Nearly every podcast I listen to is doing the spooky-story thing this time of year, which I really enjoy. I am a sucker for a good ghost story, even if I think it's bullshit.

I was listening to The White Witch Podcast this morning, and one guest mentioned visits from dead relatives that manifest in ways that most people don't recognize. It's something you don't hear about much, but I'm certain happens to more people, way more often than we're conscious of.

When I was ten years old, I went to live with my grandparents for two years. It was waaaaay out in the middle of a forest, twenty miles from the nearest very tiny town, and several miles from the nearest neighbor. Their place was surrounded by miles of thick, pine forest in every direction. A small creek ran along the edge of the property, just down a steep hill from their house.

I loved it out there. It was by far the happiest point in my childhood.

My grandmother's kitchen was my favorite place in the house. They had a breakfast nook at one end of it, surrounded on three sides by windows, so you were looking out at the forest when sitting at that small, round table. She baked constantly, everything you can imagine. Pies, brownies, fudge, cookies... all that stuff that that generation of white American grandmothers often baked.

She used Palmolive dish soap, which has a fairly unique smell, or at least back then it did. She also drank coffee at all hours of the day and night, so there was always a pot of Folgers dark roast keeping warm in the coffee maker. Finally, her kitchen also smelled heavily of an amalgamation of many different spices, which she used heavily in her cooking. These three smells mixed together to create a unique scent which I will forever associate with my grandmother.

I will smell it now, fairly regularly. At home, or maybe in my yard, it's conceivable that that smell could be produced from another kitchen and waft into our house via an open window, or into our yard. But I often smell it in places where it has absolutely no business being. At work, driving down the road, and sometimes hiking out in the woods where it's just me and my dogs and no one else for miles. It isn't just a whiff or a hint of that smell, it is very pronounced, as though I am standing in her kitchen.

I am one hundred percent certain that smell is my grandmother popping by to visit. It only lasts a few seconds, maybe three or four breaths. Long enough to smell it and be sure that I am, in fact, smelling it. Then it's gone. She's just saying “hi”, and I have made a habit of responding by saying out loud “Hi Gramma”, to acknowledge her presence.

All of this to say that while most ghost stories are scary, some of them are just really nice to hear.

#Ghosts #Halloween #GhostStory

#Witchcraft

-Tom Blueleaf