FOWC with Fandango — Paranormal
Photo A.M. Moscoso
The best ghost stories always start with a knock on the door- my Grandpa used to tell me as he settled into his favorite chair next to our fireplace and a nice drink to warm his bones.
It didn’t matter if it was day or if it was during the dead of night, but the best ghost stories are the ones that give you nightmares, the ones you share all over the place in the hopes that you’ll get it out of your head and the ghosts from those stories will go haunt someone else for a spell.
Of course, he said, they come back and when they do, they’re more likely to knock at the window.
No wait, he said. I take that back, they don’t knock at the window. They’re more likely to scratch at the window. Scritch scritch scritch. He told me.
That’s what the ghosts in the best ghost stories do. They knock at the door and then they’ll scratch at the window, it’s always the kitchen window and wouldn’t you know it? That kitchen window always seems to look out into a backyard with a swingset and one of those swings will always start swinging from side to side instead of back and forth just when you think that nothing is out there.
The Sun can be beating down from a cloudless sky or it can be the dead of night and even if there isn’t a breeze or even a cold blast of wind that swing will start to swing all by itself.
I nodded and asked, what do the ghosts want in those ghost stories? The good ones I asked. Not the silly ones where the ghost hides in a doll or plays with light switches.
” They want someone to open the door. ” he said.
My Grandpa used to like to sip sherry when he told me what made a good ghost story. Sometimes when he put the glass I’d stick my pinky into it so that I could have a taste.
Sometimes I knocked the glass over, but he didn’t seem to mind.
Once I was about to help myself to a dab of sherry
when I heard a knock at the door.
Grandpa sat back in his chair.
We waited and then we heard, from down the hall a scratching at the kitchen window and light as the sound the tiny bells on my cat’s collar made we could hear my swing start to move in a non-existent breeze.
I felt a shiver and it sizzled up and down my spine.
Then we heard it again, there was a knock at the door and this time it was more insistent and it was a little louder and it echoed through our dark house.
” Are you going to answer it? ” he asked.
I went to the door. I put my hand on the knob and then I turned around and smiled.
He smiled back and raised his little glass.
” This is going to be a good one. ” I said hopefully.
