Do You Believe in Ghosts

When my father passed away in 2017, he had been living in a nursing home for a couple of years. In the first few months, he was there, he escaped twice. The first time making it all the way home and we had to call the aged care facility to alert them. The second time they caught him in the car park. He did escape a third time, in 2017, and that time, he was never going back. The entire time he was there, all he wanted to do was come home, and in the months after he died, I started to believe that is exactly what he did.

A handwritten postcard arrived in our mailbox, addressed to my father, four weeks after he was gone. It was enclosed in an envelope and so I opened it and it was from a real estate agent...thanking my father for the nice conversation they had on the phone two weeks previous.

I thought, what a rotten thing to do...to make up a story like that...so, the next day, I called the guy for an explanation. It happened to be on a Saturday and he was quite busy but he told me he keeps records of all the cold calls he makes. There is a record of the names and addresses of people who own properties that these agents use to try to convince the owners of the great prices they can sell their homes for in the hope of gaining another listing. I made no mention of the impossibility of the conversation he claims he had with my father but I asked him about the conversation and he told me quite calmly that he makes notes of all his calls in a diary, so if ever the person calls back, he has some history...I assume, so he can act as if they are old friends.

When I asked about the conversation, he gets his diary...then begins giving me details of a conversation with someone he thought was my father.

It was then I told him, “My dad had been dead for two weeks when you say you spoke to him.”

Silence.

He then told me he would call me back that evening and I thought, sure you will. But he did call back...and he was adamant. I heard no deception on his part and I believe he believed what he was saying. I checked the phone number he dialled and it was ours and realistically, I am the only person who could have spoken to him (other than the ghost of my father).

I know for a fact it wasn’t me who spoke to this fellow...because first of all, I have no patience or want to entertain cold calls from real estate agents looking to list our home. The agent, reading from his notes, said whoever it was he was speaking to told him the house wasn’t for sale yet, but perhaps in a few months, it might be. Which settled it for me, as I would never...not in a million years, say that. He knew which football team my dad supported, which made the whole thing a mystery...but that’s all, just a mystery.

It was around this time some very strange events began to happen. My dad’s nickname at his work was ‘Road Runner’ because he always walked fast...and I began to hear footsteps outside my bedroom at night, going up and down the hallway….thump thump thump...fast.

Again...a mystery but not a ghost story because at night, sound travels and low frequency, such as a neighbour walking up and down his own hallway could travel and sound as if it was in our own home. The footsteps continued night after night and then one night I was sitting on my bed busy doing some task...I had an old DVD player in my room that I didn't use anymore but it was still plugged into the mains power as I ran the wiring through it to my set-top box and had never bothered to redirect the wiring. It was always turned off with a red standby light on and had been this way, without change for at least twelve months or more.

I was sitting on my bed when suddenly, the DVD player turns on...the red light turned to blue. I thought that’s weird, and went and manually turned it off. A couple of minutes later it turns on again and I thought, I know what was happening...the remote control must have something on top of it and was pushing the on/off button, so I went to turn it off with the remote...and it had no batteries.

I manually turned it off again, and said, quite seriously “Dad, this is not funny, please stop, you are scaring me.”

And from that night on, everything went back to normal, I haven't heard any footsteps and nothing strange has happened since.


About a year later, my mum had a small poodle cross called Molly, who we suspect had a stroke and we had to have her put down. I buried her in our back yard and we got on with life without her. About a week later, I was eating my breakfast and reading the news on my laptop...it was a rainy day and suddenly, I smelled wet dog, as sure as I am writing this...one moment there was no smell, then suddenly, there it was...it lingered for less than a minute and then it was gone.

I am the most sceptical person you could ever hope to meet, and all that stuff with my father can be explained away with some degree of logic, but the incident with the smell of wet dog must go down as the most interesting piece of psychosomatic mind tricks I have ever experienced...or, Molly was hanging around before she was ready to head towards the light.