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Ghost Story:
Maybe this doesn't apply, maybe it does. But here's a story from a true unbeliever.
Back in my youth I worked out a deal with a friend from college. I would fix up his upstate NY summer home if I got to stay there during break. It was big old house (aren't they all) on a lake. It was surrounded by woods on three sides and you couldn't see the road from the front widows. The trees were mostly big old pines that had been around to see alot before my first breath of air.
The house had recently had the electricity upgraded to 120 AMP service and some of the wiring inside needed to be upgraded. There were some plumbing problems as well as wood to be replaced or repaired.
The best part (to me) was the complete lack of phone service. I don't count it much of a service to be interrupted any time someone gets it into their head that they want to talk to me.
The girl friend was supposed to come with me but she said she didn't like the idea of being in those dark woods all alone. I felt that didn't reflect well on me but I didn't give her a hard time about it. I did kind of wonder how we would ever get along. They say love is blind but right about then I was thinking it was more along the lines of stupid. But she was mine, I was hers and she wasn't coming along anyway. But I digress.
The first week was filled with me squeezing my over large frame between beams in the attic while trying replace wiring. Got to be on a first name bases with some of the bigger spiders in the house, even made a few black widows of my own by crushing their mates when they decieded that they needed to be in a spot more than my hand did.
The cellar had a dirt floor and was actually a series of four rooms because of the walls placed across the length for extra support. Lot's of spiders down there too but that didn't stop the beetles from visiting often. The cellar also had the plumbing and oil furnace. These were mostly in the third room and always seemed to be in shadow no matter how bright of a light bulb you put in the socket.
About the begining of the second week I was working on the hot water heater over the furnace. The water was shut off and I was trying to replace the main feed to the house. As anyone who's worked on old plumbing can attest, the fitting was not inclined to release it's hold on the pipe. So here I am, pipe in hand, putting more and more pressure on the fitting when a sequence of events occured that is still not clear in my mind to this day. I remember the fitting giving way abruptly and falling forward. The light bulb went out at the same time, leaving me in total darkness. There was a spark to the left of me as I pitched forward accompanied by a dull metallic ring.
The exact order of these events escapes me. They were just too close together. Now I'm sitting in the dark and I think I sense someone next to me. You know when your standing next to someone and you close you eyes and can kind of feel them there. It was just like that.
I reached slowly around behind me and got my flashlight out of my back pocket. I was real careful not to make a sound, but I can't think of a reason why. When I flicked the light on there was nothing there, of course. Well, there was no person there. There was a shovel. It had a crack in the handle as if some fool had swung it side- ways like an axe. The wood inside the crack looked as dirty and old as the rest of the handle, so I could tell tool was put to bad use long ago.
I figured the bulb must have burned out until I noticed that the other rooms were dark as well. When the fuse box revealed no tripped breakers I searched until I found the source of the failure. The light switch by the stairs had been flipped to 'off'. The only explanation I could think of was that I had not flipped it on all the way. The shovel was still a mystery. I didn't notice it on top of the furnace or water heater so I figured it must have been on the ledge where the wall meets the ceiling beam. My struggles with the pipes must have knocked it loose somehow.
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