Ghost stories - to Lisa.

[Bara]

I don't know whether this fits in the book thread, but Lisa has a ghost and so did I. Truly.

Once upon a time, a long time ago in Africa, the little girls were sent to boarding school. There were black, white and brown girls and we slept 14 to a dormitory. 7 cubicles each side of a central aisle. We had curtains round each side of our cubicles.

At night, you would wake to hear a halting step making its way up the dorm. It would stop outside your cubicle. Your heart would fail. Then it would limp on up the dorm.

I would have been about 14, because the ghost was only ever heard in Dorm 2.

[Lisa]

Bara I would have been scared shitless!!!!

My gost is I think the original owner of the house. Things move by themselves and on occassion I smell mens cologne as if someone just walked past. Other than that he leaves me alone. I just wish he would help clean the house.

[Bara]

Oh, we were, Lisa! Heart-stopping when the footsteps stopped outside your cubicle.

Your ghost sounds fairly benign. Have you researched him? You must do!

Our 'ghost' had been there since the school began. Variously he/she was explained as 'the plumbing', the heating pipes. And then that we were built on an ancient African graveyard or that it was a girl who was killed in a riding accident.

I'll never forget the fear - we were only kids. We'd sleep 4 to a bed. The strange thing was, that we would always hear it together.

[Bara]

LOL! I just facebooked a 'girl' who was at school with me there. She was a year older than me, so we wouldn't have shared the dorm at the same time.

I said 'Do you remember the Dorm 2 ghost?'
She said 'Can't say I do ...!'

I'll find the girls from my year who huddled with me!

[Lisa]

From what the neighbors have told me the original owner/ builder loved this house. Always kept everything perfect. His wife passed away about 10 years ago then he was dx w/ alzheimers. To the point he would be found in the street naked. The last 2 owners were horrible and didnt stay long. OUr theory is since im a little ocd about keeping thigs tidy that he approves and is why he leaves me alone. Now when I was at my moms house for 8 weeks my house was dusted, and no one was here but "naked man" He does smell really good for a ghost.

[Bara]

Oh, I LIKE your ghost! Would he consider taking on a couple of other houses? I'm sure the Atlantic would be no problem for him ...

I think they finally decided that our 'ghost' was the plumbing pipes, but with over a dozen adolescent girls living in one long room, I suppose it was inevitable that we didn't believe them.

Combine that with the fact that the story was 'alive' (LOL) and well - established. By the time you moved up to Dorm 2, you'd had a year in Dorm 1 being scared out of your wits about moving up!

Be that as it may, they'd tried everything, scattering talcum powder in the aisle (no marks.) A teacher sleeping in the dorm. (She heard it too.) Poor woman, she must have felt duty bound to get up and look through the curtains - none of the rest of us ever dared!!

They turned a blind eye to our 'doubling up' at night. In any other dorm, horrible retribution came down on you if you were caught out of bed after 'lights out'. It was comforting, but my best friend, Joycie, was a big girl and the beds were narrow...

You knew, just KNEW that every girl in the dorm was awake and lying rigid and unmoving with eyes wide...

Now surely someone else has a ghost? I vote for Lisa's!

[adcooper]

For several weeks I noticed a terrible smokey smell at work in the office. I kept searching the library building for someone smoking. There are air vents that sometimes draw in cigarette smell if someone is standing outside smoking right next to the building, but I never found anyone and none of my coworkers could smell a thing. I was confused, because to me the smell was so strong and so offensive. I complained about it to a woman who worked with me and was something of a psychic. She said it was a ghost, and that the man was a wretched person in life, with a lot of unresolved issues when he died. She was quite unsympathetic about him and said he didn't belong in the library, he ought to go away and sort out his troubles elsewhere. Apparently she spoke to him, because I haven't noticed that smell since!

[Bara]

Once upon a time, a sad ghost hung around the alley where he had died. He didn't know where else to go.

He'd been promised a bright light - but it never came.

Seasons passed, rain, burning sun, snow. Seasons passed and he didn't know where to go.

Eventually, he started picking up cigarette butts from the alley where he'd died. It was hard to light them, but he tried.

[adcooper]

One day while fumbling with a soggy carton of Marlboros he'd found behind a recycling bin, he noticed that if he floated a few yards further down the alley, and turned right past the blue garage, he'd find himself in the parking lot of a small library. Not much of a reader, he was disinclined to investigate. But just then a rusty Volvo full of slightly stoned college students rumbled up behind him. Thoroughly sick of drivers running right through him, as though he weren't even there, he floated aside just in time to avoid being flitered through the grille, engine, dashboard, stick shift, seats and exhaust system of the 1989 780 Coupé Turbo.

As he levitated above a gray puddle, shaking his fist bones after the retreating auto, he noticed the faintest scent of whiskey. It was a fine, sharp smell that brought back memories of life as he'd once enjoyed it. Whirling and sniffing thirstily, he found the source of that heavenly aroma. It hung about the cuff and collar of a worn but warm wool jacket tossed over the shoulders of ....

[Bara]

"Dave." The name came into his mind as he rolled in the exhaust fumes of a 1989 Coupe Turbo..

With the name came a batch of memories, starting with a large and laughing woman calling "David!" It moved through a small woman and a pretty picture of apple blossom and three pretty children.

But they're gone. He can remember Kate. And Katie. And the boys.

There's a building here, but Dave doesn't understand what it is. He never really learned to read. Nor did Kate. But Katie did. And the boys.

Dave floats above the puddle, the whiskey tantalising his senses. He floats into the library - he knows he's not welcome.

The librarian sits at her desk. She doesn't look up. 'Take a seat,' she says. The whiskey takes a seat.

She passes a book to the empty desk opposite her and she begins reading from her own copy.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.."
Every so often the pages turn across from her, at the empty seat.

After three hours, she is exhausted. "It is a far, far better thing..." she says finally ... Her eyes are closing.

She feels a light, whiskey kiss on her cheek. There's a smell of smoke and she sees a full ashtray where it shouldn't be.

There is a stack of books by her elbow.

[Bara]

It was months later, the librarian was so busy. She'd come in early and sat through two meetings before starting her day's work. She had a children's workshop at 12 and a new consignment of books to catalogue before then.

She became aware of a large man, red-faced and slightly oil-stained, standing before her desk.

"Yes?" She barked a little more sharply than she'd meant to. The large figure wilted in his overalls.

"Please, take a seat," she said.

The figure melted into the seat. "I'm trying to find my Dad," he said. "And what Katie Did. And what Katie Did Next".