dragonlady7

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Let me just preface this by saying I’ve never seen a ghost in my life, and I’m not sure I want to. But I love people’s ghost stories. And it’s always fun when you’re in a group of people to bring up the topic and find out who among you can see ghosts, and who can’t. People’s ghost stories are always wild.

(The one apprentice who’s been here all summer is definitely a ghost-seer, and confidently said that the farmhouse isn’t haunted, nor is any of the farm. BIL, who is not a ghost-seer, hypothesized that all the ghosts wash right down the creek that goes through the farm, and go down the Quackenkill to the Poestenkill to the Hudson. VegMan, who also does not see ghosts, theorized that the ghosts of this farm would mostly be chickens, and also theorized that chicken ghosts would be no smarter than live chickens, so there wouldn’t be a whole lot to fear, especially since probably left unrestrained they would in fact just go in the creek and get washed away. So, somewhere in the Atlantic, depending on the currents, there’s like a large cache of ghosts of really stupid chickens that died on this farm…)

This conversation was during the Great Pumpkin Pie Off, so Farmkid’s BFF’s family was present, and while Rock Collecting Lady, BFF’s mom, was at the kids’ table, BFF’s dad was at our table. And it turns out, he can see ghosts, and their old house down in South Troy was super haunted. There was a cat, that they saw most often, and an old woman who was upstairs in the garage, and an old man who kind of wandered around. The other apprentice is clearly not a ghost-seer either, because she asked if the ghost cat glowed, and of course, no; most of the people who’ve told me stories have concurred that ghosts are just sort of echoes of people and critters and so on and largely look or sound like they did in life, just not entirely all there. (Very many of the ghost stories I’ve been told have been of ghost cats.)

“We thought it was the downstairs tenant’s cat,” BFF’s Dad said. “And then the tenants moved out and the cat stayed, and then we bought the whole building and spent a bunch of time in all of the building and knew no cat lived in the building and the cat stayed. And then we’d be sitting with both our cats in our laps and we’d hear it jump down from the table in the other room, stuff like that. It came and went regardless of doors, and was just around doing cat stuff where no cat should be. Our cats could see and hear it too.”

Anyway, we got talking about things being haunted and he told a story of when he and his wife were looking for an apartment. “When your main criteria is cheap you see some wild shit,” he said. “One place we looked at, the front room had a dirt floor, and I was like oh no we are not living here, but my wife was like, Can we have cats? anyway, and the landlord– he was so creepy, you guys, he was super fucking creepy– he closed his eyes and kind of tilted his head back and scrunched up his face, and went Mmmmm– mother says no, and we were like we need to get the fuck out of here before he buries us under this dirt floor.”

so that’s now a punchline, on the farm. “Mmm… Mother says no.”