I owe Akilah a big thank-you for helping with the medical billing stuff. I miss my simple Kaiser HMO. Her expertise is greatly appreciated both here and when I get a dumb explanation of benefits I don’t understand (which is always).

“I don’t understand, though, it’s not like I had a choice about the ambulance service that showed up,” said the man on the phone, frustration evident in his voice. “How am I expected to be on the hook for this? I pay my insurance premiums to you people every month…”
“I hear you, sir,” I said. “The issue here is that the ambulance company charges whatever they want to charge. We pay what’s known as the usual and customary reasonable amount. That’s a cost determined to be what most companies would charge for ambulance transport.”
“Five hundred bucks,” he interrupted.
“In this case,” I said, “Yes, that’s the usual and customary amount.”
“So, what? Was the ambulance made by Rolls Royce? Because otherwise how can they justify charging an order of magnitude more than your usual customary amount? It was…” papers rustle, “$6718.20… minus a paltry $500 and I’m left with an angry bill from this limousine of an ambulance company owing $6218.20.”
“I see here that you already filed an appeal,” I started.
“Which was denied! The last person I talked to said all I had to do was appeal and this would take care of itself. Well, it hasn’t!” he yelled.
“Sir, can you please lower your voice. I need you to calm down if you want to–”
“Calm down?!” He yelled. “My wife of fifty years died two weeks ago and you want me to…” his voice cracked and his volume dropped by half as he tried to continue, “you want me to…” He went silent for a long moment.
“Sir,” I said after a bit without hearing anything. “Are you okay?”
I heard him sobbing quietly.
I let him cry and get himself together on his own time.
Finally, he said, “I’m sorry. This isn’t… this isn’t what I do. This is what Margaret did. Even after she got sick she insisted on making me breakfast. I tried to make breakfast for her but she said, ‘James you’re amazing with computers – always have been – but you can’t make a sunny side egg properly to save your life.’” He sniffled and took a moment. “With her black and white checkered apron with ruffles – the one Susie, our littlest – made for her when she took a sewing class. She’d still have it on and she’d sit right there,” I could practically hear him pointing across the kitchen table, “and she’d go over the budget or she’d call you folks and have it out with you about some charge y’all screwed up.” He laughed, “She had the patience of Job because, I don’t know, it always seemed like she’d out argue you guys. She should be here dealing with this. There wouldn’t be any question. She should be here. She should…” a sob escaped, “She should be here…” He broke down again.
“I’m really sorry for your loss,” I said truly meaning it. “Look, we can file a second appeal…”
“Is that going to do anything?” He said. The hope had gone out of his voice.
“I think so,” I hedged. “You should get some additional information that you didn’t have for your first appeal.”
“Like what?”
“Her doctor told you to call the ambulance, right?”
“Yes,” he said and the tone of that affirmation carried all the dread of the moment he had to call 911 and already knew his wife wasn’t coming back.
“Call their office and get a letter indicating they had you get an ambulance. It’s standard procedure, so it shouldn’t be an issue.”
“And then?”
“The form is online…”
“Another form…”
“I’m afraid so.”
“But I’ve already filled out the first appeal, isn’t that good enough?”
“I wish it were, but you need to…” I stopped because I felt a freezing cold sensation behind my left shoulder. I turned and standing behind me was an elderly woman wearing a black and white checkered apron with ruffles. I could see she was slightly translucent. Her eyes met mine and she gave her head a little shake. “Uh…” I stammered without breaking eye contact, “You know… I think I can use the information in the form and fill in the second appeal,” Margaret smiled. “Can you contact your doctor and get that letter?”
“Yeah, what time is it? One thirty… Okay, I’ll call right now.”
“Great,” I said. “Once you get that, can you scan and email it to me?”
“Yeah, I can. What then?”
Margaret’s smile faded and she arched an eyebrow at me.
“I’ll… I’ll put that with the second appeal form and… I’ll make sure it gets approved.”
“You’ll… what?”
“I’ll walk it through myself and make sure it gets approved.”
“You would do that?”
“Yes, I will.”
Margaret smiled broadly.

It started with the doorbell.
Fitting, really, as that’s where we started integrating IoT (Internet of Things) smart devices into our life. We replaced our “dumb” doorbell with a Ring video doorbell. One night the kids were asleep and in their beds and Jerry and I had fallen asleep when Alexa erupted with the fake doorbell chime followed by “Someone is at your front door.”
“What the hell?” Jerry asked blearily. He’s a heavier sleeper than me, so the chime brought me to full alert and Alexa’s announcement of someone at the door started to rouse Jerry while I was reaching for the axe handle we keep by the bed.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said, starting to put my slippers on.
“No, don’t get up,” Jerry said.
“We have to check it out!” I snapped.
“No,” he said and reached for his phone. Opening the Ring app, he immediately brought up the view from the doorbell camera. It showed our front porch and that’s all.
“Wait, how’d it ring?”
He pressed a button and the screen switched to a recording that started a minute earlier. The camera started recording as the motion sensor turned on but there was nothing on the porch – no burglar, not so much as a curious racoon. In the video the doorbell chime could be heard as the button was pressed, but there was nothing in the video to indicate what pressed the button.
It should go without saying I didn’t sleep the rest of the night.
“Mom, who was at the door last night,” Alicia, my oldest, asked at breakfast.
“No one,” I said. “I think one of the racoons in the neighborhood got curious,” I lied.
“Hope you saved that video,” Andy the eleven year old started around bites of Coco Puffs, “I bet that’d get a ton of hits on Instagram!”
“Our racoons are owed a certain amount of privacy,” I said. At that moment the microwave buzzed to life. “That’s odd,” I said.
Alicia and Andy exchanged looks.
“Alexa, did you turn on the microwave?” I asked the fuzzy cylinder.
“Microwave doesn’t support that,” her computer voice replied.
Alicia, Andy, and I exchanged looks.
Before anyone said anything, though, Jerry came into the kitchen. “Morning, honey,” he said kissing me. Then “Hey gang, how’s it going?” to the kids.
“The microwave is haunted,” Alicia said matter-of-factly.
Jerry threw me a quizzical look.
“It came on by itself a minute ago. Something probably bumped it,” I said.
“That’s probably it,” Jerry agreed too quickly as he went to the freezer for a frozen breakfast burrito. “Or, it just knew I was going to throw this in and wanted to be warmed up.” He put the burrito in and said, “Alexa, microwave two minutes.”
“Turning microwave on for two minutes,” she said and the microwave whirred to life again.
Jerry sniffed the air. “Did you put anything on the smoker?”
I suddenly noticed the smell of hickory smoke. “No… Are you sure that’s us?”
“I’m not sure of anything right now,” he said, going to the sliding glass door that led to the back yard. “Holy shit!”
Everyone quirked their ears when Jerry swore, we all beelined for the yard. There his beloved Traeger smart gill sat in a smoking “V” shape. Jerry moved towards it first. Beneath the melted and smoldering cover, the barbeque looked as if the center section had melted and the remaining ends bent in on themselves. Burning pellets occasionally dropped out of the broken hopper onto the concrete.
“What the hell?” Jerry said agog. I couldn’t speak or move.
Fortunately, Alicia could as she emerged from the house with the fire extinguisher, pulled the pin and fired a white stream at the mangled smoker. The hiss of super-heated metal and molten pellets meeting foam snapped us out of our shock. “Thank you, Alicia,” I said.
“Don’t thank me,” she said halting the stream and surveying the steamy mess, “Thank the fire safety course at Girl Scout camp last summer.”
Through the steam, the electronic light of the Traeger’s information panel still shone. Seeing this, Jerry pulled his phone out of his pocket and opened the app for his now-deceased barbeque. “That’s impossible…”
“What, Jerry?”
“It says we turned it on at 3am and set it for high, but then around 7 the temperature went crazy.”
“Crazy, dad?” Andy asked.
“At that setting it shouldn’t have gotten higher than 500 degrees.”
“Looks like it did…” Alicia said.
“Yeah, try 1300 degrees.”
“How is that…” I started.
“It’s not.”
We all stared for a moment before our attention was drawn to loud rapid slamming coming from inside the house. Bang! Bang! Bang-Bang! Bang! The sliding glass door was closed and no one wanted to venture inside to investigate. Bang! Bang! Bang! Our Roomba, moving at impossible speeds, came into the family room violently ricocheting off walls, in showers of drywall (which it managed to partially clean up as it caromed around) before catching air off one of Andy’s shoes on the floor and smashing into the sliding glass door. The glass door exploded as the Roomba sailed past us, skipped once on the patio before splash-landing in the pool.
“What… in… the… ever-living… hell…?” Jerry said.
“Holy shit, we’re haunted,” Alicia said.
I almost chastised her language, but, really the moment warranted it.
After the Roomba we tried to pretend it was a normal morning. Jerry’s burrito didn’t erupt like Mount Saint Helens, so, you know, hooray for small things! The kids went off to school a little with more alacrity than they usually had, and even Jerry was quick to leave for work. That left me and the unexplained.
I called the company who had installed the sliding glass door to schedule a replacement as quickly as possible. I fished the drowned Roomba out of the pool with the net. I even loaded the remains of the Traeger into the wheelbarrow so… I don’t know, maybe Jerry wanted to give it a proper burial or something. I was in the office staring at the Ring video from earlier that morning when I realized I was sweating.
I got up and checked the Nest thermostat. It was set on 102. Because, of course it was. I turned it back down.
The Nest and I continued to dual throughout the day. 95? I set it back to 65. 108? No, back down to 65. 80? Sorry, Nest, 65.
Between the Nest and whichever Alexa was in the room randomly saying, “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite hear that,” when I hadn’t said a word, I was really grateful when the kids got home.
“I did battle with whatever’s possessing this place today,” I told them. “You guys are on it. Alicia, please keep an eye on the Nest – it suddenly wants to pretend we live in Death Valley. I’m going to lay down for a nap.”
“Yeah, mom,” Alicia said. Then, to Andy, “Get the GoPro – if something else goes haywire I want this on video!”
Andy had gone to the sliding-glass-door-less family room to retrieve the action camera when he yelled, “Hey, we’ve got a kraken!”
I groaned as Alicia and I headed back there. Sure enough, the pool churned and swirled as the smart pool cleaning machine whipped its hoses around wildly like a thrashing beast.
“How…” I started but didn’t bother to finish the question. “Andy, go shut off the breaker to the pool cleaner.”
“Got it, mom,” he started out towards the electrical panel.
“Don’t let it take you down into Davy Jones Locker,” Alicia called helpfully.
Jerry came home a little later. Mercifully, he brought takeout Chinese food. As he unpacked the bag of individual entrée boxes he asked, “So… anything else happen today?”
Before I had a chance to ask the lights in the kitchen went out. “Alexa, turn the kitchen lights on,” I said. The lights came back on.
“So… that’s how it went?” The lights went out again. “Alexa turn on the kitchen lights,” and they came on.
“Pretty much.” I told him about the window company I scheduled to come out the next day, and the wheelbarrow containing the corpse of his barbeque. We moved to the dining room where Andy told him about the pool kraken. The lights in the dining room went out.
“Alexa, turn the dining room lights on,” Jerry said. The lights came back on.
Alicia told him about the Nest’s hot flashes.
“Well, what do you all think? Some kind of digital ghost?” Jerry asked.
“Ghost in the machine?” Alicia asked.
“iGhost?” Andy suggested.
“That’s so dumb, Andy,” Alicia dismissed. “Everyone knows it’d be Apple Ghost.”
The lights went out again.
“Alexa, turn on dining room lights,” I said. The lights came on. “Do we get an exorcist or a hacker?”
“I know of a Jesuit priest who’s big into electronics,” Jerry said as the smart smoke detector started to blare. “That’s new,” Jerry said, opening the smoke detector app on his phone and silencing its strident wail.”
We ate in silence for a few minutes until a faint whirr coming from the other room caused us to exchange silent looks.
“That’s the Wyze Cam Pan smart camera,” Andy said.
“How do you know?” Alicia asked.
“Because I know when mom and dad are pointing it at me when I’m playing Xbox.”
I nodded guiltily at Jerry.
Now we all had our phones out and were staring at the Wyze app watching the camera. It was following a shadow in the family room. When the shadow moved into the hall, the smart lights in the hallway illuminated and the family room fell dark. The recessed hall lights winked out after the shadow passed. We sat transfixed as the lights in the foyer – immediately adjacent to the dining room – turned on. The shadow moved into the foyer as the hallway went dark. It stood there for a moment. It hovered there in the light like a puff of dark smoke. I felt like it was regarding us. Suddenly the August smart deadbolt unlocked with a click and the door opened. The shadow moved outside. Later we’d see that it was caught in the video from the Ring doorbell. The door closed and the August lock clicked again. The motion lights outside lit up… and then turned off.
“Goodbye,” Alexa said.
Months later the August lock clicked open, triggered by a Bluetooth signal. The real estate agent led a young couple into the foyer. “I think you’re going to love this place.”
“It’s beautiful so far,” the wife said. “Why is the family selling this place?”
“That’s actually a little strange. They disappeared suddenly. No one knows why… Oh, I can’t forget to tell you that it’s fully integrated with IoT smart devices…”

This is inspired by an actual Haunted Sofa. And a haunted dresser. Seriously, check out those awesome YouTube clips from local news about haunted items!

Yes, we bought a haunted house. Okay, to be more specific we bought the house because it was haunted.

Or at least it was supposed to be.

Neither Dave nor I are psychic. We’ve each had a number of unexplained events over the course of our lives, but neither would consider ourselves “sensitive.” We like to go looking for spooky trouble because, well… I don’t know. Some people climb mountains, some people decoupage, some people look for the image of Jesus on fried foods. We happen to run head-long into anything that’s “haunted.”

Take the house for example. We were in the market already and we genuinely liked the house and the neighborhood. There were like three houses we were looking at that were pretty equally awesome. We chose 31 Palm Street because the real estate agent took pains to say it was haunted. Like, “They’re selling for a discount, will pay closing costs, and insist on a short escrow, no backsies” haunted. (They didn’t really say “no backsies,” but believe me, that was strongly implied.

We moved into our 1600 square foot split level (with creepy basement) mid-century ready to have the crap scared out of us. And… nothing. Not so much as a spooky termite infestation.

Some people would say we dodged a bullet. We decided to try harder! So we filled the house with purportedly haunted things. There was the haunted China hutch (which we deliberately filled with dollar store plates just to piss it off) we bought off Craigslist. When we went to pick it up the previous owners wouldn’t even meet us – they left it on the street and told us to leave the money under the doormat.

We filled a room in the basement with creepy “haunted” dolls we bought on eBay. There’s the clowns – so many clowns! There’s a haunted Teddy Ruxpin that instead of telling a story will only repeat “red rum! Red rum! Red rum!” (that’s Dave’s favorite). A haunted Chuckie doll seemed a little too on-brand, but we’re nothing if not completists. We don’t actually go into that room except to put new haunted dolls because haunted or not, it’s frickin’ creepy. Though, Dave will show off the Teddy Ruxpin from time to time and I can’t blame him.

The haunted bed was supposed to inexplicably bounce, jostle, jump, and “torment” us. But we threw a Casper mattress (you knew it would be Casper, right?) and honestly have never slept better.

Dave parks his haunted April Green 1966 Ford Galaxie 500 in the garage of our haunted house. He bought off a widow who claimed it asphyxiated her husband and was sure it would bring us doom. She made us sign a statement that we wouldn’t sue her. Honestly, the biggest crime the car committed was being April Green – it’s hideous, but Dave won’t let us repaint it because he says it would totally destroy the haunting. I counter that it would anger any ghosts who feel the car is theirs. It’s a frequent disagreement of ours. Oh, and Dave found the hole in the header that likely contributed to Ethyl Peterson’s husband’s demise more than the puke green demon car itself. Incidentally, Dave named the car “June” after the June Carter Cash “Appalachian Pride” 8-track left in the car.

It was into this menagerie of slumbering spirits that we brought in the haunted sofa.

It didn’t go with anything, but we don’t actually try to match styles, so in that regard it kind of did go with everything. Off-white cushions with odd circle patterns decorated the dark wood-framed structure. It had six legs. Objectively, it was aesthetically atrocious. But three people had already returned the sofa to the furniture consignment store, and the local news was about to run a story on it (they were filming when Dave happened by) and he was afraid of a bidding war – seriously, we’re not the only ones who want haunted things! I got home from my job as an X-ray technician and somehow Dave and his friend Sal had gotten it home and inside the house.

“What the hell is that?” I asked. “It’s hideous.”

“It’s our new sofa! It’s haunted. Three people have already returned it,” Dave pitched.

“I love it!” I said dropping my bag and leaping bodily onto the couch. I struck a coquettish pose – or as much of a coquettish pose as I could manage after 8 hours and in scrubs, “Do you want to take me right here on this haunted couch?” and I blew him an exaggerated kiss. Then I sniffed. “You know, I think it’s haunted by old person farts.”

“You say ‘old person farts,’ the haunted optimist says ‘sulfur and brimstone.’”

“Hmm,” I frowned. “Not sure I’m buying it. Let’s hit it with Febreeze.”

That night we were awakened by a huge crash downstairs.

“Burglar or ghost?” I whispered to Dave.

“You get the gun, I’ll get the holy water.”

We tiptoed downstairs making sure Dave wasn’t in my line of fire and I wasn’t in his splash zone. Family room seemed quiet, though I swear the sofa seemed a bit… okay, “glowing” is too strong. How about too bright for such low lighting?  I nodded at the closed swinging door to the kitchen. We stood next to it and Dave silently counted “One…. Two…. Three!” then swung the door wide, staying high with his flask of water uncapped and ready to throw while I crouched with the gun pointed at any potential mortal assailants – we’d practiced this. Yeah, we’re weird – you hadn’t figured that out yet?

The kitchen was quiet, but every cabinet had been thrown open and every drawer slid out. The crash was the silverware draw that doesn’t have a stop, so the drawer slid all the way out and crashed onto the floor. We stared silently at the open cabinets and drawers for long moments.

“Theeeeyyyy’re heeeEEEEeeeere,” I said in my best little-girl-from-Poltergeist voice.

And they were! At long last they were! Well, in hindsight I’ll say it was here. And it was magnificent. The kitchen cabinet/drawer thing was a favorite, but it also stacked chairs in odd ways. The sinks started turning themselves on by themselves in the bathrooms – fortunately, only when we were there to witness them. I’m going to have to give Dave his “sulfur and brimstone” because that lit-match smell would show up in different rooms inexplicably. The TV would turn itself on… or off. Doors slamming in the middle of the night.

I’ll be honest, as annoying as that may sound, we were pretty stoked. It’s amazing how well earplugs work at shutting out the undead at night!

But there came a tipping point.

It was a Saturday three of four weeks after we brought the haunted sofa into our haunted abode. Dave was in the office when he came running because I let out a blood curdling scream. “What happened?!” he came running into the family room. I should note he asked after he scanned the walls for blood dripping and didn’t see anything disembodied – this is why I love him. I pointed to the floor.

“A book?”

I gave him that look. Oh, I gave him that look so hard he stepped back before he took a closer look. “Oh my God,” he said in appropriate understanding of the gravity of the situation. “Your autographed copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

“It flew off the shelf in front of me,” I said furiously. “And it bent the cover.”

“I see that,” Dave said and picked up the book like you would child that had been in an accident.

“The couch must go.”

Dave took a deep breath. “That’s kind of drastic, Jemma…”

“It bent the cover,” I spoke in a slow terrifying tone.

“Sofa’s gotta go!” Dave agreed. “Umm…”

“What?” I asked tersely.

“Sal (and Sal’s truck) are out of town until Wednesday.”

I ran my hand through my hair, but I think Dave feared for his life because he flinched. “You know what? I’ll back June out of the garage and we’ll put the sofa in there for now!”

“Good call.” Car moved, we hefted the ridiculously heavy sofa outside and into the garage.

We regretted it almost immediately.

A crash in the living room. I came running from the kitchen and Dave from the office.

“What was that?” I asked.

Dave pointed. “Haunted hutch.” Indeed, one door of the haunted hutch swung loosely on its hinge and I could see one of the dollar store plates missing… it had smashed against the opposite wall.

“Well,” I said hopefully, “Maybe it’s got that out of its system?”

Smash as another plate ejected itself at frightening speed and slammed against the wall.

“Or not…”

That night the ear plugs weren’t effective because nothing slammed downstairs. Instead just as we were falling asleep the bed started bouncing and bumping and rocking until we were completely and irreversibly awake. If we dared start to drift off the bed would again start its bucking-bronco impersonation. I’m going to write a sternly worded letter to those Casper people – with a name like that it should allow us to sleep with ghosts!!

We were downstairs the next day and we heard voices coming from down in the basement. It sounded like children chanting a playground song – which, if you don’t have children, is creepy as hell!

“Crap,” I said, “It’s got to be dolls.”

“Son of a bitch,” Dave said pinching the bridge of his nose. “You’re right. And I have to go down there.”

“Teddy?”

“Teddy.”

Dave returned clearly shaken. Face ashen, he clutched Teddy Ruxpin tight to his chest and panted shallowly.

“You okay Dave?”

“No… no… no…”

“No, you’re not alright?” I asked concerned.

“No… no more dolls,” he stammered.

“No problem!” I said heartily. “How’s Teddy?”

“Terrible.” To demonstrate he pressed the button that would “normally” make Teddy’s eyes glow unnaturally red and he would start chanting “Red rum!” Instead, Teddy’s eyes rolled to all-white as he started flatly saying, “Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal…”

“The Gettysburg Address?”

“The goddamn Gettysburg Address.”

We moved the sofa back into the house and the haunted items quieted. Mind you, the sofa kept messing with us. But as soon as it was back in the house I stood in front of the bookshelf and said, “Look, sofa, this is off limits” I spread my arms blocking the bookshelf. “You can have your run of the place – and we know you will – but you leave my books alone.” As if in response our wedding picture fell off the wall and shattered loudly.

“What was that?” Dave asked from the office.

“Wedding photo,” I called back.

“Oh, okay,” he said.

“Glad we understand each other, Sofa.”