My real ghost story

Once upon a time, when I was a young adult, I lived on an old, nonfunctional farm in a rural area. The houses on my dirt road were half a mile apart. The rich old man next door owned the property, and I would mow his enormous lawn for ten dollars.

One night, around dusk, just as I was finishing up and getting paid, I looked over to my house half a mile down the road. I could see my mom in the upstairs window, silhouetted by the light of the bedroom. She had her hands on either side of the window frame and was moving back and forth, as if she was looking for me. I waved at her, to let her know I would be riding the mower home soon. She waved back, and pulled down the window shade.

When I got home, it was almost fully dark. I put the tractor away in the barn and went into the house. My mom was sitting at the table, having her evening wine, and writing. She wrote at least seven lined pages each night, her beautiful penmanship becoming harder to read as she became more intoxicated.

I said, “Hey Mom, I saw you in the window upstairs waving at me!”

She said, “I wasn’t upstairs tonight!”

The proverbial hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up. “But you pulled down the curtain!” I told her.

“I’m telling you, I wasn’t upstairs!” she insisted.

Any other person would have thought she was "pulling my leg." But my mom rarely lied to me, and even though she was drinking, she wasn't drunk to the point that she would make up such fanciful stories.

Very creeped out, and overwhelmingly curious, I ran upstairs to the middle bedroom.

The light was off, and the curtain WAS pulled down.