Our Ghost Story
By Terry Aldershof

My new wife and I were still in the process of building a life together. I had moved into her condo in Bradenton Fla. It was about our fourth night together when she poked me in the ribs in the middle of the night. There was the shadow of a man standing in the doorway. I looked up at him, and he moved back into the hallway and walked into the living room. When I got there, he was no longer there, so I went back to bed. My wife Sandi was already back asleep. She didn't remember the incident the next morning, so I started to think I was losing my mind.

Two nights later, she woke me to see this apparition standing at the foot of our bed, staring down at us. Before I could jump out of bed, we were told (don't ask me how, I still have no idea. There were no words spoken) that it was all right; that we were all right. It waited a couple of minutes, and then it was gone.

Over the next three months, it became nightly visits. Soon, we didn't even wake up at its presence. It must have bothered him that we were ignoring him, so he started turning on the radio full blast in the middle of the night. You need to understand my wife and I have always liked Light Rock, and both of our radios were tuned to the only light rock radio station in town. He would change the station to oldies and let it rip. I would come out of a dead sleep, at a dead run to get it shut it off before the neighbors got a petition to make us move. I would shut it off, turn it back on and it would be at a normal volume, back on our station again. Then he resorted to changing the channel on the television or shutting it off altogether while we were watching it. After a year, our lease expired so we bought a house across town. He followed us to the new house and kept up the same routine. He used to drive our cat nuts. It was as if he would poke the cat in the middle of the night, sending him hissing and screaming through the house.

We eventually left the house, and moved all the way to Illinois (some 1500 miles) hoping to leave him behind. About a month, after we moved in we started smelling pipe tobacco throughout the house. Most of the time we would smell the smoke in the bathroom, but sometimes we could smell it in the kitchen or the den. Cabinet doors would slam shut, glasses would rattle and bang against each other. Every time these events would happen, we would smell the pipe tobacco. My wife and I thought it was just us, but everyone who came over would comment on the sweet smell of pipe tobacco; even our son mentioned the smell in our downstairs bathroom. It seemed the most overpowering in the shower. The previous owners had completely repainted the house before we moved in, and they did not smoke. They did not know anyone who smoked a pipe, nor had they ever smelled it in the six years they lived in the house.

We have lived in this home now for 16 years. The smell of pipe tobacco has long since dissipated, and there are no more noises in the middle of the night, but every now and then, one or more of our three cats will, for no reason at all, arch their back, and at a dead run, hide behind the couches.

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