Do You Believe in Ghosts?

I have never met a real live ghost. Or real dead ghost, as the case might be. I would really like to. I know others who say they have seen or even talked to ghosts. Me, well, there was that one guy at the DMV…um, hold on, that might have been a zombie, not a ghost.

I have always been interested in ghost-hunting and things that go bump in the night. I suppose I wouldn’t write ghost stories if I weren’t. I can thank Scooby Doo and Dark Shadows for that. (The scariest thing I remember as a child was seeing the ghost of Quentin Collins roaming the halls of Collinwood—ok, that was the second scariest thing because the guy without a head grabbing young women in the woods comes in first, or third if you count a date I had with this girl—we’ll call her Lizzie ‘cause she had this thing about sharp objects—in high school who part-timed at K-Mart. Who knew Blue Light Special had anything to do with auto-erotica and the color your face turned after five minutes alone with this girl? FYI: even plastic handcuffs can be pretty had to break. Um, so I’ve heard.

Anyway…

I had a relative who claimed to see and talk to ghosts. Unfortunately 99.9 percent of them came out of the magnum bottle of wine he polished off each night. There was an invisible dog involved with that, too. Trust me on that one.

Something odd did happen to me as a child (ok, ok, don’t even go there!) It was about a year after my grandmother died, Christmas Eve. Despite all the holiday cheer, I went to bed feeling depressed, something that never happened to me. It wasn’t long after I had turned off all the lights—except the night light—and yeah, yeah, even horror writers can be afraid of the dark as a kid—when I heard a heavy wheezing breathing type thing, considerably like the sound my grandmother was making for a time before she passed away. She was very attached to me, so it was the first thing I thought of upon hearing that sound—check that, second thing, because running was the first thing. Just because horror writers like writing about creepy things doesn’t mean we want to experience most of them personally. I wasn’t even close to falling asleep and might have thought I was imagining it if not for the fact my Dachshund, Schnapsie, who slept with me started acting peculiar. By peculiar I mean staring off at something I couldn’t see and whining. At that point, being the brave child I was, I bolted, dog and all (I loved that dog and even if I was a scaredy-cat I had a certain amount of loyalty!)

About six months later, on a summer night, I experienced the same thing, along with the dog, for the last time. Was my grandmother trying to reach me? I don’t know and could never make myself accept that explanation. Which is why I enjoy ghost-hunting and want a definitive experience of my own.

Of course, I want my ghost to look like Jessica Alba, not some guy with a hanging eyeball and really bad corpse breath. But let’s not go back to the auto-erotica thing…
How ‘bout y’all? Anybody had a definitive experience with a ghost? Or want to have one?