Currently, we are dog-sitting my younger son’s crazy little pup, Wolfie Junior. OK sorry, he’s not crazy per se; he’s just really busy and needy and he bites feet and faces and eats paper and glass and slippers and everything he shouldn’t, but from what I’ve heard is pretty normal for dogs, but which also (according to my son) is MY fault. He’s not like that at home apparently. Sure.
Now, you have to understand, I am not used to dogs – having to constantly tell them to leave these things alone and to STOP sticking their nose in my underwear. Jesus, cats don’t need that reminder. Nor am I used to letting animals suffer needlessly in crates if I can help it. And this dog does NOT like his crate. So like the softy that I am, I’ve just been either staying home with him, or making my daughter or husband do the same, or taking him everywhere I go. Yeah, he’s being totally spoiled.
Anyway yesterday, I had to go with my daughter to the bank to pick up a form that she needed for school. She wasn’t sure what to ask for, so I agreed to go with her. Of course, having the dog complicated things.
In no uncertain terms, she said, “You ARE coming in with me. I’m not interested in looking like an idiot because I don’t know what I’m talking about.” Young people and their pride – sheesh.
Coming home from the mall the other day in the car, I went to stop at an intersection and I hit a patch of black ice, which then caused me to slide right out into oncoming traffic. It was a few seconds of pandemonium, with me jamming on the brakes hard, and frantically (and pathetically, as my husband would say because he’d know what to do – obviously) waving my hands in the air, and my daughter yelling, “Mom, mom, mom, what the fuck? Are you trying to kill us?”
Clearly, I wasn’t. I’m not a maniac. I was just trying to drive home so she could start making supper, probably to next tell me that we’d forgotten a “key” ingredient, which I’d have to go back to the store to get anyway, because you cannot change the Chez Tess scheduled menu, nor can you make any sort of substitutions, even if it’s something like replacing white flour with whole wheat flour, which in my opinion, would be the better choice, but for her, would be the end of the goddamn world. Silly me.
My daughter thinks our house is haunted – for real. My husband and my two sons think she’s delusional. I think that weird stuff does go on around here sometimes. I’m hoping there are logical reasons to explain it all. I don’t deal well with the scary supernatural, or with guys coming after me in my sleep who have knives for fingers.
Let me explain what’s been happening, and you can decide for yourself. Am I living in the Amityville Horror house, or do my daughter and I just have REALLY active imaginations?
You see, my stove seems to have a mind of it’s own. It appears that it can turn itself on. It’s happened on numerous occasions. Either that, or I’ve turned it on myself without even realizing it. This may or may not be related, but I also forget where I’m going when I’m in my car sometimes. That’s weird thing number one.
Then there was the time that my daughter’s phone randomly recorded a conversation that she was having with her girlfriend about the Illuminati, playing it back to her just-as-randomly about an hour later. I guess you don’t talk about the Illuminati and get away with it. They are everywhere and always listening, even in my rec room. No doubt, it’s a place where mad stuff goes down, like we’ve been known to watch four episodes of Say Yes To The Dress in a row. I know, insane.
A few times, my daughter has heard unexplained hissing noises. OK, so we have three cats, but she says that it wasn’t any of them. She’s sure – absolutely sure. Not that she was really looking. She’s usually glued to her computer watching some comedy special on Netflix.
Then there’s the fact that the light outside our house doesn’t work very well. It’s always flickering on and off. When you peak out the window at it – scanning for phantom-like figures – it goes from a dull glow, to a slightly stronger dull glow, like it senses your presence and it’s trying to say hello in an evil, demon-like way. Now, it could be that its electrical connection just isn’t working quite right. Nah.
Also once, my daughter looked outside to see a bunch of men trying to fix it. They were up on ladders and everything. When she went downstairs a few minutes later – probably like ten minutes later, and this is the real “holy shit there are ghosts afoot clincher” – the men were GONE. Poof! They had just disappeared. My daughter thinks this is crazy. How could they have collected all their stuff and left in such a short amount of time? I think it’s just proof that city workers are really good at going on coffee break. When donuts or cigarettes are involved, those men with the neon yellow or orange vests can disassemble a ladder and pack their toolboxes faster than Donald Trump can say something stupid on Twitter.
Furthermore, the thermostat in the basement glows a firey “I’m going to kill you” red whenever anybody goes down there, not that it’s motion sensitive or anything.
OK, so the tree on our front lawn died. The city chopped it down this past summer. Maybe it was the possible native burial ground upon which our house was built – the spirits coming alive in protest – OR it was the Emerald Ash Borer beetle that was “confirmed in Ottawa back in 2008 and whose impact has clearly been seen spreading from the St. Laurent area since then”. Take your pick.
If none of the above seems reason enough that our house could be haunted, how about this? A shadowy figure keeps trying to have sex with my daughter in her dreams. It’s happened over and over and over again, so what that she’s twenty-two and quite possibly in the throws of a sexual awakening? Scarily, she can’t see his face, but his body looks – surprise, surprise – a lot like Ryan Gosling. If you assume that in the ghost world, people are – on average – about as attractive as they are in real life, then what are the chances? Wouldn’t most ghosts look more like Seth Rogen? She should consider herself lucky, I think.
There was that one time when two of the cats stood at the top of the stairs and looked down like the devil himself was coming up, their tails bushy, their ears all back. Devil or no devil, ghost or no ghost, that’s exactly why I have feline protection. Obviously, the specter didn’t come past them because I’m still here – alive, not bleeding from my eyeballs. My whiskered strategy seems to be working. You ask me why I want my cats sleeping with me every single night, by my side, under the blankets? That’s why.
So what to do about all this stuff? Well, to answer this question myself – there’s probably NOTHING I can do about it. We are just going to have to ride this torturous life out forever. It’ll probably affect generations. My great-great-great grandchildren will suffer – sadly.
If you’ve ever seen the movie Paranormal Activity, or that one with Kevin Bacon, you’d know that moving from one house to another won’t work. Being haunted is like having the flu. It doesn’t leave because you drag yourself to another location, like the doctor’s office. That just makes it worse – because you’ve gone outside and it’s cold. Most of the time, it’s better to stay put, close to the toilet, to prevent an embarrassing “stinking up the bathroom in public” scene.
Nope, the ghosts go with the people. Like car insurance. That’s just the way it is. All I can say is, thank goodness at least one of them is a sexy bad boy. Creepy and partly incestuous or not, my daughter and I will share that one. I seriously hope he likes a woman with a sense of humour.
One more question: do handcuffs work on apparitions? Please say yes.
No matter how smart you are, there is always something new to learn. Sometimes, it’s something trivial – like snails have teeth (I didn’t know that until today) – and sometimes, it’s something that could save your life, or simply keep you from eating something really gross.
Take my oldest son’s BFF, he knows a LOT of facts about a LOT of crazy things. For instance, he knows why beer makes a person fat – like the biochemical details, not just that it does. He knows that rats multiply so quickly that within eighteen months, two rats can turn into over a million furry little buggers. He also knows (for a fact) that Superman would kick the crap out of Batman should the two of them ever meet and decide to fight. I think every young adult male has a theory (or twenty) like this.
It happens from time to time – I think to myself, “What is wrong with that person? Why did they do such and such?” It happened to me just the other day, in fact.
My husband and I were at the bank – paying some bills and getting some money because $60 seems to burn through our wallets faster than if our pants were actually on fire. As we went in, we walked past a man standing outside. He looked like he’d seen better days. He had a bottle of something in his hand that he was drinking. It could have been Pepsi in a bag, but from the particular way he tipped it up to take a swig, I didn’t think so. His clothes were rough, his face was scruffy, and he was wearing an extra-large backpack. It was pretty obvious, the guy had either just returned from a a very long trip and he was celebrating outside of Scotiabank, or he was living on the streets. Yeah, probably the latter.
As we entered the bank, the man followed us. Pausing for a moment, he looked at my husband – who was already busy dealing with the machine – and then he looked at me. I gave him the stare – the “don’t fuck with us” stare. I learned that from my psychopath book. You have to be confident, no matter what. Walk confident, stand confident, give off a confident air. You can’t be oblivious, or look scared. You’ll end up a victim.
And either my stare worked, or the man thought better of what he was about to do, or both, and he turned around and walked back outside. Now, he could’ve been just trying to get warm, but that’s not the impression I got. He kind of had that wild look in his eyes. It was the look of desperation and too much alcohol.
