Ghost Stories

We were all eating supper, quietly minding our own business, as we always did, when our flat screen TV fell to the floor.

All of us jumped, and my mom squeaked. I was out of my chair almost instantly, bounding over to where the entertainment center had relinquished the TV off the stand.

It was broken, a big crack down the center. My dad sighed and had us help him load it into the truck, and after supper was over he got a new one from Best Buy.

Weeks passed, and we forgot about it. But then there were shapes and shadows flitting about our house, and I sat down and thought hard one day and traced it back to when the TV had fallen. We talked about it in low voices at the next family meal, and decided the best course of action was to leave what we figured were ghosts completely alone.

One night, though, one of the ghosts perched next to me on my bed, sending me screaming down to my mom. She brought me back upstairs and peered around my door, but the ghost had vanished, prompting her to scold me gently and send me to sleep.

When I woke up, I descended cautiously to the kitchen to find my mom sitting at the table, her face white. She told me in a small voice that the dog had been snarling at the corner of her room before she went to sleep, and then in the middle of the night a glass cup had fallen and shattered loudly. I frowned.

"Your room's carpeted."

"I know," she said, swallowing hard.

My brother burst into the kitchen just then. "Mom! Someone's tapping on my window!"

We rushed to his bedroom and heard a faint cackling as the palest of shadows disappeared from his window.

My mom invested in some anti-ghost night lights that afternoon, and after that, all activity ceased.

Until last night.

I was eating an early dinner by myself when suddenly something yanked on my hair. I screamed and tried to whirl around, but then my chair tipped over and one of my glass angels came hurtling through the air towards me. I dashed to my room, covering my head, and managed to switch on the night light.

Now I'm scared to go anywhere without it.