There’s a Ghost in My House

“Do I believe in ghosts? I am prepared to consider evidence and accept it if it satisfies me.”

M. R. James

I didn’t acknowledge it out loud until the aftershave incident.

For weeks, I’d been catching something out of the corner of my eye. A movement, that ought not to be there. A ripple of light, a disruption in the tableau. I set it to the back of my mind. I am, after all, prone to an overactive imagination and have a healthy appetite for ghost stories.

Until, that is, the aftershave incident. It was a quiet Monday evening. I was reading a book, my mother idling nearby. The door opened—my father, joining us. He’d already sat down when the wash of a strong, not unpleasant, aftershave danced ahead of me.

I questioned my father, but he rarely wears aftershave anymore—let alone for the University Challenge semi-finals we were about to watch. I gave him a sniff for good measure. Nothing. My own sweater was still rich with the smell of the soup I’d made at the weekend, with a little of the spin class I’d just come back from. Definitely no aftershave.

“It’s the ghost,” I said. My parents laughed. I was serious.

He sat with us through University Challenge, my handsomely scented new friend, and happily followed me upstairs after it was over.

“All right,” I said. It might have looked like I was speaking to an empty room but I knew I was not. “You can be downstairs, that’s fine. But you’re not allowed in my bedroom, or my parents’ bedroom, either. Okay?”

The smell of aftershave promptly disappeared.

“You’ve got a secret admirer,” my mother joked when I brought him up again. 

Excellent. Years of being single and when I do finally find a man, he’s been dead for who knows how many years. Not very helpful. 

(Ironically, there was a popular book series when I was a teenager about a ghost-hunter who fell in love with her household ghost. Her name was Suze.) 

(I’m not kidding.)

He seems to come and go. The other day, I felt him around again. There was a cold spot on my head that I couldn’t shake even as I moved between rooms. I thought to myself that he must be whistling right over my head, and it might be nice if he called it quits. It persisted. 

(Unsurprisingly, ghosts can’t read minds.)

“Could you stop that?” I said, out loud. “It’s a bit cold on my head.”

The sensation passed.

I’ve always believed in ghosts. My mother—the most rational, no-nonsense person alive—not only believes in ghosts, but has seen them. More than once. I couldn’t refute their existence if I wanted to. As a child, we occasionally visited a local castle that held legend of a Green Lady ghost. I would refuse to go into her room, convinced even in daylight hours that it was a place not to be touched.

In recent years, I can’t say that I’ve paid ghosts much thought, until last year when I found myself fascinated by ghost-hunting videos online. These videos are frequently designed to be scary, and scared I often was. But there was solace to be found in that kind of fear.

In a world that is filled with real, tangible terrors, of the seemingly constant threat of global destruction, the kind of fear that ghosts and the paranormal illicit is somehow comforting. It is old, and grounded, and not controlled by a handful of men whose egos have gotten out of control. 

The internet informs me that no ghost hanging around my house is a good ghost, and that whether ill-intentioned or not, I should be trying to get rid of it, as gently as possible. 

But he is amicable, my ghost. I like to imagine a well-tailored suit to go with the cologne.

I settled down to work on my screenplay yesterday, and hit my swinging ‘60s cocktail party playlist onto shuffle to accompany me. A few songs in, there comes Dean Taylor proclaiming: there’s a ghost in my house!

Well, I do love a man with a sense of humour.