There Was A Ghost In My Room

There Was A Ghost In My Room

Not a word of a lie

It was late, it was raining, and I had at least a thirty-five-minute drive ahead of me to get home. When my friend Diane offered that I could spend the night in her house, I eagerly accepted.

Diane lived with her mother in a spacious country house. The obviously old furniture in the guestroom was not quite what I had expected in the otherwise modern home.

“It’s my grandmother’s furniture,” Diane explained. “When grandma passed away, my mom decided to keep her stuff for the spare room. The mattress is new though and the sheets are fresh, so you should be quite comfortable.”

A few minutes after I had turned out the lights, I heard the door opening and softly closing. I was about to ask Diane if she had forgotten something when I heard her moving through the room, every so carefully as to not to disturb me.

I heard her by the vanity table, opening and closing drawers. By the linen cabinet, opening and closing drawers. Not wanting to make Diane feel bad for waking me up, I pretended to be asleep. But I smiled as I heard her rummaging, apparently, she could not find what she was looking for.

Suddenly I felt her sitting down on the bed. I stiffened as my body tilted towards the extra weight. Enough was enough. Diane and I were good friends, but we were not THAT close. Why was she sitting next to me? Was she about to put the moves on me?

I have nothing against the gay community, to each his or her own, but I’m as straight as an arrow. I should do something before Diane touched me and as such prevent an embarrassing situation. I reached up and switched on the light. To my utter surprise, there was nobody in the room.

Had I dreamed this? Had I fallen asleep while Diane was in my room and had she left unnoticed?

“Did you find what you were looking for last night?” I asked her over breakfast.

“Hu?” Diane said, not understanding.

“Last night,” I explained, “you were in my room, going through the drawers of the vanity table and the linen closet. I heard you but I did not want to say anything. I didn’t want you to think you woke me up.”

“Girl I was not in your room,” she said with a shake of her head. “I fell asleep the moment my head touched the pillow.”

When I told her what had happened, Diane and her mother exchanged meaningful glances. “This is not the first time this has happened,” Helen, Diane’s mother, explained. “When my sister came to stay, she also told us that she heard noises in that room. Drawers opening and closing. We laughed with it, we thought Anne was imagining things. Then when my other sister Betty stayed here overnight, she too mentioned what you just did … drawers opening and closing and seemingly looking for something. We didn’t know what to make of it but then someone told us that that room might be haunted.

“And you put ME in THAT room!” I cried.

“What other room was I going to put you in?” Diane asked. “I’m fairly certain you wouldn’t want to sleep with me. I snore.”

“What about another room?” I said. “You told me this house has four bedrooms.”

“Oh oh no,” Diane shook her head, “you definitely do not want to sleep in the blue room. That room is really creepy. That room is always ice cold, even in the middle of summer.”

After breakfast, we went to the blue room together and I did not even have to go inside to feel how cold the room was. An icy chill met me at the door while I admired the room from afar. It was wallpapered with periwinkle blue flowers against a white background. Blue drapes matched the blue of the flowers, as did the coverlet and the rugs by the bed.

When the ice white curtains fluttered in the breeze Diane turned to me. “Did you see that?” I had seen the curtain move. “The window is closed,” Diane said. “In fact, we can’t open it. I tried, my mom and brother tried, nobody can open that window, yet every now and then that curtain will move.”

We returned to the living room and as soon as politely possible, I left Diane’s house, never to return again.