Saturday, October 4, 2008

Poltergeist or Short Term Memory Loss?

Do you believe in ghosts? Recently, I answered a survey about ghosts in the affirmative: “Yes, I believe in ghosts.” More than 70% of the people answering the survey said the same thing. Enough strange things have happened in my life that I don’t scoff at the idea. Jim always explained weird things by saying, “It’s just harmless poltergeist.”

September 30 was one of those days when strange things happened to me. It was the anniversary of my dad’s death, and he died on the anniversary of his dad. As I left the gym, my thoughts turned to a friend of mine who had died in 2005 and how a Rod Stewart song makes me think of him. I always seem to hear the song on his birthday and the anniversary of his death. I just realized the date had passed and I hadn’t heard it this year. I turned left on 65 Highway a few minutes later and the song came on the radio. That’s creepy, I thought.

I drove home and walked into my house to discover a plastic bag in front of my coffee pot. Oh, Ginger must have left something for me. Curious, I picked up the neatly folded bag and looked inside. It was my cat’s medicine which is normally on top of the refrigerator in a basket. I called Ginger, “Did you put Katrina’s medicine on my counter?”

“No, I haven’t been in your house today.”

I felt prickles on the back of my neck. “I don’t know how it got there,” I said, “but this is weird.” I walked through the rest of the house and didn’t see anything else disturbed.

I called my son, “Were you in my house today?”

“No, why?” I told him my story about finding the cat’s medicine on the counter where it hadn’t been when I checked my coffee pot just before I left for work.

“Could Katrina have knocked it off the refrigerator?”

He knows how Katrina climbs and although she once managed to break one of my light fixtures, even she couldn’t have gotten something off the refrigerator and folded it neatly on the counter across the room.

“Oh, Mom, you probably took the medicine down and got interrupted.”

About that time, a loud knock startled me. It was Ginger. She and I checked all the doors and they were all still locked, with deadbolts in place.

“I know I didn’t get that medicine down!” I said. “This is creeping me out. Why would someone come in my house and put Katrina’s medicine on the counter?”

Ginger said, “This is creeping me out too!”

“Well, it wasn’t Jim,” I said. Jim always reminded me to give the dogs their medicine. “I didn’t find Katrina until after he died. And it wasn’t my Dad because he didn’t like cats.”

So how did the medicine get on the counter? The logical explanation is, I did it, but don’t remember doing it. Does this mean I have short term memory loss?

Which is truly scarier—short term memory loss or poltergeist? ...Does anyone have a phone number for Ghost Busters?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Just in time for Halloween!