Ghosts

I didn’t sleep well my first night in the church (see previous entry for details on what I refer to when I write ‘church’).

I don’t at times in unfamiliar beds. In addition I had new apartment issues on the mind: How much longer is it going to take to furnish it? When are the contractors going to finish?

About midway through the night, I also became convinced that the church is haunted. There were creaks from above. I heard doors opening and closing.

The next morning over breakfast my Dad told me that what I heard had merely been him getting up for water.

Possibly, but I’m not giving up the haunting theory so quickly. I mean, how could a church built in 1854 not have at least a few ghosts?

There’s a line about three quarters of the way up the wall in the main space that the architect turned into a painted border. They think it was once the balcony for black congregants. Countless weddings, funerals, and other life rite of passage services must have happened in that church.

Still, my Dad and stepmom emphatically do not believe it is haunted.

Later in the day I saw a small black lizard dart across the basement bedroom I was staying in and then disappear into the rug on the other side of the room.

“I’ve seen it down there before,” my stepmom said after she heard me yelp.

The lizard poked his head out again as I was getting ready for dinner.

Some may argue that there may not be ghosts, even in old churches, but how many small black lizards are indigenous to southern Virginia?