Not All Ghosts Like To Haunt

I saw a ghost the other night,

She stared at me through the crack of the window pane.

I knew she was a ghost when she floated in through the tiny little hole,

Which also made me think I should really ask daddy to fix that window.

The ghost didn’t look very good.

She had dark bags under her eyes,

And a sour expression on her face that looked like she had just swallowed a whole lemon.

Maybe she had, I don’t know what ghosts do in their free time.

We sat in silence, staring at each other,

Until I finally asked her why she was here.

“Are you haunting me?”

A nod.

“Don’t you have anything better to do?”

She misunderstood my curiosity for sarcasm, it would seem,

Because her beautiful face twisted itself into a mask of anger.

“So how does this work?

Do you have a schedule?

Am I supposed to be sleeping?

Can other people see you as well?”


The ghost was overwhelmed by my sudden onslaught of questions.

She threw her hands to her head and started massaging it,

Doing her best to ignore me.

It seemed my ghost was defective.

“You’re no fun.

Can you even talk?

My friend Cecilia said she was haunted by a ghost,

And that it was the scariest night of her life.”

The ghost kept ignoring me,

But I was not going to let her ruin this for me.

Cecilia still bragged about her ghost every day,

And it was time someone showed that little snotbox wannabe that she wasn’t all that.

I did what daddy did when the takeout guy took too long to arrive

Or when the policeman gave him an “uncalled for fine.”

“I hate to have to go there,

But if you don’t start doing your job right I’m going to have a word with your supervisor.”

The ghost finally looked up at me,

A mix of shock and disgust twisting her beautiful features into an unusual combination.

“ I’d like to see you try little human.”

Her voice was something out of an opera house,

It was the chiming of church bells,

And the rustling of the sea breeze.

It was magic if ever there was any.

Which, I guess there was since a ghost was standing,

or rather, floating, at my bedside.

“So you can talk!”

She simply sneered at me.

That’s all I would get out of her, it would seem.

“What now?”

She floated over to my bed,

Passing through objects here and there.

Pretty cool.

“Are you not going to even try to scare me?”

No answer.

“You’re ruining this for me, you know.

Why can’t you try just a little?”

A huff.

She shot me a glare over her pale, white shoulder.

“Over my many years of haunting,

I have found that scaring little humans brings me little to no satisfaction,

so I have decided to retire from the business.”

Incredible. Just my luck that they would send me the one ghost who didn’t like haunting.

“Then why are you here?”

I realized I was whining, something I had promised myself to stop doing

after my 6th birthday and coming into maturity, but this was just so unfair…

“This is a pleasure trip.”

And that was that.

She spent the whole night going through my stuff,

occasionally finding something to admire instead of look down on.

She rather liked my participation trophies, it seemed.

When the sun finally started rising,

Her light started dimming, and she stared fading into thin air.

“By the way, my name is Sarah”

But she was already long gone.