Quite Possibly the Scariest Moment of my Life!

You may remember that my niece, Katie, came to stay with us a couple weeks ago. The last night she was here we somehow got on the subject of ghosts. She asked me if I had ever seen a ghost or believed in them. My answer was an emphatic YES! She asked me to explain so I regaled her with a tale from my childhood. The way I remember my childhood, that is.

When I was very little we moved to a small town called Hereford, Tx. We rented a house there while we waited for our house to be built. I remember not liking that house one bit. It had a basement that I was scared to go into because it smelled funny. And I distinctly remember hearing strange noises at night. I remember hearing the kitchen cabinets opening and closing. I also remember that some mornings we would wake up with those kitchen cabinets open for no good reason at all. Spooky, right?

Well, that night after telling Katie and Mike about my haunted house experience, they decided to play a little trick on me. Mike gave Katie the idea and then she ran with it. After I went to sleep, she got up and opened every single kitchen cabinet and drawer in our house.

That also happened to be a night where Jake wasn't sleeping well. I got up several times to go check on him. The last time I went to him he asked me for some water. I went into the kitchen and turned on a light. Then I saw all of the open doors and went hysterical. I ran into our bedroom and woke up Mike. He asked me what was wrong and I told him that he had to come look at the kitchen because I was FREAKING! OUT! He pretty much busted out laughing right away and told me that Katie was just trying to scare me. WEll, it worked. Good thing I have a strong heart.

Anyway, the next day I told my sister about it and she could not remember ever living in a haunted house. I was sure I had talked about this with my parents before so I called up mama to confirm. She told me "honey, that never happened." I was shocked. I have told this story to many people in my lifetime and apparently it was all one, big lie. It never happened. Could it be I took a scene from a movie (I'm thinking Poltergeist) and made it part of my history? I really am crazy. It also freaks me out that I clearly remember a conversation with my mom not so long ago where she confirmed the house was haunted. Who am I having conversations with anyway? People in my head?

Clearly, my sense of reality has become skewed. Now, I'm starting to worry that other things from my past might not really have happened either. Was I really never in detention with four people from very different cliques in high school? Did my family really never forget my 16th birthday in all the hub bub of my sister getting married? Did I not feed m&m's to a loveable extra terrestrial at some point? And, oh my word, did that family vacation to the lake resort where I met Johnny and learned to dance really never happen? I think I need to go lay down. Hopefully, when I wake up this will all have been a bad dream.