Do you believe in ghosts?
I think I do. Or at least something like it. I believe that the more we open ourselves up to the spiritual or the paranormal, the more we experience it. Most adults prefer NOT to experience the paranormal and choose instead to explain it away as a gust of wind or faulty wiring. Kids, on the other hand, don’t need to open themselves up to it because they have yet to have reason to close themselves off.
Kids don’t explain things away to keep from being scared or to make things make sense. They, in their naivety, just accept things as they are presented, even if they are not of this world. What an adult might excuse as a blurry mind playing a trick, a kid will say, “Who’s that person behind you?”
When we moved into our house in January of 2019, it was newly constructed on what used to be an old pipe plant. I say that to say there is no reason for me to believe the house itself is haunted…
One evening soon after moving in, we had a friend pop by to see the new house and share a drink. C was 2 at the time – full of questions and very sociable. He loved to be involved in everything. He said hi to our friend Lucas when he arrived and showed him a couple of his toys. He asked me Lucas’s name multiple times and when he couldn’t remember, he referred to him as “Daddy’s friend.” As the evening wore on, Jon and Lucas went out back to have that drink and I put C in the bathtub. He started with his usual line of questions about who, what, where, and why. He asked me, not for the first time that day, “Who is daddy’s friend?”
I told him his name was Lucas. He then asked me who came with Lucas. I smirked a little and said he had come alone as I washed C’s head with a rag.
“But who is the girl?”
I stopped washing and looked at my sweet baby in confusion. I almost didn’t want to ask, “What girl?”
“The girl who came with Lucas!” and before I could ask again, he continued, “That girl!” with his chubby arm extended over my shoulder pointing to the hall behind me.
My mouth went dry and I almost didn’t turn around. So many things flashed through my mind in that millisecond – Had someone come over and I didn’t hear them knock? Was I about to get accosted and my child stolen? Was Jon expecting someone? Would I turn and see a horrifying undead person in my house? But, being the rational minded adult that I am, I knew it couldn’t be anything as unexplained as I was picturing. I turned around and, of course, no one was there.
I casually went back to washing Cillian without so much as a tremble. I knew it wasn’t real. It couldn’t have been. C was obviously just trying to scare me… but why, or even how would a two year old know that a girl behind me would scare me? He wasn’t scared. He hadn’t explained her in some horrifying way. He was just curious about who she was.
It was my turn to start on a line of questioning and without hesitating or faltering, C answered them all. I learned this women was wearing a long white dress that touched the floor and she had blonde hair passed her shoulders. It was all so matter-of-fact. I could almost hear the audience watching the movie of my life screaming at me to get out of the bathroom. To run! To call the police! The more dramatics ones were swearing they would burn the house down.
But that’s the thing about closed up (some would say ‘rational’) adult minds, they explain away the scary and supernatural to create a safe space. They keep living in the house and they always go into the basement. After all, none of that is real…
XO Beka
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