Past Owners

There is a common trope in ghost stories that adults who saw specters when they were children no longer have the ability to do so as they grow older. Children seem to lose their imaginary friends. A woman I knew who had regular visits from her deceased grandfather no longer saw him after a certain birthday. (By the way, she didn't know it was her dead grandfather until she saw a picture of him in an old family album and learned who he was; he had died years before she was born.)

Some people say children don't yet know that they're not supposed to see the dead. Then as they get older and they learn that "there's no such thing as ghosts," or that what they saw "must have just been their imagination," they lose the ability to see beyond the physical. I'm not sure what the reason is, although it seems that some people never lose that ability. Thus we have mediums, psychics, and those that are considered to be crazy. 

I believe in ghosts and I believe in mediums and psychics, so I must fall into the last category. Crazy. But I kinda like it here. 

At any event, my oldest grandson, like his mother, sees ghosts. I guess I shouldn't be surprised; it does seem to run in this family. He used to talk about who and what he saw more often; I can't decide if these conversations are becoming less frequent because he is beginning to realize that others don't see the same thing he does, or if it's because he's actually outgrowing the ability to do so, the way so many people do. But he did give me one last ghost story. a year or two ago.

Jim and I decided to redo our kitchen. Our house was built in 1961 and the kitchen was original to first construction. It was tired and worn and totally bedraggled in some areas, so after my sister and her husband renovated their kitchen, we decided to follow suit. The process took several weeks (that's a LOT of frozen dinners and take-out, by the way) but it was so worth it. Our beautiful new cabinets gleamed and the floor no longer looked like 1960's linoleum with many decades' worth of ground-in stains and marks.

Shortly after it was finished, I was standing in that kitchen when my grandson came to me and said, "Who lived here before we did?"

I was surprised by the question. "An older couple," I said. "They retired and decided to move back to the East coast because that's where they were from originally and they wanted to be close to their families."
 

He thought about that, and then he said, "They're dead."

That made me just a little uneasy. "Well, I guess they could be," I answered. "They were a bit older when we bought this house from them."

He nodded. "They're dead," he said again. And then he turned and started heading back to his bedroom.

"Did you see them?" I called after him.

But he didn't answer.

For me, he didn't have to. Yes, I'm pretty sure he did see them. Probably even spoke with them since he knew who they were. After all, they had lived in this house since it was built and were very proud of it as it was. I'm sure they wanted to find out what was going on, and who better to speak with than the child who could have that conversation with them? I hope they liked what they saw when the renovation was completed. 

I think they probably did, because my grandson never mentioned them again.