I'm sleeping on the couch.

Until further notice, I am sleeping on the sofa.

I'm not married. I don't have a significant other who has shooed me from my bed. Instead, I chose to sleep on the sofa because I think my house is haunted. By whom or what I know not. I just know that I hear noises. Every since I cleaned out the office and stored the stuff in the garage, doors inexpliably slam in the back of the house. Windows rattle. And this morning, I woke up to tapping on the wall. Or more expressly, *in* the wall.

I'm not a big believer in ghosts. Well, I guess in a way I am. I've seen one before, but it doesn't freak me out. I attribute the things to some yet-explained natural phenomenon. I saw her. And I knew what I was looking at.

Here in my hometown, there is an old home, a heavily-rennovated plantation house redesigned to look like a castle. About two years ago, while I was staying in an apartment there, a friend who also resided in the castle had a barbeque. A bunch of us were sitting on the lawn, watching the night bugs. When it started to rain, we moved the gathering to the inside of the porch. We were talking about music, politics, or some other such nonsense and I looked just outside the archway and there she was. Maybe six years old, wearing a white dress, curly hair trailing down to just past her shoulders. It had just stopped raining and she was just there, wondering who these strange people at her house were. Our gaze locked and I'll forever remember the look on her face, the bewilderment in her eyes, like she was seeing for the first time people from another race, country, and continent. She was the Indian and I was the explorer at the moment of that first, wholy unexpected first contact. I glanced away to point her out to everyone and when I turned back, she was gone. The only evidence of her ever being there was the bone-dry patch of sidewalk...right beneath a rainspout. The rest of the sidewalk was drenched from the rain. But that one spot, where the girl stood, was as dry as a rock in the Arizona Desert during a drought.

It's one thing to see a ghost outside the place where you're staying. It's wholy another to have one in the bedroom of your home. Tap tap tap, it goes on the wall outside my house. Slam it goes with the door or rattlerattle rattle at the window. On more than one occasion I've heard it cough. On a couple, footsteps.

Luckily, it hasn't ventured beyond the door to the hall. So I'll just stay in the living room until I determine the proper course of action. Any suggestions in dealing with spectral phenomenon, please email advice to: michaeldevault@techbroker.com

md