Ghost

Just in time for Halloween, I have a ghost story. There’s a ghost that lives in my apartment. Well, I guess it doesn’t “live” there. “Dwells”, maybe? Anyway, a few months ago, I noticed the oven turning on by itself. It’s not like there’s just a button to turn the oven on; you have to push on the dial and crank it to the temperature you want. I was willing to believe that I had turned the oven on and forgotten about it, except that it was always turned to 375 degrees, which isn’t a temperature I ever use.

Around the same time, I started to notice little things being moved around: cupboards and drawers being open, papers shuffled, bookmarks in the wrong places, and more of that sort of thing. This was a few months after a man in Japan found out that a woman had been living in his closet for a year, so I searched my apartment (several times!) to see if I had any “human ghosts” inhabiting it. Nope, nobody else was living there.

Finally, after I had turned the oven off TWICE in one day (and it was a day when I had been at home the whole time) I announced to the ghost that we wouldn’t be baking anything that day and told her (I imagine it’s a “her”) to quit fiddling with the oven. The next day, the clock on my DVD player was set to the correct time. I haven’t set that clock since I first bought the DVD player, about five years ago. It’s a pain to set it (lots of menus with the remote control), and anytime the power blinks off, it resets itself. So I just never bother with it. The DVD player is only hooked to the TV and doesn’t get a signal from the outside world, so it’s not being set electronically from another source. But there it was, suddenly set to precisely the right time. And since then, anytime the power goes out and all my other electronic clocks get reset, that clock always magically sets itself to the right time again.

The ghost even knows about Daylight Savings Time, although she has the dates wrong. On Sunday, the DVD clock was set an hour back, like it was the day for the time change. I told the ghost it wasn’t Daylight Savings Time yet (and checked the dates myself online, just to make sure). Before leaving for church I reset the clock an hour back so the time was right. (Even though I never used that clock before, if it’s going to be set, I think it should be set correctly!) When I got home from church, the ghost had set the clock an hour ahead again. Maybe she’s just playing with me. At least she’s a friendly ghost. If she starts writing the words “Get Out” on fogged-up windows, I might have to move.