Things That Go Splat in the Night

This is a column I wrote that tells about recent conversations I have had with my wife and step-daughter that deal with whether or not our apartment is haunted. It is a humor piece.

My wife and step-daughter tell me that our apartment is haunted.  The stories started when my step-daughter told us about dark creatures looking in her window at her.  While this would otherwise initiate an immediate phone call to the police and serious new locks on the windows�"our apartment is on the second floor with a shear wall on the side where her window is located.  So unless some goon is levitating up to the second floor to stare at little girls, there’s something else going on there.  My step-daughter also has a report of what is known in the paranormal realms (har) as a Shadow Person.  These are folks (or, at least, we think they’re folks) who are nothing but shadow and tend to walk through an area without speaking to anyone.

     My wife has reported hearing things in the apartment that shouldn’t be there (the sound of my keys jingling when I’m not home or clicking and popping sounds coming from somewhere “down the hall”).

     Our apartment complex is only about three years old.  Finding out what was here before then would be easy if I would just go to the courthouse and do the search in the records for what was on this land prior to the building of this apartment complex.  I suppose it is reasonable to assume something was here before.  Our complex is in an older part of Clarksville, and it just seems likely that land along the Red River was at a high premium until the City Sanitation Department decided it would be a good place to dump sewage three times a night.  There are other apartment complexes along our road, several businesses, and Austin Peay State University is a mere stone’s throw (if you’re an NFL-quality QB) from where our apartment complex meets the road.

     So at this point it’s impossible to know if there’s any leftover residue from a past building or housing unit (i.e. house, cardboard box, URL).  And this, of course, leads to a question: What was it that went splat the other night when I was having one of my now-famous sleepless nights?

     The reason this question is significant (other than because I got a column out of it) is:  I am what is known as a psychic wet blanket.  I don’t “perceive” anything paranormal.  I do have a bell sound that goes off in my left ear when a demonic presence is near, but other than that alarm system, I don’t have a high sensitivity to paranormal happenings without highly scientific test equipment (i.e. a microphone, a tape recorder, an 8-track playback machine and a gramophone).  As the story goes, I was sitting at my desk working hard on a game solitaire when all of a sudden, splat!

     What would you think if you heard such a sound coming from a dark kitchen at three in the morning?  You would probably think that the watermelon rhine you cleaned in July and were saving for your child’s April science fair project had fallen from its perch on top of the refrigerator.  You might also think it was that evening’s main course being pushed out of the refrigerator by gremlins that closed the door when they were done.  If you thought the second thing, you’ve got what happened with the splat.  I walked, wary but brave, into the area of the kitchen (i.e. behind the dining room table) and noticed a slightly shiny metal object lying in the middle of the kitchen floor.  Turning on the kitchen light revealed it to be the leftover chicken we had roasted for supper that night sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor.  It did not have legs, and it did not resemble the Virgin Mary.  It simply lay there, motionless.  This doesn’t explain how it leaped (or rolled or was pushed) off the second shelf inside the refrigerator and landed on the kitchen floor.  This didn’t explain how many gremlins it took to push it out of the icebox (it took three, but the way: one to push, one to pull, one to whistle an Irish dirge as the chicken plummeted to the floor).  It didn’t even wink or wave when I turned on the light to let me know that it knew that I knew it wasn’t normal chicken.  It just sat there, cold and beginning to drip with the condensation of going from cold to warmer than cold.  So I picked up the chicken, replaced the now-dirty aluminum foil, and placed it back in the fridge�"on the top shelf just to be sure.  I closed the door, then opened it again quickly to make sure the light was still working to the gremlins wouldn’t come back (we all know how gremlins hate fridge lights).

     Then I went back into my office (after turning off those lights…my step-daughter would have my hide if I’d left them on with no one in the kitchen) and finished crafting a column about Halloween parties for grownups (which you’ve at least seen posted if you haven’t read it yet).

Now, I know I have some strange habits left over from my days in radio that bring holidays a lot sooner than most humans can stand.  For example, I start listening to Christmas music around my birthday (August 21^st).  This is because sales for Christmas advertising in radio begin in August, and as a former production director, it was my job to make sure that the clients who wanted to hear their ads before the aired heard them in all their Christmas glory.  So I would listen to Christmas music on my Walkman so as not to scare anyone else into thinking they’d lost a few months and be ready to be filled with Christmas cheer when I cut the spots.

     But that one habit doesn’t justify creepy, spooky chicken episodes being allowed to happen when I’m the only one awake to witness them.  I mean, you’d think the gremlins would wait until my wife and step-daughter were up at three in the morning to launch the chicken from the fridge.  But no.  They did it all for me.

     Now I’m just waiting for a Shadow Person to come walking in my office one night to tell me my phone rang while I was in the bathroom.

 

Author's Note

I'm looking for all input. This is my first time posting anything I've written in the humor category and I would appreciate all opinions on what you think of it or how it might be better.