Poltergeist

Bill writes: During the past few weeks, we had thought we were being haunted by an unfriendly spirit. We'd hear strange sounds in the middle of the night, clatterings and bangings from down the hall in our flat. In the morning, we'd invariably find our most personal belongings strewn about the bathrooms. In its distemper, someone, or more accurately, some thing would have thrown my deodorant into the waste can, Aline's hair brush into the bathtub, or--oh perverse spirit!--our dental floss or toothpaste into the open toilet.

The most reasonable assumption was that a poltergeist had taken lodgings in our bathroom, and that our medicine cabinet had become a home to some troubled and angry soul trapped between this world and the next. Well, in the spirit of things, I determined to photograph our aetherial wanderer during one of its nightly disturbances. I made sure I kept my camera at the ready. Then, late one night, I heard the unmistakable turmoil and clattering of that ghostly marauder. Gathering my courage--and my nightshirt--tight about me, I proceeded down the hall, camera in hand, ready to capture whatever image this creature of the beyond presented. Firming myself to the dreadful task, I stretched out one arm at length, letting the camera peer into the bathroom where I dared not, and pressed the trigger.

I had captured the ghost in the medicine chest:



While we have grown to accept that we must live with this continuing evil presence, we have also learned to close the toilet lid before retiring for the night.