So, you think you're a ghost&;#063;
By rachaelkerryj@aol.com
- 314 reads
I've been haunted. Well and truly haunted. First it was in that flat
built on the site of a Medieval Monastery. In a supernatural way. But
hauntings can take on many manifestations as I have since
discovered.Anyway back to the flat. My upstairs neighbour verified my
suspicions after that night of disturbed sleep. Asthmatic breathing
(not mine) and sensation of pillow suffocating my own muted breath
stricken by terror. And the room was so cold. I hardly moved. Next
morning the condensated window showed a figure of a head. Similar to,
yet more sophisticated than a childish scrawl of an outline of what I
could only descibe as a malevolent bald bodyless monk, pointing at me
gleefully. Only in one pane. The other panes were unaffected. I rang my
friend. She told me I was mad. My imagination was running away with me,
she said. You've just come out of a bad relationship, she continued,
you're all alone. What about my little girl I answered? Well, that
makes you more vulnerable, she replied. I didn't want to believe in
nasty baldy monk, but that night I dreamt of my flat being on top of a
grave. A boggy grave with malevolent hands stretching out trying to
pull me and my daughter in. Of course, motherly instincts and a healthy
desire for self-preservation kicked in, and I averted our fate in my
slumbering state. Next morning I again told my friend, who just said I
ate too much cheese before going to bed. Which I didn't, being allergic
to the the stuff. How could I even broach the subject to the other
mothers at playgroup, considering my initial sounding board of
scepticism? Besides they were all too jolly sensible anyway. Village
commitees and PTA meetings were all the order of the day for that
happily married cosy cottage dwelling, four wheel driving lot, not the
ramblings of a single-parent who was obviously troubled by a whole lot
more than the visitations of an evil dead cleric. Tentatively I endured
the household alone while daughter played away and ventured out to hang
out the washing, which I never did because I had a dryer. But so
convinced was I, that mad Rasputin would somehow endeavour to chew up
and spew forth the only garments that we possessed I chose another plan
of action. which I called bad , but necessary plan. My upstairs
neighbour would always entrap me in conversation, once in the garden,
which due to my reclusive nature would often be unwelcome. Nice woman,
I suppose, if a bit Liverpudlian, even though she hasn't set foot in
the city since 1983.
"Hiya love" she duly cooed from above. "Hey you'll never guess what,
but last night night me telly turned off by itself mysteriously."
"Getaway " I said.
"Yeah, straight up. Andy an' Scott had gone to bed like." referring to
Hubby and Son "Then all of a sudden this bald bloke turns round and
looks at me on the blank screen. It really shit me up like."
I pegged my finger on the washing-line by mistake.
"It wasn't your imagination?" I queried.
"No, it's not the first time." she answered. "I'm putting this place up
for sale I tell ya." She banged her window shut. I felt guilty, because
I shouldn't have let previous neighbour hostility prevent me from
sharing our common haunting. I had dismissed her as a over-imaginative
woman with too much time on her hands just as I knew I would be by the
ladies at playgroup. I knocked on her door and told her about my
visitations the last couple of days. She looked at me disbelievingly.
"He was in your room, right? Oh he wouldn't dare do that with me not
with my Andy."
"Oh."
"No my bald bloke appears on the telly and he turns the radio off all
the time."
Thank God for that, thought I , as I had long suffered the Golden
oldies from the Eighties permeating through my ceiling. Perhaps old
baldie wasn't so bad after all.
"In fact" she trilled, "he doesn't bother me that much. May be if you
got yourself a fella he wouldn't really bother you."
Of course she was referring to Andy, which was her second husband and
twelve years her junior. The man who helped fix my car and flirted with
me while you were at Safeway's I felt like saying. But didn't. I supped
my coffee extra noisily instead.
"Do you think so?" I replied.
"Yeah, definitely" she answered. "that ghost is picking on you. You
need someone to look after you."
I left her flat half annoyed and set with a determination to find a new
man. The whole situation/predicament that I. who was educated in a
particurlarly feminist and objectively scientific era of the twentieth
century defied belief in that I had succumbed to this fixation with the
supernatural and old housewives tales that I was nothing short of a
witch if I was without a man by my side. Another voice in my head
shouted, well at least you're not haunted by the very vestiges of
popular culture, telly and radio- at least your ghost tried to manifest
himself with arty scribblings. I just didn't know what I was fighting.
A ghost. archaic seventeenth century matrimonial customs or the
sensible women at the playgroup, who seemed to observe my sanity with
pitiful looks. Or myself. And I owed my landlord rent. What a wretched
life. It was then and there I decided to move to the city. But first I
decided to find a man. May be she was right, that was the answer. After
all, all the women at playgroup had husbands. But did I want a man. I
felt so independent. But accidentally I found a man. Near my village.
When I visited my sister. After I moved to the city. Hundreds of miles
away. Story of my life. And that is another story. A very sad story.
And I've been haunted ever since. But a story in which I found
myself.
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