By G.A. Scheinoha
Do you believe in ghosts?
Okay, that's tantamount to asking if you acknowledge the credibility of UFO's, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster ? things under the title of the paranormal.
As a writer of the occasional (hopefully) spooky tale, I don't have to look far for inspiration. I live in the middle of a happy haunting ground. Mind you, it's not as outright scary as the former undertaker's parlor where my mother lived as a girl.
Back then, it wasn't just the sounds of someone sitting down to supper, long after the entire family had gone to bed, that riled the family. When they woke up to see what the commotion actually was, especially during the racket of someone washing dishes and stacking them in the cupboards, they actually saw plates and cups levitate, as if held by an invisible hand.
The house we live in now was probably built shortly after the turn of the last century. The spirits inhabiting our plane would be considered poltergeists, given their habit of making noises and pulling pranks, like removing Mom's earrings and placing them in the back parlor, or opening doors with a sudden thunderous wrench.
Most times, we don't see these specters, other than a streak of light at the corner of the eye. But we know they're present all the same. Take, for example, the change in room temperature or the static charge raising the hair on our necks. Our cats, a gold Morris look-alike tabby named Howie, and a Russian blue, Smokie, follow spectral movements up walls, across the ceiling, their eyes wide, wild.
Then there's the too-close-and-personal touch.
Once, while I fired the wood stove in the cellar, I felt a firm grip on my left bicep, swung around with the sawn length of a 4x4 in my right hand, and I saw no one.
More frightening is the gentle tap of unseen fingers down your shoulder to waist before someone or thing passes through you, and sucks away your breath for a brief, confusing instant, as if death had stretched forth an icy grasp.
Some may say, as did my father, it's only our imagination playing tricks or a collective hysteria. Too much writing and reading dark stories. Too many books by Stephen King and Ramsey Campbell, now on the bookcases upstairs.
Without scientific proof to corroborate the manifestations, people will absolutely refuse to accept even the possibility, if not probability of these bumps and brushes.
I cannot explain it myself. I do have a theory, however, that certain places act not as conduits to the other world but as wrinkles in the time/space continuum. They are mirrors to reflect past lives, replay scenes over and over in a endless loop.
Admittedly, it doesn't explain the how or why of poltergeists.
But, as Shakespeare wrote, "There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
That's a good enough explanation for me.
Northwestern Community Columnist G.A. Scheinoha has lived all his life in the country. That and his Czech/German ancestry has affected his outlook. When not working as a vacuum packer in a warehouse or caring for an aged parent, he pursues a third, more public life as an author. His poems, plays, short stories and columns have appeared in newspapers, magazines and Web sites in Australia, Canada, England and the United States.
http://www.thenorthwestern.com/apps/pbc ... OSHopinion
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