“Emma,” said my friend Lauren Berry (a former Country Day student) over FaceTime. “I promise you your house is not haunted.”
I had called her for two reasons: for reassurance that I was just being paranoid about my house being haunted, and so I would have a witness if whatever demon that was lurking decided to murder me while I got ready for bed.
My family moved into my house while I was in sixth grade, and before now, nothing very suspicious has happened. I had never believed in ghosts or haunted houses before – well, that is, until a week ago.
As much as I want to believe otherwise, I have some pretty conclusive evidence to prove my case.
The first sign was on Jan. 22. It was getting late, so I stopped doodling in my notebook to take a shower.
I remember putting the notebook and pen on my lounge chair after debating whether or not to put them on the desk. (I decided against it because I figured I would continue drawing in my lounge chair after my shower.)
About 30 minutes later, I came back to my room to find that my notebook and pen had been moved off of my chair and placed neatly onto my desk.
Of course, this was suspicious, especially when I so clearly remembered leaving them on the chair. But I didn’t want to jump to conclusions, so during dinner on Tuesday evening, I confronted my family.
“Was anyone in my room on Sunday while I was taking a shower?” I asked my parents and younger brother Hayden, who’s in the eighth grade.
Everyone shook their heads no.
So I explained to them what had happened on Sunday, and that my current hypothesis was that our house was haunted. As I predicted, my parents scoffed at me, brushing my misgivings off as superstition.
But then Hayden looked up from his meal and said that he agreed.
Encouraged by his support, I told him my second (and weaker) piece of evidence: that I kept getting that creepy-crawly feeling one gets when they’re being watched. To my horror, my brother nodded and said he got the same feeling.
But our parents didn’t believe us.
My final piece of evidence is perhaps the weakest, but it’s evidence nonetheless.
Usually, particularly during the cold winter nights when my mother refuses to turn on the heater, my cat will jump into bed with me and try to steal some of my body heat. But lately, she hasn’t been doing this. It may seem as though she has simply chosen some other bed besides mine, but my parents’ room is closed, and she would never enter my brother’s room willingly (not after he tried to shoot her with his Nerf gun).
In addition, she is extremely shy and doesn’t reveal herself to strangers. If there is something strange in my room, it would make sense that she’d stay away while it’s there.
But though I’m scared of my haunted house, I’m even more scared of being proven correct.
After my parents laughed off my superstitions, my father jokingly asked if we should install security cameras to catch the culprit.
Immediately, I responded with a resolute “No,” because when it comes down to it, if I were offered the blue pill (to continue living in ignorance) or the red pill (to know the horrible truth), I would chose the blue pill in a heartbeat.
I’m actually fine with having a haunted house – as long as whatever is haunting my house doesn’t make its presence so obvious. I’d rather live in blissful ignorance, thank you very much.
—By Emma Boersma
