"Oh?" A hundred thousand things that could be wrong with a farmhouse that was nearly a century old flashed through my mind.
"It's--well, some people say it's haunted."
A startled laugh escaped my lips. That had not been one of the items on my list.
Seeing that I wasn't scared off, the landlord managed a smile of his own. "The place was built by two bachelor brothers and some people say they're still around."
"Okay," I said. "Just don't tell my partner. She'll freak."
So, Kathy and I moved into the farmhouse, and I put the landlord's warning out of my mind.
We'd been there about two weeks when Kathy approached me. "There's a terrible draft on the stairs," she said. "Have you noticed?"
No, I really hadn't. I paid attention that night when we went upstairs to bed, but I still didn't feel anything unusual. Kathy, however, shivered and wrapped her robe more tightly around her body.
A week later, our dog got in on the act. He started trotting through the house with his eyes focused on something we couldn't see. He acted as if he were following a beloved master. Sometimes he stood on his hind legs and looked adoringly at thin air.
Then one day Kathy came into the kitchen where I was fixing dinner. "I just saw a ghost," she announced.
We sat at the kitchen table and she told me what had happened. She was upstairs in our bedroom, changing her clothes after work, when she felt someone or something staring at her.
She turned and found herself face to face with a white-haired man. He had a weathered face, partially covered by a long beard, and he wore denim bib overalls. His clothes were worn and tattered. He looked like someone who had spent his life at hard labor.
Kathy stared at him, frozen. He returned her gaze steadily for a moment and then turned away and walked down the hall. She raced to the doorway after him, but in the split second it took her to get into the hallway, he had vanished.
"Were you scared?" I asked.
She thought for a moment before shaking her head. "He didn't want to hurt me. I think he just wanted to make sure we were taking care of his home."
We stayed in the farmhouse for several more months. I never experienced any hauntings personally, but the ghost continued to make himself known to Kathy. In fact, they developed quite a cordial relationship.
Years later, when I started writing lesbian romances, I decided to borrow aspects of our paranormal experience for one of my books.
The result was Love's Ghostly Shadow, a novel about a young woman of Arapahoe descent who is in danger of losing touch with both her partner and her heritage. It takes a haunted house with a sometimes less-than-friendly ghost to get her back on track.
Have you ever had an encounter with a ghost? Leave me a message and tell me about it!
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