Tonight was the last wedding of the season at Dawn Ranch in Guerneville. Even at the other catering company I work with, they’re effectively done for the season as well. The end snuck up on me, but it couldn’t have been a more wonderful wedding – the couple and their families were absolutely delightful. At the end of the night they were still giving speeches when my shift was up and I said goodbye to my coworkers who I’ll hopefully see next spring, but… you never know… So, I’m clearly feeling a little melancholy and nostalgic, and, of course, ghosty.

“Alright, will all the single ladies please make your way to the dancefloor for the bouqet toss!” the DJ announced as Beyonce sang that if you liked it you should have put a ring on it.

A dozen women crowded on one end of the dancefloor as the music returned to top volume. Most of the women were about the same age as the bride with a few older women being cajoled into the crowd. The bride, with her back to the gathering women, took her bouquet from the wedding planner smiling and nodding, their exchange lost beneath Beyonce instructing everyone to put their hands up, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

The music faded out quickly as the DJ came back over the PA, “Just a few more minutes now. If you’re a single lady, please head onto the dancefloor now!”

A few moments later, the DJ said, “Here we go, everyone! On three…” and all the guests chimed in to count it down, “Three! Two! One!” and then with a squeal the bride tossed the bouquet over her head behind her.

The flowers reached the zenith of the arc and began falling back to earth with the crowd of women surging forward to be the one to catch the bouquet. Suddenly, a pale dark haired woman split through the crowd, moved past the other women and caught the bouquet.

The entire room fell silent.

The woman now clutching the bouquet and smiling furiously wasn’t just pale – she was translucent.

The bride’s gleeful smile turned to a curious frown at the silence and she turned around to see who caught the bouquet and froze.

The bride stared into her same blue eyes framed beneath jet black hair. She could only manage to get out one word: “Julie?”

The ghost’s smile turned upon seeing the bride’s reaction. She let out a nervous little laugh and said, “Hey, sis.”

“But…” the bride stammered, “You’re…. you’re…”

“Dead,” Julie finished, sadly. Her eyes falling to the flowers in her hands. “I know.” Then she brightened and looked back up to her sister. “But I couldn’t miss your wedding!”

Tears welled up in the bride’s eyes. “I’ve missed you so much…” her voice cracked. “It’s been 15 years…”

“I know! I’ve been keeping an eye on you.”

“You’re… You’re old, too!”

“Hey now, sis, who are you calling old? We’re the same age!”

“I’m fifteen minutes younger,” the bride said reflexively, the words loosing the tears that started down  her cheeks.

The ghost laughed sadly.

“Stay?” the bride squeaked out.

“I can’t,” Julie said. “I wasn’t supposed to do this,” she gestured towards the bouquet in her hands. “But I… you know I can’t follow the rules.”

The bride laughed.

“I’ll be around…”

“I know…”

And the bouquet fell to the dancefloor.

I’m aware my house is haunted.

There have been quite a few unexplained creaks and sounds at various times, and footsteps in the dead of night. Occasionally an item will go missing and then show up again somewhere else I or my husband couldn’t have placed it – my car keys balanced precariously atop the closet pole in the guest room, for example.

Our washer and dryer are in the basement. If you’re not imagining how creepy the basement of a house that’s obviously haunted above ground is, then you, dear reader, lack imagination and should probably just stop reading right now.

Usually, it’s just innocuous things like I’ll be downstairs folding laundry and the door leading upstairs closes on its own with a slam. Or the light gets switched off and the creepy basement is plunged into terrifying darkness. Once, it did all the above at the same time – door slam, lights out, and – oh yeah – menacing laughter. What the ghost or ghosts didn’t factor in, though, was I was having a truly awful day and what was clearly meant to make me quiver in terror just pissed me off.

“Ghost!” I bellowed. “I do not have time for your shit. Knock it the hell off!”

Instantly the lights came back on and I heard the door to the upstairs creak open.

At least that proved the ghost is mischievous and not malevolent.

From then on the ghost backed off a little bit – it’d still do the items individually, but never all at once. And it seemed to get better at reading my mood, remaining quiescent when I’ve had a bad day.

One thing that stayed constant, however, was mismatched socks.

No matter how diligent I was making sure matched pairs went into the washer and were transferred to the dryer, when I pulled the laundry and started folding it, inevitably most of the socks were missing their mates.

I was folding the laundry one evening and lamenting the sad, sad state of our mismatched socks when I heard a giggle from the corner of the basement behind a support pillar. I eyed the dark corner and listened. There was a swooshing like fabric being moved back and forth. I set down the mismatched pair of socks and slowly, stealthily moved towards the dark corner. I heard the giggle again and I stepped closer, and closer. I popped my head around the pillar and froze.

Staring back at me was a translucent ghost draped in dozens of mismatched socks! The sock-covered ghost squeaked and then flew towards the far wall, disappearing straight through it while the socks it slapped against the wall and fell to the floor.

“Hey Phil!” I called to my husband – he had to hear this!

I explained what I had just witnessed and he inspected the wall the ghost disappeared into, tapping the wood here and there. At a particularly hollow knock, he crooked an eyebrow and experimentally knocked a few more times close by. Then he shocked me by suddenly rearing back and kicking the wall. His foot punched through the thin veneer. He pulled back his work-booted foot and shone a flashlight into the hole he had just made. He looked back at me and shook his head.

“What?” I asked.

He reached into the hole and pulled out huge fistful after fistful of mismatched socks.

“Ghost!” I called out, “I’m getting sock and tired of this!”

Phil groaned and somewhere an unseen voice groaned so loudly the whole house shook.

But we never lost another sock!

Bryan, Kyle, and Maria set up their sleeping bags on the second floor of the old Carmichael mansion. On the outskirts of town, the dilapidated structure had stood surrounded by a chain link fence for as long as any of them had been alive. Everyone, it seemed, had a story about why the old place remained sequestered behind the fence, rotting through year after year of wind and weather without so much as a caretaker attending to the place.

The old man Carmichael had killed his wife there and hid her body on the property somewhere.

No, it was his wife that killed him and buried his body on the property.

No, no, neither – there was an intruder, see…

But there were strange lights in the place at night – lit windows when the place had been without power for years. And noises when walking past the fence at night – creaking wood that couldn’t really be explained by the house settling.

Bryan knew it wasn’t some other kids exploring the place because, first, the fence was the only thing seemingly well kept-up about the place. Second, though, if someone had been investigating the Carmichael place, news would get out in their small town.

Kyle had the idea for the them to spend the night. They were all into ghosts and had all been intrigued about the place since they were kids and heard older brothers and sisters tell about the lights and noises.

Bryan had found a corner of the fence he could pry up while the others shimmied under, onto the property. In the end, Miguel backed out, Keisha said she had a bad feeling about it, and Isabella said she wasn’t going if Melissa wasn’t.

Maria was amazed at the layer of dust everywhere as they entered through the front door once they pried off the boards. Thick and undisturbed, they kicked up little dust clouds as they worked their way upstairs. 

They found a room that looked like it had once been a library, but all the books were gone and one of the heavy bookshelves had fallen over. Because of the copious floor space, they decided this was the place they were going to spend the night. They crawled into their sleeping bags, turned off their lights and lay quietly in the darkness.

At first they thought their night would pass uneventfully as all three fell into deep sleep. But then the footsteps started.

“Did you hear that?” Maria whispered.

“How could you miss it?” Bryan whispered back.

“I was worried I was just hearing things,” Kyle confirmed.

All three listened as footsteps sounded on the first floor. They walked the length of the great room, and then back. Then they started up the grand curving staircase and walked down the hallway past the library where they were camped and kept moving to the end of the hall. Then the footsteps came back and paused in the doorway of the library.

Maria could hear Kyle’s rapid breathing and wondered if she, too, were breathing crazy like that – she was petrified.

Then the steps retreated back down the stairs and resumed walking through every room downstairs. As the steps kept treading, Bryan whispered, “Did you look when the steps were at the door?”

“No!” Maria replied quietly.

“I did,” Kyle admitted. “The doorway was empty.”

“That’s what I saw, too,” Bryan confirmed.

And then the steps were coming back up the stairs again, and again they came to the library where they were huddled in their sleeping bags. Pause. Then back down the hallway…

This went on for what seemed like hours. None of the three thought to look at their watches to see how much time had actually passed while they listened to whatever it was perambulate around the mansion. At some point they managed to fall asleep again and only awoke when the sun shone in through the spider web-covered windows.

“Oh my god, I’m so glad that’s over!” Maria said.

“I know!” Kyle agreed. “Let’s get out of here,” he said as he started stowing his sleeping bag.

“Hey, do you guys know where my shoes are?” Bryan asked.

Maria looked around and said, “I don’t see mine either.”

“What the hell? My shoes are gone, too,” Kyle said.

They finished putting away their bags and padded back down the stairs in sock feet. At the foot of the stairs, all three pairs of shoes were carefully set neatly side by side each other in a precise line. In the dust just in front of the shoes something had been traced in the dust: “Thank you for keeping me company,” the message read.

The three looked at each other for a moment, then grabbed their shoes and ran for the door.