Our Pet Ghost

Ryan was still very young when we moved to Florida. My ex-husband, Bill, got a job with a moving company that required him to stay overnight in Miami or the Bahamas. His first overnight trip, Ryan asked me where his dad was. I told him he went to Miami. He thought for a minute, then asked me, "What's your ami?"

Bill was gone on one of his overnight trips and Ryan got spooked by some noise. I told him our pet ghost made the noise. I explained that our ghost was nice and hung around to take care of us, but he was noisy sometimes. Ryan asked what his name was. Unimaginative but quick on the fly, I named him after my stepdad, George.

George ended up being as much our pet as any dog or cat we ever had. He was still around when Sona, Lisa, and William were born. Since they were born into a family with a pet ghost, they never questioned it.

George was to blame for a lot of noises and misplaced items. The unexplainable was always explained by everyone as, "George did it." I said to William once, "You peed your pants." So seriously, he said, "No I didn't, George did it."

I was cleaning out the laundry room one day and had a mismatch of different stuff from kids birthday parties. I ran to the store and bought a cake and candles, came back and told the kids it was George's birthday. We had a party. George got the seat at the head of the table. We gave him invisible presents and blew out the candles for him.

George was fun. We had a bathroom that didn't have windows and was very dark when the lights were out, and we had a glow in the dark Halloween mask. Lisa ended up being my victim. I lured her to my trap, jumped out from behind the shower curtain, and she ran screaming. She wasn't scared. She was excited, yelling to the other kids, "I saw George!"

The older the kids got, the less George stayed around. By the time we moved back to Nevada, George was pretty much gone and didn't make the move with us. He showed up to visit a few times, but it's been years now since we've seen him. I was sorry to see him go. He was a great pet.