I gathered up my bedtime toys (my laptop, cell phone, book of choice, bottled water...what were you thinking?) and headed to my room on the other end of the house. I fed the cat, settled the dogs on the bed where they insist on sleeping no matter how much floor room I give them, and went to use the bathroom before I went to bed myself. My bathroom really isn't very big - it is like a baby rectangle with a window at one end. Right in front of the window is the toilet and a shelving unit for all my girly stuff. So I am sitting on the top of the toilet seat, digging through a basket for some hand lotion....in my dead quiet, ghost infested house....and all of a sudden the curtain behind my head moves and something lands on my arm. I screamed, jumped up, got lotion everywhere, and had a mini little panic attack.....all as my cat jumped down from the back of the toilet and looked at me like I had lost my mind as he nonchalantly made his way to his food dish.

I am now safely ensconced in my bedroom on the one-fifth of the mattress that my dogs left me, bedroom door shut, cell phone charging within arm reach....and I am calling it a victory that I didn't bring a dining room chair in with me for the door knob.