Hauntin' around the Christmas Tree

Another personal ghost story of mine dates from the 1980s when I was a member of the choir at the Church of Gethsemane (now closed) in downtown Minneapolis.  One of the choir members, Kay, invited us all to her large 1960s house in Edina for a holiday party.  Kay knew that I collected ghost stories, and she told me privately that her house was haunted.

When she and her husband first moved in several years earlier, they noticed odd things happening: a cupboard door found open when it had just been closed, a book placed on a side table sliding off onto the floor, lights turning off and on, and a rocking chair moving on its own. After doing a little research, they learned that a young couple previously owned the house and that the wife, Barbara, had died of a virulent cancer that had spread quickly. They deduced that the woman was the one moving objects around the house. The rocking chair was Barbara's particular favorite. Kay said she often found it rocking away when she came into the living room. 

With a couple dozen people in attendance at the choir party, it was hard to tell if anything ghostly was going on. People were sometimes sitting in the rocker, sometimes not. In any case, only Kay, her husband, and I knew about the ghost. 

At one point, I decided to go down to the family room on the lower level to check out the Christmas tree. Several guys were at the bar at the end of the room opposite the tree discussing the Vikings' prospects as I went over to see the ornaments and lights on the tree. I hadn't been there more than a couple of minutes when all of the lights in the downstairs went out: the tree lights, the overhead lights, the bar back-lights, the stairwell lighting. It was pitch black. To my surprise, the men stopped talking for only a few seconds, and then went right back to sports talk, sitting there in the dark like nothing had happened. I stood there by the tree, wondering how long the blackout would last. I was afraid to move, concerned about stumbling into furniture in the dark. A few minutes went by, and the lights went back on all at once. Since the lights were on three different switches, no one person could have accomplished this.

 I went back upstairs and told Kay what had happened. She just smiled, nodded, and said, "Merry Christmas from Barbara."

God bless Us, Every One!