A Ghost Story

My wallet disappeared during this past week.  It wasn’t lost.  It was not stolen.  It simply disappeared.

My good friend and house helper, Rita, saw me as I held the wallet in my hand and asked her if I should pay her for her services that day.  She decided I should wait until Friday, when she planned to return.  So, I closed the wallet with the magnets it has and tossed it into my red purse.  Just that day, I had changed purses from the black one I usually carry to the red one that would go with me as I travel in December.  I figured that I would know where the red one was at all times, better than the black one.  The red purse into which I tossed the wallet was sitting on the floor in front of the loveseat that I have in the living room.  Rita left and I continued with my day of work on the house.

The next day, I had lunch with another friend at a local Perkins restaurant.  My friend had to go back to work; I planned to pay for our lunch – an early Christmas gift since both of us will be gone in December.  I looked in the red purse for my wallet that had cash and could not find it in the red purse!  I looked again and again.  I could not imagine why is was not there.  Both Rita and I had seen it as I tossed it into the red purse.  Perhaps, I thought, it fell out in the car.  No.

I told Steve (the restaurant manager) that I would go home to see if it had fallen onto the floor in front of the loveseat.  And, thanked God that, because I frequent the restaurant a lot, he knows me well and did not demand my first born as collateral.  At home, I searched around and under the loveseat and in other parts of the living room.  Not there, either!  Understand that I don’t usually panic.  But, I have to admit that panic was about to set in.  As I realized all of the pieces of important documentation that are in that wallet … I’d say that panic REALLY WAS ABOUT TO SET IN.

I called Rita to see if she had any ideas of where the errant wallet might be; she repeated to me what I already knew.  The wallet should be in my red purse.  How many times I looked in the car almost tearing it apart or how many times I looked in the area where the red purse was, I can’t really say.  We do that, you know.  Look in those same places, again and again; willing the object to be there.  The wallet was no where to be found.

So, here comes the part where I risk losing some of my readers because you think I’m out of my mind.  Some might say “crazy.”  I recently gave a presentation to one of the organizations that I belong to.  The topic was “Ghosts.”  Many of our members had their own ghost stories.  I shared books, as well as stories of my own.

What I need to tell you is that I have a spirit who lives with me.  A ghost you may say.  But, a spirit, nevertheless.  I know when she is here when I smell her perfume.  A young woman’s perfume.  What I smell is definitely not my perfume.  I wear the same perfume, all of the time.  I don’t know how I’m sure that she is female (perhaps, the female perfume) and that her name is Jenny.  But, I do.  She attached herself to me when I was a school superintendent on the Eastern Plains of Colorado.  I lived by myself in the house provided by the school district.  Coda lived with me – a beautiful dog of part Australian shepherd and part golden retriever with two very blue eyes.  One evening, we were in the room I called the TV room.  She jumped onto the couch, stood with her front paws digging into my leg, looked at the rocking chair in the corner, and growled a low, cautionary growl.  The hair all along her back was standing straight up.  The next time I entered my bedroom and crossed the threshold of the room, I smelled the perfume for the first time.

It became common place for me to smell her perfume.  She was not malevolent.  She was just there.  And, Coda knew, as well.  Time came when I moved away from the school to return to the university to work on a doctoral degree.  However, living in Greeley, first in a trailer house and, then, in a house that belonged to an older lady living in a hospice, Jenny was no longer with me.  I worked at Hewlett-Packard after leaving my university program and moved to a cabin up in Devil’s Gulch close to Estes Park.

One evening, I returned home from work, and there was the perfume.  Jenny had found me.  She lived with me for several months.  I think she liked my jewelry because there were occasions when I would reach for a piece to wear to work, and it wouldn’t be there.  Specifically, one Friday morning, I planned to wear a certain pair of earrings, and they were not in the box where I kept them.  I very sternly said to her that she could live in my house, but when I wanted to wear my jewelry, it had better be there.  I wanted those earrings returned to their proper place by the time I returned on Monday after work.  I spent Friday at work, drove to my home to spend  the weekend at home with Larry, and Monday, I drove back to H-P for work.  That night, it was dark by the time I was back at the cabin.  I looked for the earrings – they were there.

She stayed with me in the cabin until the evening I arrived from work, prepared to go to sleep, climbed into bed, where the sheets reeked of a man’s cologne.  So much so that I almost had to change the sheets.  I yelled – yes, yelled – at her, telling her that she was never to bring a man into my house, again.  I did not smell her perfume, again, for the rest of the time I lived in the cabin.

When I left Hewlett­Packard in Loveland, I was home for about six months before I smelled Jenny’s perfume.  It was at that time that I decided it took her about six months to find me when I moved.  Larry never really believed that a spirit could walk on earth.  I suppose that is the way he was raised.  I’m not even sure his mind changed when the incident with his lunch box lids occurred.

On a Saturday, he called me to the pantry in the kitchen to demand what I had done with all of the lids for his lunch boxes.  He always made his lunch to take to work, and the lids to his lunch boxes (he had about five) were all missing.  My first and most immediate suspicion was that Jenny had taken them.  So, I scolded her, telling her in my stern teacher voice that she could wear my jewelry but she was to leave Larry’s stuff alone  And, I walked away.  The following Saturday, Larry called me to the pantry, again, saying, “You’re not going to believe this!”  The lids were back.  Even though Larry accused me of putting them back, I had not.  They had simply reappeared.

Other incidents occurred.  Sometime with witnesses; sometimes, not.  I won’t relate any of them here, but I want to tell you about the wallet incident of this past week.  Rita was at my house working on Wednesday.  The wallet was discovered missing on Thursday.  All day Friday was spent figuring out what cards and documents were in the wallet and preparing to get duplicates of them.  Driver’s license.  Insurance cards (two).  Costco card.  Library cards.  Monarch card.  Cash.  Etc., etc., etc.  Perhaps, the most valuable document in this world of the pandemic – the verification card of my Moderna vaccines.  Gone.  All gone!  Friend Susan helped me find my passport to start the replacement process.  How do you get anything replaced without identification – a photo ID?

Thursday evening, again using my best “teacher voice,” I told Jenny that if the wallet didn’t show up by Friday evening, she would have to leave my house – forever!  And, I meant it.  I cannot have this kind of thing happening.  Ever again.

Rita came to work with me at about 5 PM on Friday.  She spent time, once again searching for the wallet and not finding it.  The loss of the wallet so disturbed her that she did not sleep well, Thursday night.  We set to work on the cleaning and organizing of the house, getting me ready for my trip to Wisconsin. I went into my TV room to clear away some paperwork.

I moved a box lid that was nested in another box lid.  Out of the bottom box lid, hidden by the top box lid dropped the wallet.

Partly opened.  Not closed with the magnets that hold it closed.  There it was!  Concealed in that box lid!  I did not move the wallet from my red purse and hide it inside a box lid under another box lid.  I did not!  So, how did it get there?  I believe that Jenny had a hand in this event.  So, thank you Jenny.  You are welcome to stay here with me.

I told you I am not losing my mind.  I am not deranged.  And, yes, I have a spirit who lives with me.  A ghost, if you will.  I want you to think back to things that have happened in your life.  Happenings that occurred for which there was no explanation.  Times when you said – That’s funny.  How did that happen?  My hope is that we can open our thinking to understand that there is more in heaven and earth than we can conceive of in our philosophy.

Do you have a “ghost story” that you’d care to share?  I think my friends to whom I recently made the presentation were happy to share their stories and know that they are not alone in this phenomenon.

Note:  all of these photographs are staged to  demonstrate what happened in our search.

Be Safe and Well

The Cranky Crone

Thoughtful comments are greatly appreciated.