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# Ghosts
- URL: https://pamphleteer.co/post/ghosts/
- Published: 2026-10-30T19:35:01.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-30T19:35:01.000Z
- Description: The seventeenth installment in Tales from the Westside
- Author: Rachel Gladstone
- Tags: Tales from the Westside

When you move into an old house, you expect to hear creaks and pops and things that go bump in the night. It takes a while to acclimate to these sounds, which, if you’ve watched any of the Poltergeist movies, ever, sends your imagination to places you wish it wouldn’t go. Eventually time does its job, and these sounds weave themselves into the fabric of your life, giving your imagination the rest it deserves. But then, on a random Friday night, there’s a shift in the space-time continuum, and you come face-to-face with a fully formed apparition who’s chillin’ on the sofa in your sitting room, and it totally freaks you out!

To be clear, this wasn’t the first time I felt this spirit hanging around. As a matter of fact, he’s been here for as long as I can remember. I’d heard stories of him materializing in front of other people, but he’d never appeared to me, which made me feel a little left out. But that feeling was outweighed by gratitude because I scare easily and ghosts are not my favorite thing.

In order to give you the full story, I think we need to travel back to 2001 when my then-husband and I bought the 1913 Central-Hall Bungalow I still call home. I quickly became friends with the woman and her two young daughters who lived next door in a house identical to mine. One evening, while sipping wine on my porch, she told me about the ghost that lived in her house and regularly appeared to her eldest daughter who saw dead people, like the kid in The Sixth Sense, only this was not a movie. 

The first time it happened, she was about four. Shortly after bedtime she ran from her room screaming, “The man! The man! The man!” Rushing to the scene, armed with mace and resolve, her mother found nothing. No man. No one in the closet or under the bed, and no open window through which he might have escaped. Tucking her daughter back into bed, she stayed with her all night, mace in hand. But the next night and for dozens of nights thereafter, “the man” continued to materialize. Eventually everyone came to accept him. And because he wasn’t a malevolent Specter, they simply went on with their lives.

Of course, this story unnerved me. But since I’d never seen this ghost in my house, I didn’t think about it much. That is, until my husband and I called it quits. The silence he left in his wake seemed to amplify the creaking floorboards and rattling windows that had previously unsettled me, and I found it difficult to sleep. I guess his snoring, which sounded like a Harley revving up in a tiled bathroom, had drowned out the scary sounds. But the noises weren’t the only thing causing me to lose sleep. I could feel a presence in my house, and every time I was in the kitchen, which opens into the sitting room, I felt like someone was watching me. But this presence never felt malevolent. Actually, there was something sad emanating from this Haint and I became convinced he was stuck here, looking for someone he’d been separated from in life. And I wondered if this was indeed the same ghost drifting from my neighbor’s house to mine. 

In 2016 my neighbor sold her house to a developer, something that took me years to forgive her for, and in place of my house's twin, three tall-and-skinnies were erected. It was then that “the man” began showing up at my other neighbor’s house; not only did he appear to her, but he was also pretty damn dramatic about it.

The first time was in her bedroom at dawn, one summer morning. Upon opening her eyes, she saw a man standing by the window looking at her. Wearing a long P coat, his dark hair was slicked back, and she could see the details of his face quite clearly. At first she thought he was an intruder, but her three dogs were still asleep, so she ruled that out. Rolling over, she tried to wake her husband to no avail. And when she turned back to look again, “the man” was gone. 

A few days later she was awakened from an afternoon nap by someone stomping around the house. Thinking it was her husband, she got up to scold him. But as she exited the bedroom, she came to find the house was empty and, shrugging her shoulders, returned to her room. Just as she lay back down, the bathroom door facing the bed slammed shut by itself and the house fell quiet. Unfortunately, her poor heart did not!

A few weeks later while hanging out in the living room, she watched as her dogs sat up and began looking at something or someone that clearly wasn’t there. Cocking their heads as if in confusion, they began to track the movement of the apparition with their eyes as it crossed the room and settled in a chair by the window. And although they could clearly see this thing, none of them barked or moved a muscle. Within a few minutes, they stopped staring and laid back down. Then, the next evening, she heard the front doorknob rattling as if someone was trying to get in. This time, the dogs went crazy, and, running to the door, she yanked it open to find the porch deserted. Dashing out into the front yard, she also found that the street was deserted. So she stepped back inside, locked the door, and headed to the living room. That’s when the lights began to flicker. Moving to the kitchen, the lights repeated this action, so she stepped back into the front hall where the same thing happened. “For God’s sake! Stop it!” She yelled out loud. The flickering stopped as quickly as it had started. Evidently, that was enough to take the Poltergeist moves out of the equation. “The man” had obviously never meant to scare her; he’d only wanted her attention. 

Things were quiet after that, at least at my neighbor’s house. But I continued to feel “the man’s” presence regularly, which didn’t scare me even though it probably should have. And then, a few weeks ago, he decided to show up in three dimensions.

I’d come home later than expected. The house was dark, save for a light in the kitchen. Flicking on the hall light, I greeted Nancy Drew, my crazy Aussie Doodle who was trying to break the Olympic record for pole vaulting, sans pole. And as I walked down the hall and into the sitting room, I saw a man perched on the sofa by a south-facing window. At first I thought it was a friend of mine, and I was about to ask him what he was doing there when the figure began to dissolve and vanished into thin air. Naturally, I screamed like a little girl and ducked back into the hallway where, in a shaky voice, I told the Specter to get the hell out! I avoided the room for days, and despite the fact that I kept a light on 24/7, I was still spooked. So far, he’s followed my orders and hasn’t repeated the haunting. But I can still feel him hanging around.

The funny thing is, my neighbor has been feeling his presence again as well, which makes us wonder why he’s back with a vengeance after a decade of hanging in the ethereal zone. We think it has something to do with the two historic houses behind us having recently been torn down and replaced by six tall-and-skinnies. We wonder if the construction upsets him like it did in 2016 because, after all, these developers are destroying the landscape that’s been here forever. We think there’s a portal between the houses because he’s always appeared by a south-facing window in the same latitude. If my neighbor’s house were still standing, you could draw a straight line from hers to the house on the other side of mine. 

Honestly, “the man” isn’t the only ghost I’ve had occasion to see around here. Last year I could have sworn I saw a neighbor who died of an overdose, standing under a streetlight in the alley. And another friend, who also died in that house, has come to many of us in dreams. The ghost of my ex-husband still rattles around my old house on occasion, but, unlike “the man," his presence is easy to dispel because it’s just the ghost of a memory.

It’s Halloween tomorrow, when the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead becomes blurred and spirits reveal themselves. My hope is that “the man” has made his appearance early and won’t feel the need to do so again. But if he does, I think I’ll try to appease him with a Snickers bar and hope he goes away once and for all.