The Ghost at 4015

I used to own a little house in Oregon.

I knew it was my house the first time I saw it online. It was exactly what I had seen in my mind’s eye when I first decided to buy a house.

Because of the location, it was outside my budget, but my friend took me to see it. I felt at home immediately. Tiny (660 sq. ft), cozy and dry, with a 1940’s kitchen and hardwood floors. The back yard had 3 big apple trees, and the grounds were covered with a year’s unharvested apples. We dubbed it The Apple House and began working to make it mine.

I don’t know how I was approved for the mortgage. My credit was terrible. I was a single buyer, borrowing from my 401K for the down payment. We were on the verge of a real estate collapse and economic depression.

Still, I closed on October 31, 2008. I rushed to my new home with 2 bags of Baby Ruth bars, a folding chair and a lamp, and welcomed my first trick or treaters to my first home.

I had this feeling, under my ribs, that the former owner helped me to get it.

Her name was Beverly, and later the women who became my neighbors told me I reminded them of her. She died in the house a couple of years earlier, from bladder cancer.

I heard Beverly before I ever saw her. The first night, after moving all the boxes in, I was in bed with my cat Galen, not quite asleep yet.

There was a crash in the spare bedroom.

I got up to see if a box had shifted and found a book on the floor. Everything else seemed stable, so I left it, and went back to bed.

A few minutes later, there was another crash.

Galen left my side and sat at the end of the bed, with his tail curled around his feet. He looked over his shoulder at me, then turned to watch the bedroom door.

Great, I sighed. A ghost.

This wasn’t my first ghost experience, and I recognized the signs (I’ll tell that story another day).

I slept with my bedroom light on. I would ask my shaman friend to clear the house for me soon.

She wasn’t an angry or scary ghost. She knocked things over occasionally or pushed on the artwork. Sometimes, I smelled her.

Have you ever smelled a ghost? The ones I’ve known smell like body odor, or occasionally heavily floral perfume. Beverly (and there is no nice way to say this) smelled like pee.

Galen and I were sitting on the couch, and the distinct smell of human urine hit me. Galen watched something move across the room, then looked up at me, as if to say, “did you see that?” I pet his head, and said don’t worry about that, Galen.

I decided to ignore Beverly. I ignored the swinging artwork, the breeze of urine, the moving shadow in my peripheral vision.

A friend was over, watching TV. “Did you see that?” she asked wide eyed. “A lady walked into the bathroom!”

“Shh,” I said, shaking my head disapprovingly. I felt that acknowledging Beverly would only make her more active.

The activity increased every time I was preparing for guests, or a dinner party. The swinging drawings, the pee smell. It was annoying and distracting.

“She wants to help with the guests,” said my friend who was a shaman.

“I don’t need the help,” I said.

“She knows the house is yours, your energy surrounds the house. It’s like one of those Ferrero Rocher chocolates - your energy is the truffle, and Beverly is like the little hazelnut knocking around in here.”

I told her as much as I liked those chocolates, I wanted Beverly to stop it.

"You'll need to ask her to leave," she said.

"She doesn't need to leave, just stop interfering."

"You need to ask her to leave, if you want to have the home as your own," she said.

So we asked her to leave. My friend did a clearing ritual, and I told her I was grateful she had taken such good care of the house, but it was time for her to go on, and let me take care of it now.

I didn’t hear much from Beverly after that.

Except - Beverly did not like foul language, or unladylike behavior.

A couple of years after the clearing, a friend visited who had a very bawdy sense of humor. She was telling a story, a risqué story, with plenty of descriptive cursing.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the hall mirror begin to sway. I turned away from it - shifting my attention back to my friend, hoping she wouldn’t notice it.

My friend stopped mid-sentence. “Are we gonna talk about the fact that your mirror is going crazy swinging over there on the wall?” she asked, eyes round over her cocktail glass.

I shook my head. “No, just ignore it. It will stop soon.”

She rolled her eyes at me, and we left soon after. She always met me at a bar for cocktails after that.

Also, Beverly did not like Marvin Gaye - the song “Sexual Healing,” specifically. Whenever I put on my Marvin Gaye CD, it skipped and skipped. I bought another - it skipped on that song too. Both CDs played fine in the car.

According to my neighbor, Beverly was a bit of a puritan.

When I decided to sell my home eight years later, I began to feel Beverly again. The old pee smell came back, occasionally. The mirror would swing, and I wondered if it was Beverly’s anxiety about someone new in the house.

“You pick,” I said aloud to her. “You pick, Beverly.”

It was strange to say goodbye to the apple house. I wondered if a part of me would stay there, the same way part of Beverly had.

My closing was scheduled for October 31, 2016.

A young woman, a kindergarten teacher whom I never met, bought the house.

I hope she and Beverly are getting along alright.