Sometimes I Think Our House Has a Ghost

We bought our house in 2019 when it was four years old. It had one owner before us, a single guy who smoked like a chimney. I know he was a heavy smoker because the house reeked of a weird cologne smell. One afternoon, when I was cleaning right after we moved in, I noticed a circular object in all our ceiling vents. I opened one, and a “Mountain Air” scent canister fell on my head. I said a few swear words because d*mn that hurt, tossed it in the trash, and instantly, the room reeked of cigarette smoke. (Smooth move there house seller guy.)

The previous owner may have tried to smoke himself to death in this house, but there weren’t any actual deaths in it. (Me almost dying while sealing the walls with a toxic-smelling primer to banish the cigarette odor doesn’t count.)

Our house has a simple layout. When you enter through the garage, there is a long hallway. If you walked down the hallway, you’d pass the laundry room on the right and two guest bedrooms on the left. At the end of the hall is the guest bathroom. If you could continue to walk in a straight line through the guest bathroom wall, you’d end up in our master bathroom, and if you kept going in a straight line, you’d end up in our master bedroom closet.

Got it?

After we moved in occasionally, out of the corner of my eye, I’d think I saw someone…or something…gliding down the hallway. What I glimpsed wasn’t a person. It was more like a white misty outline of a person drifting down the hallway and disappearing into the guest bathroom wall. Sometimes, I’d notice it in our master bathroom, and other times, I’d see it when I was in our closet.

I never gave it much thought or felt scared. When it happened, there was never an ominous feeling or a scary vibe that made my hair stand up. It was always a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it situation that went by so fast it made me go, “Hmm…did I really see that?” or “Are my eyes playing tricks on me?”

I was raised in a very Catholic but slightly mystical family with a mother who dabbled in Tarot cards after my dad got her a set for Christmas one year. She didn’t take those tarot cards seriously. She never did readings for anyone other than herself and occasionally me, that I know of. (High school me: “Mom, can you tell me if Tim Harper will ask me to the dance?” And out would come the tarot cards…).

I had cousins who saw a local psychic once or twice and aunts who played fortune-telling games when we got together at Christmas and Thanksgiving. I’m NOT talking about Ouija board stuff. It was mostly made-up party guessing games. Even though my family was staunch, practicing Catholics, talking about spirits was also normal. Kind of like, “I forgot to buy lettuce at the grocery store, and Grandma was hanging around the kitchen yesterday…” (Except Grandma died in 1977, and that’s a whole different story. Maybe I’ll tell you about it one day if no one thinks I’m too weird for telling this story.) I grew up in a family that believed that our loved ones sometimes stayed close to us after they died, and that was not anything to be afraid of.

So, while I may have been mildly interested in what was drifting down our hallway, I mostly felt oh well about it and put it out of my mind when it hadn’t happened in a while.

I haven’t seen the misty walker often —probably a handful of times in the five years we lived here —and I never mentioned it to anyone because people have mixed feelings about ghosts and spirits, and I respect that. That thing, whatever it is (at one point, I thought it might just be me developing cataracts), was such a non-issue that I never even mentioned it to Bill.

And then this happened…

One Sunday afternoon, Bill and I came home from brunch. We both walked into the house from the garage. I’m a germaphobe, so I went straight to the kitchen sink to wash my hands while Bill went to our bedroom closet to change clothes. I was drying my hands when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the transparent person-thing float down the hallway, heading straight to the guest bathroom.

I walked into the family room at the same time as Bill, who came from our closet.

He looked at me and said, “The weirdest thing just happened. I was in the closet changing clothes, and someone came into the closet. I thought it was you, but it was a misty white thing that disappeared through the wall.”

I said, “Are you sure?”

And Bill said, and I kid you not, “I didn’t want to say anything because this sounds crazy, but a few times I’ve seen something in the hall by the bedrooms. It goes into the guest bathroom and disappears. But I’ve been in the closet and saw it there.”

And I said, “Well...I’ve seen that too.”

We compared notes and realized we had both been seeing the same thing in the same way in the same places. And on that day, we saw it at the same time.

So what is it?

Someone told me that long ago, an Indian tribe settled in this area, so we started calling our passerby The Indian, thinking it was walking a forgotten path to and from somewhere— although we have no confirmation that’s true.

We haven’t done anything about it. I don’t even know what to do about it. Sage the house? How does one go about doing that? Nail crucifixes in the hallway? It doesn’t happen anywhere else but in the hallway and occasionally in our closet.

It never gives us a “you need to be scared” vibe. There is no sense of foreboding or negativity. Things aren’t mysteriously disappearing or being moved. Doors aren’t slamming on their own. Lights aren’t turning themselves off and on. We don’t hear phantom footsteps, and nothing is going bump in the night. Sometimes, our house looks haunted, but that’s me being too lazy to dust and Bill leaving the kitchen drawers and cabinets open.

Seriously though, occasionally, out of the corner of my eye, I swear I see something filmy and white floating down our hallway. I’m not kidding. Got any thoughts - besides “Get checked for cataracts.” and
”Are you freaking kidding me?”