Ghost

Is the supernatural real or imagined?

I was behind the couch when I saw the ghost. She was roughly my age but smaller, with a fair complexion, blonde hair, and greyish blue eyes. She wore a long white dress, and she looked at me, conspiratorially, the way children do when they are in cahoots, before making the universal hand signal to stay hush with an index finger placed over the blush of her smiling mouth.

My cousins and I were playing hide-and-seek at our aunt’s house, which was rumored to be haunted. The ghost did not linger. Like a match struck in a dark room, she was there and then gone. Her appearance was so ephemeral that I doubted my eyesight. I told no one what—or who—I had seen, or thought I had seen.

Recently, I texted my aunt to see if she could verify the address of that house. I told her I was writing a story about the paranormal. I did not mention having seen a ghost. Of the address she was unsure, but she told me apropos, via text message, that the house was built on the property of a former orphanage and that her sister, who lived in that house for many years, used to hear footsteps, and that once she saw a girl wearing “old-style lace-up shoes and a long dress.”

When I read those words on my phone, a chill spread over me, as if someone was running a fingernail along my spine. I guess my eyesight didn’t fail me, after all. I, too, saw the girl in the long dress.