My Ghost Story

Since it is getting to be that time of year, I decided I ought to share a ghost story. Get your Depends on and gather around the campfire kids, because unlike Paranormal Activity, these are actually REAL experiences had by yours truly. And I mean freaky-real. And I'm not lying. Are you on the edge of your seat yet?

One night when my daughter was about 6 months old (which would have been about two years ago, give or take) I was home alone with her and we were in the bathroom. It was late in the evening, just before bedtime, and I was giving her a bath before we called it a night. Suddenly, without warning, a rubber duck hit me in the face - ok, that wasn't a ghost, that was just Lainey. But immediately following the duck assault I was overcome by the smell of men's cologne. I don't mean a whiff, I mean it surrounded me in a cloud similar to one you'd find in a bar on college night. *Important Story Note: My husband does not wear cologne. He has scented deoderant but that's where his affiliation with Old Spice ends.*

Naturally, I was terrified by the sudden odorous onslaught and I immediately slammed the bathroom door shut and locked it, positive that there was a strange man in my house. I sat on the floor shaking, trying to determine what my strategy should be. Of course this particular bathtime found me without my cell phone (which was charging away happily downstairs), and the only other exit was out the 2nd story window. I could go MacGyver and fashion a zipline out of a wet towel and the electrical line that connected to our house. Wait, wet towel and electricity? Not to mention that this would require my daughter to cling to my back koala-bear style. Ok, scratch Plan A.

I could recreate the scene from Panic Room where she opens the door and runs for her phone before they get to her, but I did not have the benefit of 360 degree security cameras to aid me so unless I had a 2x4 and came out swingin' I wouldn't stand much of a chance. So much for Plan B.

I probably sat on the floor of that bathroom for at least an hour, deliberating on what to do. I did finally remove Lainey from the bathtub before she shriveled away into a tiny pink raisin, and with her sitting on my lap I decided to go through every drawer and cabinet in the bathroom just to make sure that the cologne wasn't something my husband had stashed away. This took up another half hour and turned up unsuccessful.

By this point my daughter was so beyond tired that her exhaustion-induced tantrum could have easily taken the place of a fancy security alarm. And I couldn't stay locked in there forever....so with Lainey in one hand and some spray can of cleaning foam in the other (to douse the intruders eyes with) I boldly left the bathroom and found....




.....absolutely nothing. My cats were snoozing comfortably on the sofa, my doors and windows were all intact, not a thing was out of place.

To this very day, I have no idea what exactly happened that night. But the smell of that cologne was so vivid that I would have no problem picking it out of a lineup even now.

I had sort of let that experience fall back into the recesses of my brain - until about two weeks ago, that is. Around 5am I was literally awoken from my sleep by yet another overwhelming smell - but this time, it was of a woman's perfume. *Important Story Note: I do not wear perfume. Not only do I find that most of them give me allergic headaches, but even if I did enjoy them I don't believe that wearing some to bed is proper protocol*. A quick (and slightly disoriented) scan of the room revealed no one. The bedroom door was not even so much as cracked. I could have checked the closet, but considering the obnoxious squeak of the closet door coupled with the fact that opening it would have sent a mountain of baby clothes down on the intruder, I determined it to be a non-issue. Both my husband and my children continued to snooze away happily, oblivious to the strange happenings. I sat in bed and watched the room, in the dark, for a long while before I eventually fell back asleep.

Two eerily different and yet freakishly similar experiences, with no explanation for either of them. I am nearly certain, after replaying both in my head eleventeen thousand times, that they must be spirit-related. Is it someone who used to live here? Is it my grandparents stopping by for a visit? If so, why did they choose a scent to make their presence known? Perhaps I may never know...but at least I can be thankful that they didn't take on demonic voices and throw me across the room.

*Unimportant Yet Spooky Story Note: As I sit here writing this, there is an owl hooting somewhere very close to my bedroom window.*