The Day I Stopped Believing in Ghosts (And Why I Started Again)
My grandmother swore our house was haunted.
“Listen,” she’d say, her knuckles whitening around her teacup as we sat at the kitchen table. The old Victorian would creak and groan, floorboards sighing like tired lungs. “That’s Mr. Higgins. He died right where you’re standing, you know. Fell down the stairs chasing his terrier.”
I was eight, and I believed her. Why wouldn’t I? The house breathed. Shadows pooled in corners like spilled ink. Windows rattled even in still air. At night, I’d lie awake, convinced I heard whispers threading through the hiss of the radiators. Mr. Higgins, I’d think, pulling the quilt over my head. Please don’t let your dog eat me.
My mother rolled her eyes. “Ghosts aren’t real, kiddo,” she said, tucking me in one evening after a nightmare. “It’s just an old house. Old houses talk.”
But Grandma’s stories were more fun. She fed me tales of Civil War soldiers pacing the attic and weeping widows who’d drowned in the bathtub. “They’re not scary,” she insisted. “They’re just… stuck. Like a record skipping.”
Then, the summer I turned twelve, Grandma died.
It was sudden—a stroke while pruning her roses. At the funeral, I stared at her casket, waiting for her to sit up and wink, to call the whole thing a morbid prank. But she stayed still. Silent.
That night, I sat at the kitchen table, glaring at her empty chair. The house creaked, as always. “Mr. Higgins?” I whispered. Nothing. “Grandma?” The radiators hissed. No ghostly terrier. No flickering lights. Just an empty teacup collecting dust.
I threw my juice box at the wall. “Liar,” I muttered.
The Death of Magic
Ghosts became a joke after that.
In high school, I’d mock my friends for believing in Ouija boards and “haunted” graveyards. “You know what’s scarier than ghosts?” I’d say. “Student loans. Climate change. Existential dread.”
I traded Grandma’s stories for science podcasts and Carl Sagan quotes. The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you. I scribbled it on my calculus notebook.
But sometimes, in the quiet hours, I’d catch myself staring at the attic door, half-expecting it to swing open.
The Thing in the Walls
Fast-forward to last year.
I’d moved into a cramped Brooklyn apartment with my partner, Sam. The building was a relic—pre-war, with peeling wallpaper and pipes that screamed like banshees.
“Charming,” Sam said. “Like living inside a Tim Burton movie.”
One sleepless night, I stumbled to the kitchen for water. The fridge hummed. The clock ticked. Then—
Scritch-scritch-scritch.
A sound like nails dragging through plaster.
“Sam,” I hissed, shaking them awake. “There’s something in the walls.”
They squinted at me. “It’s mice. Or rats. Definitely not Grandma’s ghost.”
But the noise came back. Night after night.
The Baby and the Bathroom
Then, our daughter was born.
Mira arrived in October, during a thunderstorm that knocked out the power. We brought her home to a dark apartment lit by cellphone flashlights.
At 3 a.m., during a feeding, I heard it again: Scritch-scritch-scritch.
Mira’s head snapped toward the bathroom door. She cooed, reaching for nothing.
“What do you see?” I whispered.
The door creaked open. Cold air slithered out.
And then—
A flicker. A shape. Not a shadow, but a presence, like the aftershock of a flashbulb.
My throat tightened. Grandma?
The bathroom mirror fogged, though the room was cold. Two words appeared in the condensation:
“SHE’S LOVELY.”
Why I Started Again
I don’t know who—or what—wrote those words. Sam insists it was sleep deprivation. A hallucination. A draft.
But here’s what I know:
When Mira was six months old, she’d giggle at empty corners, her chubby hands batting at the air. When she took her first steps, she toddled toward the bathroom, babbling as if greeting someone.
And last week, while sorting through old boxes, I found Grandma’s teacup. Mira grabbed it, pressing it to her cheek like she recognized it.
Maybe ghosts aren’t souls trapped between worlds. Maybe they’re the stories we cling to when the dark feels too vast. The love that outlives bone and breath.
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