My One and Only Ghost

In the late spring of 1990, I went back to the States for the first time in five years. My husband and I were still technically newlyweds, and it was his first time in the U.S.  We had spent a few weeks in Southern California visiting family and friends, and were travelling up the California Coastal Highway to meet still more family and friends in San Francisco. 

I have always loved the California Coastal Highway, but it is hundreds of miles long and a little of it goes a long way. After interminable miles of hairpin curves, it was growing dark and we’d both had enough. We stopped at a small inn in Big Sur, a California State Park in the middle of the redwoods. The room we rented was a small, rather rustic cabin with a wood-burning stove near the door. There was a small bathroom on the opposite side of the room; the bed was placed right in the middle. There were two windows, one on either side of the room. That night we had a good meal in the small restaurant run by the inn. Full and happy, we were both asleep before midnight. 

I still don’t know what woke me up. I didn’t need the bathroom, wasn’t thirsty, have no particular recollection of having heard anything other than a slight creaking sound. I simply remember waking up and seeing a figure pacing back and forth from the space between the door and the wood-burning stove to just beside the bed, perhaps three feet away from me, where our suitcases lay open. Whoever it was, I noticed, was carrying what looked to be a heavy load of stacked material like sheets or towels.

My eyes were wide open; I was absolutely not dreaming. I watched this figure moving back and forth and said to myself that it must be Peter, my husband. Surely he had gotten up and forgotten where the bathroom was. But this didn’t make sense: no matter how drunk my husband gets, unlike me he doesn’t forget his way around a room, even if it is a strange room. And as I lay there on my side and watched this figure go back and forth, it suddenly struck me as very odd that Peter should be pacing like that, carrying a great load of cloth. But what other explanation could there be?  I summoned up all the courage I had and reached back behind me with my left hand, sure that I would encounter empty space. To my horror, my hand landed on Peter’s warm and very solid body.

I screamed my head off.  As I screamed, the figure seemed to melt right in front of me into nothing but light. The best way I can think to describe it is what happens on a television screen when you switch the set off – lots of shimmering lights, quickly fading. Then gone. 

Peter was up in a flash – ‘What the hell happened?’   

I told him, and we went through all the predictable things you say after an experience that you cannot explain – ‘You must have been dreaming’ – ‘No way was that a dream!’ – ‘Sometimes I’ve had dreams like that, that seem so real –’ – ‘But my eyes were wide open the entire time, I swear to God!’ And so on, back and forth.

Looking back, the period that elapsed between my first seeing this figure and realizing that it was not Peter could have been no longer than fifteen to twenty seconds. While the figure made no sound itself, the floorboards under it seemed to creak. Later people asked me if the figure was a man or a woman, and I could not answer that. The figure was definitely the size of an adult. I did not get the feeling that it meant me any harm, but quite honestly, it scared the hell out of me.

Peter and I looked under the bed. We checked the windows, all of which were bolted firmly shut. The door was bolted shut and locked. The bathroom window was slightly open, but it was far too small for a person to fit through and it was so high up that I doubt Houdini himself could have managed it. Finally, we went back to bed. In the morning, we went through the I’m sure you were really dreaming arguments once more.  All I could say was ‘I know what I saw.’

The people who ran the inn were old hippies. They were thrilled to hear about my experience and told me that the cabins had been built back in the twenties by a Norwegian grandfather who was a bit of a recluse and had died there – they weren’t sure in which cabin. According to the proprietors, while no other guests had reported a ghost before, the shared bathroom of two adjoining cabins often got locked on both sides.  Guests would come fuming to the reception desk, complaining that whoever was on the other side was obviously hogging the bathroom and no amount of knocking could get them to open the door. Perhaps I had been lucky enough to see the ghost of old Mr Olson? 

After this experience, I began to think that maybe I had some sort of spiritual powers. My grandmother was reputed to be able to see into the other world – why not me?  For the rest of our trip, I kept waiting for it to happen again. We stayed in some wonderful old places – plantation houses, reconstructed mills, ancient (for America) hotels. But never did I see so much as a shadow of another ghost.