Ghost Stories: Every Psychic Has One.

I have a ghost story for you.

I’m a psychic. It’s not so much what I do for a living as it is who I am. However, I’m not a medium by profession, and that’s because I’m not normally attune to spirits all the time. Yes, I can sense them, and I can communicate with them, but this isn’t my natural mode. I’m more attune to living beings, such as humans, animals, and plants.

Yet, that doesn’t mean I haven’t had some encounters myself. I wrote about one of them in my latest book, Teach a Psychic to Fish. However, I’ve had quite a few since my first one as a child.

At first, she only bothered the cat.

I was housesitting around Ithaca, NY. I watched the house, and in exchange, I had a free place to live while I attended the Grassroots Festival. It seemed to me to be a much better deal that spending every night in a tent and bathing in a river. I got there in the morning, got the tour, the instructions, and the keys. The owners left for Montreal and would be back in a week.

There was something odd about them, especially him, but I brushed it off because honestly: I loved the house, and with him gone, it would be fine. I tried not to shudder when he shook my hand.

I never had a dream home, but at the time, if I could have conjured an image of a place I might consider to be a dream home, this was it. It wasn’t big, but it was tucked in to the park around Buttermilk Falls, not too close to the water, not too close to the college. It was a mix of all the things I felt necessary for living when I was in my late 30’s: nature, water, the city close by, and quiet.

The owners left their cat, who was pretty calm. I’ve always been good with cats, and this one took an instant liking to me. She was an older, chatty Siamese, so it wasn’t unusual to hear her chatting away, even in to the night.

Even when there seemed to be nothing around.

The ghost never revealed itself. It didn’t have to.

Old houses in the woods settle and sway with the night, and one surrenders to these noises. I grew up in a farm house; I knew these noises. Bumps, clacks, creaks, and groans.

This house, however, made other noises. Slams. Thuds. Pitter-patters. The whine of an old hinge letting a door open and shut.

I knew because I felt someone there. Normally, I ignore other beings, because most of them are too far behind the veil between the living and the dead to do more than observe or make a little noise. However, this one was different. This felt as if there was a being right in the house, in this realm with me.

I thought it may have been a burglar or perhaps a homeless person who snuck in, so on my second day there, I waited until twilight and began exploring. The cat went with me, chatting away, all the while, until we got to the mud room.

The mud room was off the kitchen, with no windows. There was a washer, a dryer, and some shelves with things on it. It was a normal room, all except for the fact that even though it was in the corner of the house and had no windows. In fact, it appeared as if the windows has been taken out and hastily boarded up.

Deep down, I knew what it was. I just didn’t want to admit it. 

I told myself it was the washer, or the dryer, or the vent. That’s why the cat was terrified of this room. That’s what I heard at night, right? I heard an animal in the vent, or the vent warping from the heat. It surely wasn’t what I thought it was, right? It was definitely not the thing that I knew was standing right behind me, daring me to turn around.

That’s what it said.

“I dare you.”

….and I’ll tell you what it was here.