Welcome to Macabre Miscellanea, a curated collection
of creepy curiosities. Tonight, we have a practical
man with a practical problem. Three ghosts in
his house. A man, a woman, a little girl. None
pay rent. They keep moving his things, drink
his beer. There are worse roommates, but there
also happens to be fates worse than haunting.
I'll leave it to you. to decide which side of
that equation applies here. Tonight's tale, ghost
story. Turn down the lights. Let's begin. Hi,
my name's Flint, and my house is haunted. I know
how that sounds. I'm not one of those guys. I
don't burn sage or talk to crystals or watch
those shows where some idiot with a... Thermal
camera creeps through a dark hallway and acts
surprised when the thermal camera picks something
up. I'm a practical man. I fix things when they
break. I have a label maker. But I've got three
ghosts, and I've counted them more than once.
And three is what I keep coming up with. I've
never told anybody about this before, mainly
because I don't got anyone to tell. I live a
solitary life, if you can even call it a life.
Don't get out much, just home and work. I sit
in front of a computer all day and in front of
my TV at night, and that's pretty much the whole
of it. Same thing every day. I'm so entrenched
in my routine, I don't think even dying could
interrupt it. I don't got friends to tell, and
I'm not one of those guys who needs to... cry
about his feelings on a podcast or whatever,
but I feel like I need to tell somebody before
I go completely nuts. A guy could lose his mind
living in my place. Don't get me wrong. I'm completely
stable. No dogs giving me instructions or anything
like that. I just need to get this out. Maybe
I should just move. But who am I kidding? I should
tell you about the job first because it's relevant.
I work in data processing, have for a long time,
long enough that I've stopped counting, which
is probably its own kind of warning sign. I sit
in my cubicle, stare at my screen, don't talk
to my co -workers, and they don't talk to me,
and at the end of the day I go home. I like it
that way. You stay under the radar. Nobody asks
you to do things. The days blur together, even
before any of this. One Tuesday is pretty much
every Tuesday, and that stopped bothering me
sometime around year four. It's like being invisible,
but on purpose. I get home right after sunset,
same as always. Up before dawn, home after dark.
I can't remember the last time I saw a natural
light through my own windows on a day I wasn't
at work. Between the commute and the cubicle
and the TV, it's all just inside. One long inside.
It's really killing me, if I'm being honest.
But a guy's got to make a living. So, the ghosts.
There's a family of them. which I did not see
coming. A man, a woman, and their little girl.
They don't interact with me, and mostly don't
interact with each other, which honestly describes
most families I've met. So maybe that part's
not so supernatural. The man I've got no name
for yet. He's younger than I expected. Late.
thirties, which, if you're going to haunt somebody's
couch for eternity, seems like a real waste of
an eternity. He's got the build of a guy who
was athletic once and then discovered couches,
parks himself on mine every night, takes the
remote, watches whatever's on. I come home and
he's already there, settled in like he paid for
the place, flipping channels like he's looking
for Something he knows he's not going to find.
I have a system with the remote. I keep it next
to my easy chair where I can reach it without
moving, which is the whole point of a remote
control. But every night I get home and it's
on the couch next to him. Every single night.
I've started hiding it. He finds it anyway. The
little girl I usually find asleep on the couch.
Eight or nine. Blonde hair, the kind of face
you'd put on a greeting card. Little pajamas
with the feet in them. She shows up after he
does. Falls asleep at the other end of the couch,
and that's her whole evening. Honestly, out of
the three of them, she's the least aggravating.
She's quiet. She sleeps. I could use more roommates
like that. The woman I'll get to. The woman is
a whole other situation. Three ghosts, all of
them convinced they live here. None of them paying
a dime toward the mortgage. Welcome to my house.
The first real incident was a Tuesday, I think.
Like I said, they blur. I got home the usual
time. Right after sunset, dead on my feet the
way I always am. Dropped my keys on the hook
by the door. I'm particular about my keys. I
like them on the hook, not on the counter. Not
in my pocket. On the hook. And went straight
to the fridge for a beer. No beer. I could have
sworn I had a six -pack in there. But the fridge
had a Coke, some leftover something I... couldn't
identify and a general attitude of disappointment.
I took the coke. Fine. I've had worse Tuesdays.
I went into the living room to catch the news
and the TV was already on. Channel 11. Some home
improvement show. A guy in Arizona explaining
why you'd want travertine over ceramic in a high
-traffic kitchen. I don't have a high -traffic
kitchen. I don't really have a kitchen. I have
a room with a fridge in it that I pass through
on the way to the couch. I know I didn't turn
it on. I'm not that far gone. I switched to 6
for the news and sat down in my easy chair. Before
my second cheek hit the cushion, it flipped back
to 11. I switched it back to 6. Back to 11. I
figured the remote was acting up. I just bought
the thing, which is exactly when electronics
decide to develop a personality. So I got up
to change it manually. I'm standing there at
the TV, finger on the button, 6 o 'clock, when
I hear from behind me, What the hell? I turned
around. There's a man on my couch. Late 30s.
maybe 40, the build of a former athlete who has
made his peace with the couch. Sitting up now,
holding my remote, looking at me with an expression
like I'm the one who doesn't belong here. My
first thought was vagrant. Some guy found an
unlocked door and helped himself to my living
room and my beer and my remote control. And now
he's looking at me like I'm the problem. I said,
loudly, what the hell are you doing in my house?
He pointed the remote at me and flipped it back
to 11. I want you to understand the nerve of
that, the sheer breathtaking nerve. Breaks into
my house, drinks all my beer, takes my remote,
and when I confront him, he changes the channel
at me like I'm the one who needs to be managed.
I grabbed a vase off the end table, not one I
was attached to, I've never been a vase guy,
I think it came with the place, and smashed it
on the floor and told him to get out before I
called the cops. He bolted, off the couch, out
the door, gone so fast I barely saw him move.
I stood there a second, vase pieces on the floor,
coke in my hand, news on the TV. I remember thinking
it was strange, a guy like that running so hard
from a cop threat. But I was tired, and the news
was on, so I sat down. The news was on for exactly
four minutes before it switched back to Channel
11. I went to bed. After the remote incident,
I figured I had my answer. Vagrant. Case closed.
Weird night. Moved on. Except the TV kept switching
to 11. Every night, come home, flip it to 6,
sit down. Five minutes later, back to the home
improvement guy and his opinions about tile.
I bought a new remote. Same thing. I unplugged
the TV entirely one night and went to bed. And
when I came back downstairs in the morning, it
was plugged back in and on channel 11. I stopped
fighting it. I know more about backsplash tile
than any man should. A few nights later, I fell
asleep in my chair. Don't even remember doing
it. One minute, the game was on. Next minute,
I'm waking up to a living room gone quiet and
dark, except for the TV doing its late -night
thing. Infomercials, mostly, except it kept cycling
back to some documentary. about the 1969 World
Series, like that's what people want at two in
the morning. No idea who won. Don't care. I flipped
it off and got up to head to bed. That's when
I saw her. Little girl, asleep on my couch. Blonde
hair, face like a Kewpie doll. Little blue pajamas
with the feet in them. Sound asleep, one arm
hanging off the cushion. I've heard of leaving
babies on doorsteps. I have not heard of leaving
a sleeping child on a stranger's couch while
the stranger is sitting four feet away watching
the same TV. I crouched down next to the couch,
close enough to see she was breathing, and tried
to figure out my next move. She must have felt
me there because her eyes opened, still half
asleep, blinking slow. the way kids do when they're
not quite back in their bodies yet. She sat up,
rubbed her eyes with both fists, swung her little
legs off the couch, like she knew exactly where
she was going. I got down to her level. Hey,
pumpkin, you okay? Where'd you come from? She
didn't even look at me, just stood up and...
started walking, still mostly asleep, heading
for the doorway where I was crouched. I figured
she was going to walk into me, so I stayed put,
thinking the contact would wake her up enough
to tell me something useful, like whose kid she
was and how she got into my house. She walked
through me instead. And I mean through. Not around.
Through. It felt warm, like standing over a heating
vent on a cold morning. That specific warmth
that comes up from the floor lasted half a second,
and then she was past me and gone up the stairs,
and I was still crouched in the doorway, frozen,
and I believe I may have wet my pants. I'd like
to tell you I handled it with dignity. I did
not. Then the shock hit me. Not the electrical
kind, the other kind. The kind where the world
slips sideways and you're somewhere else entirely.
35 years. 35 goddamn years. And they let him
go. No seniority, nothing. Not one of those 35
years meant a thing when it came right down to
it. Budget cuts, they said. Restructuring. And
now what? Back on the job market. At his age,
he'd almost rather... Then I was back on my floor,
kneeling in my own living room with wet pants
and a heart rate that had some serious catching
up to do. I have no idea whose thoughts those
were. My whole life has been the same job. I've
never been laid off. Never had to think about
going back on the job market. I sat down on the
couch where the girl had been and stared at the
wall. Call a priest? Call a doctor? Call someone
who handles both? My legs didn't have it in them
to make it upstairs, so I pulled the throw blanket
off the back of the couch, turned the TV back
on, and slept right there with the lights on.
The home improvement guy was still going when
I woke up. From that night on, weird was just
the nightly forecast. A few nights after the
girl situation, I went upstairs to get a shower
like I always do after work. Force of habit.
You come home. You clean up. You feel like a
person. Again. Done it the same way my whole
life. And I wasn't about to stop. Just because
my house had become a way station. for the recently
deceased i did what i needed to do stood in front
of the mirror to shave and that's when the door
opened woman mid -thirties dark hair bathrobe
walked in like she owned the place which to be
fair to her from her perspective she probably
did and didn't even clock me standing there with
half my face covered in shaving cream looking
like Kenny Rogers. I pressed myself back against
the sink as far as I could without actually climbing
into it. After the girl, I wasn't taking any
chances. The last thing I wanted was another
round of the warm, fuzzy feeling and its associated
consequences. So I stayed very still and watched
her walk to the shower, drop the robe, and turn
the water on. I'll say one thing for her. She
had a nice rack for a dead girl. I'm not proud
of that thought. I'm just telling you what happened.
I grabbed my razor and my shaving cream and took
the whole operation down to the kitchen sink,
which is not ideal, but considerably better than
the alternative. I found something out that night,
though. Ghosts can feel temperature. I know this
because... When I turned the hot water on in
the kitchen, I could hear her all the way upstairs,
carrying on like I'd done it on purpose. I mean,
maybe I left it on a little longer than necessary.
But that's between me and the hot water heater,
so that was my life for a while. Come home, fight
over the remote. Lose, watch tile. Find things
moved, put them back. Find them moved. Again.
The remote kept migrating to the couch. My keys
they liked on the kitchen counter instead of
the hook by the door. My wallet. They kept moving
from the dresser to the nightstand. Which is
not where my wallet goes. My wallet goes on the
dresser. I've kept it there my entire adult life.
And I see no reason to change now. Every night,
I'd put everything back exactly where it belonged.
And every night, they'd move it again like we
were playing the world's most pointless game.
I started hiding things. Didn't help. They found
them anyway. And the mess. God, the mess. I'd
come home to dishes in the sink, shoes in the
hallway. The general state of someone lives here
that... I did not authorize. I'm not a neat freak,
but I have a system, and the system was being
systematically dismantled by people who were
technically not even alive. The worst was the
dining room table. I came home one night and
the whole thing was buried in tax forms and receipts,
stacks of them spread out like someone had been
working through them all day. which I suppose
they had, from their point of view, most already
filled out in handwriting that wasn't mine. The
name on everything was Gaines, Robin Tammy Gaines.
I had to gather up every one of those forms and
take them down to the furnace, when I should
have been watching the news and having a cold
one, standing there feeding someone else's tax
documents into the fire. Mr. and Mrs. Gaines,
I really think you're going to love this house.
leading a young couple through rooms I knew like
the back of my hand. My rooms. My hallway. My
living room. My scratch on the hardwood near
the stairs. This is my house. What the hell is
she doing showing my house? The young guy, Rob,
I guess, looked around with the expression of
a man doing math he already knew the answer to.
His wife was small, dark -haired, the kind of
pretty that's going to hold up. She was already
imagining where the furniture would go. People
do that. Walk into a place and start moving things
around in their heads before they've even asked
about the water pressure. We'll take it, Rob
said. Didn't even have to ask her. The realtor
smiled the smile of a woman about to make a commission.
Wonderful. Now, just for full disclosure, it's
not a big deal, really, but the previous owner...
Then I was back in my basement with a fistful
of ashes and the furnace ticking down. Previous
owner. I stood there a minute. Then I went upstairs
and watched the tile guy. Some things you file
away to think about later and later. never comes.
That's just how it goes. A man's got a routine.
Then came Thanksgiving. I came home one night
to the dining room table spread out like a magazine
photo. Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet
potatoes, corn, the works, six -place settings,
candles lit. If I was on death row, I'd request
the same thing. Maybe with a couple cold ones
on the side. I figured they were expecting company.
Their company, not mine. But the food was there,
and I hadn't eaten a real meal in, I couldn't
remember how long, actually, ages. So I sat down
and helped myself. I ate half that table. It
was good, too. Really good. The kind of meal
that reminds you what... food is supposed to
taste like. I was feeling pretty charitable toward
my ghostly roommates, right up until my stomach
started making noises like a backed -up drain.
Then came the cramps. I spent the rest of the
night in my easy chair, sweating and moaning,
curled around my midsection, convinced I was
dying. Which, looking back, It's funnier than
it felt at the time. They'd had enough of me.
I can see that now. An uninvited house guest
who fights you for the remote, runs cold water
while you're in the shower, sits down, and eats
half your Thanksgiving dinner without being asked.
From their side of things, I was the problem.
I was the haunting. They started packing. I came
home one night and the whole place was in boxes.
My stuff, all of it, packed up neat and labeled.
Every box marked the same way. Ship to Rob and
Tammy Gaines. The nerve. The absolute nerve.
Bad enough they'd been moving my wallet and drinking
my beer and commandeering my remote for months.
Now they were boxing up my belongings. and shipping
them off to themselves like I was the one who
needed to go. Conceited bastards, the lot of
them. This is my house. I'm not getting evicted
by a family of corpses. I unpacked everything.
Put it all back exactly where it belonged. Every
item in its right place. Wallet on the dresser.
Keys on the hook. Remote next to my chair. Took
me. Half the night. They packed it again. I unpacked
it again. This went on four times. Four times
they packed up their lives. And four times I
put my things back where they went. Because this
is my house. And I'm not going anywhere. By the
fourth time the fight had gone out of them, the
boxes stayed empty after that. Well, that's my
story. I wish I could give you some kind of epiphany
at the end of it. A white light. A deep truth.
Some wisdom I picked up along the way. But I've
got nothing like that for you. Just a man and
his house and the people who keep moving through
it. They're not the same ones anymore. That's
the thing I didn't expect. The Gaines family
moved on eventually. Even they couldn't stay
forever, I guess. New ones come. They stay a
while. Drive me crazy. Move on. It's like living
next to a bus stop. I'm still here, though. I
keep thinking I should move. Get a fresh start
somewhere. But who am I kidding? I can't move
on. I'm too much of a creature of habit for that.
And that was Ghost Story. A man so entrenched
in his routine that not even death could interrupt
it. The tragedy isn't the haunting. It's that
he never noticed the difference. If you want
more, follow Macabre Miscellanea here. And if
you prefer your nightmares with visuals, the
full video version is on YouTube. Until next
time, remember, the lights were never on for
you.