A strange, spooky thing just happened. I’ve spent most of the day at my mothers’s house, cleaning their carpets and rugs (you want to be popular? Buy a $500 steam cleaner and watch what happens). And there was a ghost.

Their house is about 175 years old. Over its nearly two centuries, it has been a girls’ school (which was also a sweatshop, from what we’ve learned), an asylum, apartments, a law office, a rooming house and more, until it was beautifully restored in the 1970s. It even has a name, engraved on a brass plate: Rush House. It’s a landmark, a gorgeous piece of Second Empire architecture, and one of my favourite buildings in the city.

There’s a ghost in it. We’ve heard stories for years, and my mothers have noticed odd things here and there. I never really took it seriously, though … until today.

Because of the noise the steam cleaner makes, I usually don’t listen to music or podcasts while I’m using it. It drowns everything out. But as I was using it today, I kept hearing a clunking noise from the kitchen. (I should mention that I was alone in the house.) After hearing it three or four times, over the noise of the cleaner, I started to wonder if there was a mouse in the cupboard, so I went to check it out.

The fridge door was wide open.

I hadn’t used the fridge. In fact, I don’t think I was even in the kitchen. “A draft,” I told myself as I closed the fridge door. I went back to cleaning … only to hear the noise again. This time it was one of the cupboards ajar. I was starting to wonder if a prankster was around, but I checked, and the doors were locked, and I was definitely alone.

As I pondered this, the steam cleaner started up on its own, in the master bedroom. The master bedroom used to be one of the dormitories for the girls who had no parents, who slept on iron cots their whole lives, being educated by day and sewing upstairs at night.

I’m not a believer in the supernatural, but I do have an open enough mind to consider that maybe there’s something to ghosts after all. True story: my grandmother, a spiritual old broad who helped raise me, used to warn me that after she died, she would turn into a crow and keep tabs on me. Well, the morning after she died, the biggest crow I’d ever seen landed on my porch and squawked at me for ages. To this day, I move through life with a chorus of crows following behind. Do I believe my grandmother turned into a crow? Not really. Do I accept that it could be possible? I’m not saying absolutely not.

So I’m open-minded about ghosts. I’ve read a lot of theories about them, some of them more modern than others. I particularly like the idea that ghosts are actually fragmentary evidence of damage to space-time, that we’re just seeing a glimpse of history where that time briefly bumps into ours. I’ve never thought ghosts were actual human spirits, here to do us harm. If they’re anything other than our imaginations, they’re just images, flickering in and out for a moment. But as much as I like to consider these ideas, if you ask me flat-out if I believe, I would say no.

Today adjusted my attitude a bit. I can’t explain what happened, and I’m not sure I want to. It was enough to know that I was not alone in that old house, with its centuries of memories. I felt something there, something not like me. After I turned off the steam cleaner, I asked aloud: “Are you interested in pitching in?” I got no answer.

Here’s the weird part: I decided to tell all of you about this, so I sat down at their computer, logged into Simply Read, and tried to write this story. And it didn’t work. I couldn’t type anything. After a while, I realized my words were appearing, but they were white text on a white background. The page kept freezing. I checked other Firefox tabs: no problems there. I checked the rest of this website: no problems there. But something didn’t want me telling you this story.

So I came home, which is where I am now, and everything’s fine. There aren’t any ghosts here; this house is too new and too bland for that sort of thing. I’ll go back to Rush House tomorrow and finish the job, and I hope the fact that it’ll be November 1 will mean I can do so without interference.

Happy Halloween, people.

Kennedy, Starbase 66