My ghost story

I'll go to my grave believing I saw a ghost.

On the farm I grew up on southwest of Canton, our newer house and my grandparents homestead were separated by a grove a spruce trees. In my high school years I moved from a bedroom upstairs to one of the coolest rooms in the basement a kid could ever have. Dad built it. One wall was peg board. Another wall was cork board. All walls were covered with sports photos I'd cut out of Sports Illustrated, The Sporting News, Viking Report, etc. Only a poster of Farrah Fawcett in a swimsuit indicated I might have an interest in something other than sports.

My room sat at the far end of the basement from the stairs. Lying in bed, if my door was open, I could see down the hall to the stairs. On the other side of the basement was a family room with a fireplace, a small library and another room with a pool/ping pong table.

This has nothing to do with the ghost story, but Dad made the ceiling of my room out of sheets of styrofoam to cover up the floor joists (is that what they're called?). That was all well and good until the mice started running around up there. The tick, tick, tick of little feet above me while trying to go to sleep added to the ambiance. Even better was when they started chewing and clawing at it and through it. Scratch, scratch, scratch. One day I came home from school and there was a hole in my ceiling and a pile of styrofoam crumbs on my bed. You think you have trouble sleeping? Try doing it waiting for mice to fall on your face.

So one night, guessing freshman or sophomore year, I finally fell asleep with visions of Farrah or Tommy Kramer in my head. My faithful cocker spaniel, Buffy, was curled up beside me. I was awakened about 3 a.m. by my dog's growling. That'd never happened before. I sat straight up in bed, wide awake, and watched this white shadowy figure flow from the bottom of the stairs, down the hall toward me, before stopping at the foot of my bed.

Buffy stopped growling but was tight against me watching the show. I rubbed my eyes a couple times like you'd see Scooby and Shaggy do when they saw a ghost.

The figure was female, old, but not frightening. If anything, she was calming, friendly, protective. Oddly enough, I wasn't frightened. I felt like somebody was checking on me. She stood there for a few seconds looking at me, then calmly turned and floated away.

The next day I asked my parents if they'd come downstairs for some reason. They hadn't. And if they had, there would be no reason for the dog to growl.

The image kind of reminded me of my grandmother, Lydia, but she was still alive and unlikely to be wandering through the evergreen trees and into our house at 3 a.m. So I'm kind of left to believe that maybe it was her mother, or my grandpa's mother.

I don't think it's crazy to think there are spirits or ghosts among us. (But then again, crazy people don't general recognize they are crazy. Maybe I am.) But, heck, if you're a Christian you pretty much have to believe in that stuff. Don't you? So a friendly ghost it was, and I'd pass that lie detector test.

I have other stories, but this one makes me seem less crazy, so I'll stick with just it for now.