I should probably start by saying that if you’re a skeptic when it comes to ghosts, you’re not going to like this post. And I respect your opinion. Really, I do. I don’t think I’d believe in them if they hadn’t seemingly followed me around for most of my life. There’s a saying that skeptics like to employ around believers: There are no haunted houses, only haunted people. The thing is, I think there are both.

It was the dreams that started everything for me. When my grandfather died, he appeared to me in a dream looking younger than I ever knew him and asked me to remind everybody not to forget him. I had completely forgotten about it until my grandmother died and appeared to me looking 40 years younger than I ever knew her. I asked her how she was, and she told me, “I’m wonderful! I’m bathed in light!” I woke up crying. Bathed in light? What the heck was that??? I couldn’t have come up with that phrase if I tried.

My father appeared to me after he died, looking younger and asking how my trip to Budapest had gone when I dropped his ashes in Lake Balaton. He was young and thin, and the dream didn’t last beyond that one question. I awoke crying again.

You can say that he was in the back of my mind, that my subconscious had taken over. But that’s not it. This dream occurred long after my trip to Hungary, and I was at peace with his passing, already moving on with my life. But as he lay dying, I had asked him to visit me. And he has. Three times, I’m sure that he’s stopped by to say hello. The third time was on Thanksgiving a few years ago. I was turning off the lights in my music room, and the entire room was filled with an instantly recognizable smell. It was the smell of the room my father died in. You never forget something like that. Thinking I was going nuts, I called my wife down and asked her what she smelled, and she confirmed it for me. It’s all the more significant to know that the only time my father came over to my house was on Thanksgiving, and he spent some time playing my piano in the music room. It’s still one of my fondest, last memories of him. It’s also the room that contains his childhood violin and some dirt from the bottom of the lake where he chose his final resting place.

Which brings me to my house, which was built in 1751. We’ve got two ghosts. One, we believe to be a woman, simply because of her small size. She’s a residual haunt, which just means it’s like a tape playing over and over. She appears as a shadow that moves along one wall of our living room, passing into a set of stairs that didn’t used to be there until 2005. (Obviously, she still doesn’t know the stairs are there!) The thing is, you can only see the shadow if you’re looking at a reflection in the window opposite. Turn and look directly at the wall, and the shadow is gone. My wife’s children have confirmed that they saw the same thing growing up. For me, I was completely freaked out the one time it happened to me.

The second ghost is most definitely a man, and it’s an intelligent haunt. Which is to say he interacts with us and likes to mess with our heads. We have sounds of slamming doors (when every door remains open), footsteps on hardwood upstairs (when everything is carpeted), the smells of cologne and (more alarmingly) feces, which seem to move from one spot to another–and only in one specific spot (which is physically impossible), and the sound of muted and unintelligible conversation when nobody is around (even though it sounds like it’s right next to you).

We’ve had two experiences that my wife and I count as the most unnerving. She talked to a dark shadow in a dark upstairs hallway that she heard and saw walk toward her and stop. She addressed it, thinking it was me, and it turned and walked away, disappearing into our daughter’s bedroom. She hadn’t realized it wasn’t me until she came back into our room and saw me lying in bed.

But the most impressive experience was when we were both watching a movie and my eye was drawn to the decorative window in our front door. I watched a shorter man in a golf cap walk up to the door, lean forward, and knock on the glass of the door twice, then turn to his right and walk along the porch…except he never passed in front of the living room window. My wife heard the knock and jumped up and opened the door. There was nobody there. It was only then that I realized I hadn’t heard any footsteps on the wooden porch, and seeing the man at the door was like looking at somebody in black and white. It was only when we tried to recreate what had happened that all of this occurred to me. My wife was in color (of course) and made noise walking, and none of that applied to our visitor.

And I won’t even tell you how we’ve had ADT come out to look at a door alarm that goes off every night at 12:15. Imagine the conversation I had with that guy. He gave me a look like the look you’re probably giving me right now. And that’s okay. I know it’s all true, and you don’t have to believe it if you don’t want to.

I thought I’d share it in the “spirit” of the season. Living in our house is a constant adventure. We can go six months with nothing, and then suddenly everything will begin going haywire–like it did this month. Feel free to stop by. We’ve got plenty of empty rooms…or perhaps not so empty.

Happy Halloween.