In which I have ghosts
My house is haunted. As an empiricist, I use the word "haunted" with reserve and only because of what I have actually experienced myself. What it is, precisely, I don't actually know. The first ghost (or presence or phenomenon or hallucination) is female. I first experienced her as a wave of perfume, something old-fashioned and floral and nothing that I have ever worn myself. It doesn't smell like potpourri or candles or even the incense I sometimes burn. It's just a cloud of scent, wafting past, usually when I'm sitting completely still. The perfume is often accompanied by the sensation that there is another woman in the room, even if I am entirely alone. We once had a houseguest who claimed to have seen her, before he even knew of our experiences. He thought I called his name once he was in bed, and later he caught sight of her out of the tail of his eye. He looked distinctly shaken the next morning to discover that I hadn't called him; in fact, I hadn't even been on the same floor. Our female entity has been known to stroke the occasional hip or hair of someone sleeping, very gently, and sometimes dance music plays between the first and second floors of the house--faraway and dreamy and barely audible.
Our newest presence is a little more direct. I have occasionally entered my study to find the smell of fresh coffee filling the room, even though there is no coffee in the house. I smell aftershave, a whiff of something spicy, often in the middle of the night, when something--twice a modest shaking of the bed--has awakened me. I also smell tobacco, thick and sweet, like a very slim cigar or a good pipe, and this presence feels like a male, settling in comfortably, although I could not begin to explain why.
Interestingly enough, I have never felt remotely threatened, even when I slithered into the crawl space leading from the basement directly beneath the house. (Ostensibly I was helping run a new dryer vent under the house. Really I was looking for anything interesting that might have been left behind in the last seventy or so years. I was sadly disappointed. It was nothing but cold, dry earth, not so much as a snakeskin to see.) The "ghostly" experiences are just smells, after all, and the odd brush of something indefinable now and then. The atmosphere of the house itself is extremely welcoming. The house was built in 1940 and stands on an acre that is half-wooded, half-landscaped. It's a traditional colonial, elegant and symmetrical, and the very first time I saw it, I knew I would live here. It stands squarely on a historic road between two settlements of great importance in colonial times, and I wonder if its location alone has proved too convenient or too enticing for a passing spirit. Or perhaps the occasional whiff of perfume or pipe tobacco is nothing more than a fancy. As I said, I only know what I have felt and smelled for myself, and there may well be a perfectly pedestrian explanation for all of it. But I wonder...
Edited to add: I wrote the entry above on November 3 for posting later in the week. I woke at four this morning (November 6) after a dream in which I saw a headless horseman riding through a blue mist. I jerked awake, which is uncommon for me. When I turned over to go back to sleep, I realized there was cold air blowing over my face. The air conditioner was not on; there are no drafts or ceiling fans in the room. As I lay there, it occurred to me that the air was blowing in precisely the same rhythm as my own breathing, very softly, down my cheek and over my lips. Curiouser and curiouser.
Revision count: 250 pages down. I work, I sit in a hot bath until my fingers prune up and I am in danger of dozing off and drowning, I sleep, then I work again. Sometimes I eat, but not often and not much. I am living on dark chocolate, cups of Lapsang, and words.
And someone needs to stage an intervention because I just bought RUNNING SHOES.
