Scaring A Ghost Out of Existence

Back when I was a kid my family and I used to spend a week each summer with our friends who owned a farmhouse in Pennsylvania. There were hayfields to play in, horses to ride, 18th century graveyards to explore, electric fences to grab and ghosts to shock you — if you wanted to believe.

Those who believed (my brother, nieces and nephew of our friends, neighborhood kids, adults) claimed that the upstairs room in the eastern most part of the house was haunted. Things happened that just couldn't be explained. The room was always cold and the smell of lilacs filled the air. A chair rocked back and forth on its own. Of course, there was the ever present "presence" that just happened to put pressure on the bed when "it" decided to sit down next to them.

A ghost? Yep, they could feel it. That's what they told me.

I wasn't even skeptical. In fact, I was a committed nonbeliever.

When I came into the room there was no sweet smell of lilacs wafting through the air, no chairs rocking, no chill in the air. And definitely no ghost. The only thing I felt was the embarrassment coming from the people hiding under the sheets — plus a little bit of anger. They blamed me for not believing and scaring off the ghost.

Guess every disembody is afraid of something.