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10:46 a.m. - Tuesday, Apr. 18, 2006
MsLeslie Writes to a Ghost
Dear Mr. A;

I should begin this letter, perhaps, with some sad and slightly disturbing news: You are dead. I thought I should tell you, in case you hadn�t noticed.

You died in this house several years ago after what must have seemed to you like an endless imprisonment in your own body after you had your stroke. Your daughter took care of you until the end, then she sold this house to me almost a year ago.

I did not like your daughter. I might as well be honest about it. She was a very difficult seller and as I�ve lived here, I�ve discovered that she did nothing to preserve or maintain the house. It�s going to take me a long time and a lot of money to make this into the truly comfortable home I so desire. It�s also going to take a kind of minor exorcism to dispel the negative energy she left hanging like a cloud of decay in and around every room. I am dealing with that in my own way. Soon, her influence will be here no more.

I think I would have liked you, though. Although we never met personally, I�ve come to feel that I know something about you:

I know you bought this home in 1965, the year it was built, and I think you must have been very proud. I still see the signs of that pride in every room. In the living room, it shows in the wall of cabinets and book shelves you built with your own hands. The built-in speakers are still there, waiting to be hooked to an old-style LP record player. The built-in desk holds my bills and postage stamps. In my bedroom it�s the same with the combination vanity and closets you made.

I�ll tell you the truth; I think you were a better builder than cabinetmaker. It�s easy to see that you worked hard and put a lot of yourself into your projects, but you chose inexpensive wood that did not deserve to be used in cabinetry. Perhaps you didn�t make a lot of money and so you were doing the best you could with what you had. On the other hand, The two-car garage you added is excellent, and the covered patio with its massive posts and cantilevered rafters, double-strapped against hurricanes is the best I�ve ever seen. I think you probably noticed that even hurricane Katrina could not touch it.
Well, I won�t bore you by going into every detail. Just know that I see you every day in the work you left behind. I have a lot of respect for your hard work and the love you had for this property which is so very evident.

It�s that love, I think, that makes it so difficult for you to leave.

I was not the first to notice you here. You see, I don�t believe in ghosts, so I am very apt to find other explanations for the noises I hear when I am alone, or the moving shapes and shadows I see from the corner of my eye.

It was Gumbo, the Boston Terrier who announced your presence. He is normally so mellow that he could be in a coma. His only desire is to sleep on or near Ann, the lady who has spent so much time here, both with me and alone. It was when she was alone here, watching TV one night that Gumbo alerted and went into a frenzy of protective barking. It was very strange for a dog who watched placidly while two men ransacked my apartment shortly before I moved here. Anyway, Gumbo continues to bark at things unseen occasionally when he is here, which then makes Ann a lot more sensitive to the things she hears. I�ve told her that the unexplained noises will most certainly diminish once I replace my old clunky water heater, but to be honest, There are a few things I hear that I can�t explain, and doors I find open and closed that were not made so by me�. and I am pretty sure you have stolen somehow my new green lawn rake.

As I said before, I don�t believe in ghosts. I am an atheist and therefore believe only in futility and oblivion. But you see, it�s my atheism that compels me to write this letter to you. I�ll try to explain briefly:

As an atheist, I must accept that my existence is an accident; the product of a very tiny probability that I would spring from nothing. But you see, no matter how small the probability of an occurrence, given an eternity, that same occurrence becomes a certainty. Isn�t that funny? As it turns out, since I had an endless amount of time to do it, it was always certain that I would appear sooner or later.

And so it is with gods and ghosts.

My loony philosophy will not allow me to say that there is, was, or will be no God, nor will it allow me to say that your existence as a ghost is not possible, when it is not only possible, it is certain.

So when I felt you touch my arm, I could say it was only my own nerve endings. I still happen to think the simplest explanations are the best, but I could not discount the possibility that it was you. And when I see your shadow against the glass in the other room it�s the same thing. Probably my own dying eyes�. But maybe it�s you.

Well, at last I�ve come to the point of my letter:

I�m writing to invite you to stay. I am going to burn incense and do some ritual cleaning to rid myself of your daughter, but I will not ask you to leave.

If you stay, you may not like some of the things I will do here. You will not want to see me demolish and discard much of what you worked so hard to create. I cannot apologize for that, for I am still living and have a right to create my own surroundings. But even as I deconstruct some of your work, I want you to understand that I respect it greatly, and I can very much feel your presence through it. If you stay, I hope you will give me your blessing as I make this into my home just as you once made it into yours.

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