I was going to write a real blog but, I’m beat.

Instead, I’ll just write a little about my new Himalayan crystal salt lamp. Six bucks on the discontinued merchandise shelves at work. I always loved the color.

Or, I will just ramble on and see where I end up.

My friend, Kim, gave me a pyramid shaped one years ago. I think it needs more than a new bulb. I vaguely recall Crazy Lady’s son dropping it just before we moved from the house she sold that was about three blocks from here.

It was haunted. No, really. It was haunted. More below.

The salt lamps allegedly emit negative ions and help clean the air. I’m not so sure about all that. I mostly just like the peachy orange golden glow.

I actually am more positive Crazy Lady’s house was haunted.

The first week I lived there the doors to my TV stand, which were held tightly closed with magnets, would be completely open every morning when I woke up. These were cabinet doors had to be tugged open. Also, my lava lamp would be unplugged every afternoon I arrived home from work.

Kitchen cabinet doors would open and close loudly when no one was in the kitchen. There were times the noise awoke me and Crazy Lady (both our bedrooms opened into the kitchen) and we’d meet in the kitchen each thinking the other was getting a late night snack. A few times the noise happened when I was still up and I knew she and her son weren’t home or were asleep. Sometimes this happened when I was home alone, reading in my room with the door closed.

Another time I was watching TV in the livingroom (I didn’t have cable in my room) and got up off the couch to get food from the kitchen. I returned to the livingroom and in the soft brushable fabric of the couch cushion was the clear handprint of a child.

In around September of 2015-I remember because I’d been working for Boar’s Head for a few months-I awoke to the sound of three loud knocks, then a break, then they repeated several times. The noise seemed to come from every wall in my room. Simultaneously, a plastic shower liner I was planning on hanging in my shower was billowing and making a rustling noise.

I took Parapsychology as an elective when I was still enrolled at UCF and, my interest in the supernatural introduced me to many books on how to placate ghosts. Sometimes you can ask them to leave and they will go without a fuss. In this case, this night, I said aloud to the ghost, “I know you are here. I acknowledge you but, you need to stop making these noises. I want you to please stop, now.” To my surprise, the billowing and knocking immediately ceased.

This was the first time I ever felt freaked out by the presence of a spirit. We had one or two where I live now. I kept asking it/them to leave and to stop disconnecting my CPAP machine. I expressed anger about that. Right now we seem to be spook-free.

This night at Crazy Lady’s freaked me out bad enough that I slept with my light on every night got months. The next day I told Crazy Lady my story and she said, “Yeah, I heard the knocks, too.”

Then we had a fun conversation about all the weird stuff that happened when she first bought the place and moved in.

Like the time in the middle of the night they were awakened by a commotion coming from the livingroom. When everyone met up there, they discovered their huge flatscreen television was yanked from the wall and it, on its stand, was moved to the center of the room.

There were pictures that were tilted on their wall hooks, tapping on windows. This happened all the time in the bedroom that was her teenage daughter’s room before she moved out to Colorado to live with her dad. I was invited to borrow DVD’s from the collection in that room and I HATED going into it. It was super creepy.

One time a low, three shelf bookcase fell apart. At first, I thought the shelves broke. Nope, it just kind of fell over when no one was anywhere near it.

The thermostat was constantly toyed with: up or down. This could have been the kid but, my gut said, “Nope. The spook.”

One of the ways ghosts will manifest is as a mist. Dark gray, black or white are common. We’d see white mists all the time. Once, I was reading in my room and a mist appeared and then rolled right through my closed bedroom door and into the kitchen.

In ghostly literature, an author often writes about the effects spirits can have on animals. They are not always negative. In fact, some animals can be attracted to, in a positive way, toward the spirit.

I had a theory that our ghost or ghosts liked animals because Cammie, my cat, never acted freaked out. In fact, when I would arrive home from work. She often seemed very peaceful. I honestly used to think that maybe the spirit(s) maybe even played with her when we were not home.

I think the creepiness I felt was because this was the most active haunting I’d ever been around. It could also have been that one spirit that mostly hung out in the daughter’s room may have been more anti-social than the other(s). We all felt there was more than one spook.

NOTE: the intro pic on the archive page of my blog-the one of the lottery scratch off tickets-was a complete accident. I keep trying to learn how to correct this. WordPress always chooses the first image the writer inserts. In this case, I was searching for an image and accidentally taped on it. It’s sooo damn annoying.