Ghost Essay Part 1

April 29, 2010
Thursday, 6:30 P.M.
Home

An urban legend from my childhood told of a mean old man who died in the run-down shed on the property of a near neighbor. The rumor was that his ghost walked the streets of the neighborhood at night and came to the bedsides of sleeping children. When they would awake to his presence, he would point his bent, wrinkled up finger at them, terrorizing them in the dark. I woke one night and saw him standing at the foot of my bed, waving that mean old finger. I cowered under the covers, pulling them up over my head praying that when I looked again, he would be gone. He was.
This is my first memory of the subject of ghosts. Many were the nights after this experience that in my terror of seeing him again, I fought to stay awake, little body wrapped up in the covers like a mummy, so that the old man or any other spooky thing, for that matter, would not be able to touch me. Of course I would fall asleep and wake up just fine morning after morning until I forgot about the old man ghost.