When Ghosts Speak - Mary Ann Winkowski [39]
I first met Donna and Maureen when they called to ask me about some problems they were having in their shop. I visited and cleared the business of various ghosts who had been attached to furniture acquired at auctions and estate sales.
Donna and Maureen loved to go to the auctions. At one particularly high-end sale, they came upon a collection of Rolex watches that was being broken up and sold. A significant wedding anniversary was coming up for both couples (I’m sure you’re not surprised that they married in a double ceremony), and each woman decided to buy her husband an antique watch. Although the bidding for the watches was spirited, they were able to get the two they had picked out.
The watches were only a few years apart in age, but were similar in appearance with only slightly different details. On the drive home, the women talked about how sure they each were that they’d bought exactly the right watch for their husbands. But then Donna mentioned that, although she liked her watch better, she actually preferred the box that Maureen’s watch had come in. Maureen laughed and said that it was funny, but she preferred Donna’s box. So they switched boxes. That night, after a group dinner, they gave their husbands the watches.
From that moment on, nothing went right in their homes. The building where they lived was a new one. It shouldn’t have had all the problems it did, but they were relentless. The basements flooded, the furnace broke, and the ceilings developed cracks. It seemed as if their home was crumbling around them. As if that weren’t stressful enough, the four friends started fighting. Things got so tense that the brothers and sisters moved in with each other.
Donna and Maureen were still going to the shop together, and one day it occurred to one of them that when they were in the shop, they weren’t as angry at each other. I got a call from them that afternoon asking me if I thought they might have a ghost at the house.
That night I stopped by Donna’s side of the duplex. Sure enough, there was a ghost going back and forth between the two homes. It was the original owner of the fancy watches. And boy, was he was a fussbudget! He told me about how much care he had put into his collection when he was alive. Now he was worried that his watches were not going to be happy if they were in different boxes.
“The serial numbers that match the watch are on the box, you know,” he told me, wringing his hands.
I only wish all my cases were this simple to handle. I had the women switch boxes in front of the ghost. Then I made the Light, and he went right into it.
Attachments to Cars
Another type of earthbound spirit I frequently encounter is that of a man who just can’t bear to leave his beloved car behind. I can’t tell you how many times a widow, remembering her late husband, will say to me: “I swear he loved that Buick/Oldsmobile/Corvette as much as he loved me.” I don’t usually have the heart to tell her that her suspicions are completely correct.
I once got a call from a woman whose husband’s behavior was driving her crazy. She suspected that he was having an affair and that he was, in fact, trying to drive her out of the house. She recounted several instances when—with her husband out of town—she’d hear banging in the garage and go downstairs to find the garage door wide open. Once, she’d found that the door that led from the garage into the house was unlocked as well. The last straw came when, after locking the house up