15: Dinner Debate
2004
Several family discussions were prompted by my decision to learn more about ghosts. Sharing my thoughts on what orbs might or might not be at the dinner table one night, Wes and Troy fell into their usual skeptical roles. Neither one of them had thought much of the orb photos I’d taken during the ghost tour and when I told them what I’d learned about orbs, they of course went with the idea that the pictures had to be of dust or bugs, because ghosts simply didn’t exist.
With that can of worms not only opened, but dumped right on the table, we rehashed the accounts of the green glowing ball, the pictures, the plaques, the missing items, the doors opening and closing, etc. As we continued talking, I realized just how much activity our house had had over the years, and to my surprise, much of it was unknown to Wes and Troy. Since Keshia and I knew how they felt about the subject, we discussed a lot of the activity between ourselves.
Keshia decided to fill them in on some of the activity they didn’t know about. First, she recounted a time that she and I were the only ones at home. She had gone to her room in hopes of taking a nap. As she lay in bed with her head partially covered, she heard someone come in. Thinking I wanted her to get up and do something, she quickly closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep. After a minute or two, she peeked out from the covers and, seeing a pair of black-socked feet pass in front of her bed, she assumed her plan had worked and she snuggled back down and went to sleep.
After getting up from her nap, she came into the living room and saw my white-socked feet propped up on the coffee table. Ready to confess that she hadn’t really been asleep when I’d come into her room, she asked me why I’d changed my socks. Since I hadn’t changed my socks, we concluded one of our ghosts must have been in her room.
When Wes heard the story, he laughed and said that was our problem—anytime something seemed a little unusual, we just automatically assumed it was a ghost. In all probability the sunshine coming in through the window must have cast a shadow on the floor, making my socks appear darker than they were. That actually almost made sense except for the fact that I hadn’t gone into Keshia’s room at all.
He decided we were either “messing” with him, or that I’d simply forgotten about going in there.
Refusing to be deterred, Keshia said she’d like to see what kind of explanation he could come up with concerning her touch lamp.
In good humor, Wes readjusted his ball cap and told her he had his sleuthing cap ready and for her to bring on the next mystery and he’d solve it too.
After making sure that he remembered the touch lamp we’d gotten her for one of her birthdays, she told him that it would turn itself on in the middle of the night and wake her up.
Wes put his hand up, halting the conversation. He told her she’d have to do better than that to challenge him. He said that this mystery was the easiest one yet to explain away. With a smug grin, he pronounced that the lamp must have had a short in it.
Matching his self-righteous attitude, Keshia shook her head and told him that he hadn’t let her finish telling the story. She continued by saying she had thought of that too, and that is why she unplugged the lamp and wrapped the cord around its base. With a little smugness of her own, she told him she wanted to know how, even after she had unplugged it, that it continued to turn itself on in the middle of the night.
Wes rubbed his forehead as he told her that was an impossibility and it couldn’t have happened that way—period.
Keshia simply replied there were a lot of things that went on in our home that should be impossible, but they happened quite frequently and the only way to make any sense of it was to believe in ghosts.
At that point, Wes teasingly slapped his hands on the table and bellowed out, “If there are any ghosts in here they’re going to have to prove it to me. Give me a sign! Do something to let me know you’re here.”
On cue, a picture hanging on the wall rose above the knickknacks on the shelf below, and then fell to the floor. Shocked, we all sat in stunned silence. Wes regained his composure and said something about that being pretty cool, even if it was a coincidence.
The picture coming off the wall shocked me, but not as much as his blatant denial. Even Troy told Wes that he was on his own this time.
Wes got up from the table and picked up the picture. Inspecting it, he said, “Oh, come on, it was a coincidence. It had to be!” After hanging it back up, he pointed out the fact that the knickknacks on the shelf below the picture stood higher than the bottom of the frame. He commented on how the knickknacks should have fallen to the floor.
Still amazed at his stubbornness, I told him the picture hadn’t fallen, that it was purposely taken off the wall.