My life goal is to see a ghost.
I know that once I see this ghost, I’ll probably piss myself and run screaming in the other direction, but with the goal crossed off, I can then “rest easy” when it’s my time and not swan around the earth with unfinished business (You know you saw Casper and learned about the unfinished business too).
Anyway, once I had my ghost experience, I became more resolute with my goal to see a ghost.
I t was summer 2001. I had completed one year of college and was accompanying my mother and sister on some college tours for her. We made a stop in Charleston, SC. I love the culture of the Old South. We were staying at this charming Bed and Breakfast that was originally a plantation owner’s city home. It was all done up in period pieces. It was beautiful. I also heard about possible hauntings and haunted ghost tours.
We went on a tour.
We saw Edgar Alan Poe’s wife’s grave.
We didn’t see a ghost.
I was a disappointed.
We go back to the Bed and Breakfast. A tropical storm has just come through South and North Carolina. My sinuses have been in complete pain and the air is as thick mustard gas. Every breath you take is chalked full of moisture. And it’s summer. So it’s hot and muggy. Mom instructs Andrea to turn the air on. Andrea turns the air all the way down.
After several miserable hours, I go to sleep. And awake at 6:30 a.m. barely breathing from a stuffy nose to hear my mom’s voice saying my name.
“Erin,” she says. “Did you turn the thermostat back down?”
“What thermostat?” I groggily say. At this point, I didn’t know we had a thermostat. I was in the bathroom when Andrea turned on the air.
And the story unfolds:
Apparently mom woke up way too cold and she crept out of bed over to the thermostat. She saw that it was turned all the way down. She turned it all the way up so it wouldn’t kick on anymore. Then she lies down and goes to sleep. However, she is awakened at 6:00 a.m. to hear the air kick on again. Thinking it’s one of those systems tied to heating and air, she checks to make sure she hasn’t triggered the heat. Cue the Twilight Zone music…the thermostat is back all the way down where Andrea set it.
Andrea was a little flipped by the ghost tour and sleeping with my mom in a bed. There were two beds in the room, both three-foot-high monstrosities that were pushed against opposite walls. Mom made Andrea sleep against the wall. She would’ve felt Andrea climb over to turn the thermostat. She knows Andrea didn’t turn it down.
Her curiosity gets the best of her, and she then decides to wreck my sleep by asking me if I messed with the thermostat.
Guess what.
It is really hard to sleep if you think there’s a possible specter hovering around watching your vulnerable unconscious form.
Anyway, vulnerable unconsciousness aside, I still want to see a ghost.
And after this second encounter, I still want to see a ghost.
Oh, right! The second encounter.
Ok, fast forward to present day.
A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting in the living room (Odds are I’m either watching Entourage or The Office) and Kevin began to tell me this story. I was only half listening by when he said “disappeared in my closet” I was all ears. I mean, I’m going to get the full details on a possible Narnia sighting in my brother’s closet.
But there was no Narnia. There was only…the unexplainable.
Kevin woke up and he had a distinct impression that someone was watching him. He looked around and saw a girl standing in front of his wide-open closet with a hat on her head. The figure looked like my sister Andrea so he called out Andrea’s name and asked her what she was doing. ‘Andrea’ did nothing. Kevin then rolled to a sit and walked towards his closet. ‘Andrea’ bent over at the waist and scooted backwards into the closet.
Kevin was alarmed and confused by now. He walked over to the closet and began to search for ‘Andrea.’
Needless to say, she wasn’t found.
The real Andrea was asleep in her bed.
Never one to be outdone, my mother had a similar ghost story.
One night, she awoke to find her bed shaking. Thinking it was an earthquake (you know you saw that one coming), she hopped out of bed to discover that only her bed was shaking. Standing in the middle of the room, she said “Ok, I’m up now. What do you want?” Apparently the bed stopped shaking and no further furniture was tampered with. She then went back to sleep.
Which brings me to last night. I went to bed. I had some trouble falling asleep because I let myself sleep in too late on Sunday morning. So around midnight I fall asleep. Now, I know my sleeping patterns. I know that by the time I start to have a vivid dream, it is near 2:30/3:00 a.m. AT THE EARLIEST.
Anyway, I have this dream…I don’t remember the details but I do remember that I was with a ghost and the ghost was my sister, only it wasn’t. Andrea hadn’t died, but the ghost was her (this will all make sense in a moment, just hold tight). I was with friends and the ghost got jealous and haunted them. I dreamed more details, but now the details are as vague and translucent as a phantom’s “body.”
Anyway, I jolt awake and suddenly feel quite frightened. I have had some creepy dreams before. I was killed in a bobsled accident (I had just watched Cool Runnings), I was chased by velociraptors (after watching Jurassic Park), Jigsaw came after me one time (and I slept with pots and pans in front of my door for a week…Brinks has nothing on my own hillbilly security system!), and Dick Vitale held a knife to my throat and tried to car jack me (after watching the NCAA tourney…I’m not sure about the carjacking part though).
Anyway, the one common thread that all of these bad dreams have in common is that they were the last thing I saw before I went to bed. When I watch these movies, I am not scared, but my brain likes to keep these images handy to scare the living bejeezus out of me when I’m at my most vulnerable.
Now I watch bits of The Scarlett Pimpernel before bed. If I’m going to dream, I may as well dream about my dream man.
After dreams like those, I normally open my eyes and glance around my room. Once I get my bearings, all of the fear disappears and I concentrate on Sir Percy Blakeney so I can have that deliciously good dream instead of the bad dream.
But this time…
This time I was utterly afraid to open my eyes and look around. Not only that, but I began hallucinating an icy caress against my cheek that may not have been my fan, but a ghost. Despite the buckets I had been sweating, I pulled the covers all around me and closed my eyes tightly.
Now, I know, had I opened my eyes, I might have seen ‘Andrea’ and would accomplish my life goal of seeing a ghost. However, I don’t want to see a ghost in my house. I want to see a ghost in someone else’s house and then come back to my ghost-free house where I am nice and secure and can sleep completely unmolested by people or phantoms.
I laid their shaking, trying hard to get the thought of icy fingertips out of my mind even though they kind of sounded good because I was so hot under the covers. Finally, I summoned a bit of bravery and grabbed my phone to look at the time. 1:30 a.m. I had only been asleep for an hour and a half. That’s a little odd for me.
Anyway, I finally went back to sleep. In the morning, I remembered the dream and I remembered Kevin’s ghost. It was a little spine-tingling.
Later in the afternoon, I tell this to mom. We talked and we find a common thread in all of the so-called haunting. Hans, Andrea’s fiancé has been in town.
True, the ghost could be following Hans. But that doesn’t account for two people associating this ghost with my sister.
My theory is simple and is centered around the fact that my sister was an IDENTICAL twin. During the pregnancy, the one fertilized egg successfully split in two eggs: Andrea and Aerdna (the reverse Andrea!). Andrea had the bulk of the umbilical cord and was able to get plenty of nutrients to survive. Aerdna didn’t get near enough nutrient and didn’t survive. She died months prior to birth.
So what I am wondering is this: Is Aerdna jealous because Hans is taking Andrea to live in Denmark?
And if she is…what do they do about it?
Notice: I said they because I am not getting involved with Andrea and her Unborn-Shit. I like to keep myself out of the line of fire and a match between Andrea and her possibly paranormal unborn twin? I’ll watch, thanks!
Anyway, it’s enough to give me the chills.
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