I usually tell this story for Halloween. Here’s a shortened version (for friends only).
I usually tell it for a specific person. This time, it’s for forbiddencookie.
I saw a ghost once.
I was fifteen years old, just got out of the hospital after I died the second time. I took a bottle of anti-depressants before I went to bed and, to my surprise, woke up the next morning.
But something felt different about me. Something… lost. In the weeks that followed, I found that my speech had changed. I had difficulty remembering things. My thought process was more… difficult. I had lost something.
I was working at the Albany Little Theater in Albany, GA at the time. I loved the theater then. It was built from an old plantation mansion. It was even rumored to be haunted. Apparently, a woman everyone called “Mary” had killed herself when her husband didn’t come back from the Civil War. She put a rope around her neck and threw herself off the banister in the main foyer.
When word got out of what I had done to myself, the people hurt most (other than my family) were Woody and Marilyn Wyatt. They owned the theater and were very good friends of mine. I looked after their son and daughter when they were doing shows. I was part of the theater and did young roles for them. But after that, memorizing lines was difficult. I wasn’t the same person.
While Woody was only disappointed, Marilyn was pissed. She refused to talk to me. For weeks.
One night, after acting/improv class, Woody told me that he couldn’t stick around until my mom came to pick me up. Marilyn was with the kids at home and one of them had gotten sick so he needed to return quickly so they could drive the kid to the hospital. He gave me the keys to the theater and asked me to lock up after him.
So, I waited in the lobby for my mom. The lobby that used to be the main foyer of the old mansion. It got late. My mom was late. It was the beginning of winter and the sky got dark fast. I sat in the lobby with the light on reading a D&D book, trying not to get creeped out while sitting all alone in what everyone insisted was a haunted plantation house.
Around 10:00, the light I was using to read by went out.
The only light in the lobby was the silver halo of the moon, shining down over the buildings across the street. I looked up from my book.
That’s when I saw her.
She fell from the banister, a rope around her neck. I saw the impact of the fall and heard the bones in her neck break.
I screamed. My book fell to the floor. I ran for the door, trying the handle.
It would not turn.
Then, I heard her voice behind me. She said my name.
SHE SAID MY NAME.
I screamed again, fumbling for the keys in my pocket. In the reflection of the front glass doors, I could see a white figure behind me. Not hanging from the rope, but walking across the foyer. I heard bare feet on the cold, marble floor.
I found the keys. I saw her face in the reflection.
She said my name again.
The key fit in the door. I turned it. I heard the sound of the key turning the tumblers inside. The door was opened and I ran out. I hid in the bushes across the street, too terrified to look at the theater.
My mom showed up about ten minutes later. I jumped in the car. She asked me about class. Then, she asked me where my book bag was. I told her I forgot it inside. She asked if we should go back and get it.
“No,” I said. “It’s not school books. Just D&D books.”
* * *
The next day, I met Woody at the theater after school. He asked me why the door was left open with his keys in the lock.
I didn’t know what to tell him. I paused. He said, “I sometimes forget things, too.” He had a bag of oranges. He gave me one. “Remembering lines is hard,” he told me. “It’s hard for everybody.”
I nodded and began peeling the orange. Then he said, “John. If you ever do anything stupid like that again, you and I will no longer be friends.”
“You mean leaving the keys in the door?” I asked him.
He nodded. “Yes. I can’t think of anything else you might have done to piss me off.”
He ate some orange and I ate some of mine. Then he said, “What happened last night?”
I paused. Then, I told him, “I don’t believe in ghosts.”
He said, “Neither do I.”
I still remember how good the orange tasted.