Ghost?

overnighters always think their workplace is haunted, too funny. the last shelter i was at was convinced that a little girl in a white dress was haunting the lower floor. residents claim to have seen it too. but i never saw nothing!

I could write a book detailing the run-ins I've had of the ghostly kind. Here are two 'more personal' incidents...

My grandfather passed in his 80's. Several weeks after the funeral I drove the three hour trip to go check on my grandmother. As I drove out to the edge of town (where their house is) I passed my grandfather driving his '72 Ford pick-up into town. We reflexively waved at each other and smiled as we drove past one another and I noticed his dog 'Shih Tzu' curled up on the front dashboard.

It suddenly dawned on me that 'Shih Tzu' had been dead for two years and my grandfather had been dead for several weeks. I quickly checked the rear view mirror and watched the pick-up truck disappear around the bend in the road noticing the homemade tailgate with our family name welded into the design. It was the only truck like it in the small town and the only tailgate like that anywhere on the planet.

I continued driving the remaining half-mile to the house where I found the pick-up truck where I had last parked it after grandpa had died (he had a heart attack in the truck, in the parking lot of the local masonic lodge). Getting out, I felt the hood of the truck. It was cold.

Walking into the house through the country kitchen I hollered to my grandmother to let her know I was there. She hollered back from the bedroom that she would be out in a minute. While this exchange was happening, I had caught my grandfather out of the corner of my eye waving to me in greeting from his favorite rocking chair pulled up close to the television. I had waved hello back but turned my head to the sound of my grandmother's voice from the back of the house during our exchange.

"Wait a minute... he can't be there... he's dead", I thought as I turned my head back to look. He was gone... but the rocking chair was still rocking back and forth as if he had just stood up from the chair.

At that point my grandmother entered the kitchen and we hugged and kissed and sat down for a cup of coffee. I didn't want to alarm her or cause her any grief but I HAD to say SOMETHING. So I began with... "you're not gonna believe what happened just now!" After I told her, she let out this immense sigh of relief and said, "So you've seen him too!" I'm so glad someone else has because I didn't want you to think I was going crazy!"

She proceeded to tell me how he had been spending hours with her sitting at the kitchen table (as his 20 something self) talking over all the great and wonderful memories of their lifetime together. She had been too afraid to mention it to anyone in the family for fear of being locked up and shipped off to the loony bin.

The second incident was not seeing a ghost per say. I was a railroad engineer driving a freight train to Pecos, Texas. Since we are not allowed to use our cell phones, I had mine turned off and left it sitting on the console above the throttle lever. As we were passing through a cellular dead zone down into the valley my phone began ringing. I looked at the display and it was a call from my grandmother!

I noticed the phone had no antenna signal but went ahead and answered it anyway. I heard lots of white noise and my grandmother's voice saying, "I love you son-shine."

I looked down and the phone was off. My conductor looked at me and asked, "How did you get a signal out here, and who was it?"

When I got to the hotel in Pecos, I called my dad and asked him what he had done with grandma's cell phone after the funeral. He said it was still on the family plan with his and mom's phone until the contract finished in a couple of months. When I asked him where the phone itself was, he said it was gathering dust on his dresser. He had swiped the battery out of it a few months back when his would no longer keep a charge.

I told him about the phone call and he just said, "You too, huh?"

Those are two ghost stories involving close family members. I have lots of others from various locations I have lived around the world, some in the States, some in Europe.