Will Ghosts Do Chores?

[SSilhouette]

OK, I'm being serious here though the thought truly is funny. After watching dozens of ghost shows on the boob tube, I remarked to a friend how it would be kewl if instead of freaking out about the dishes flying around in your kitchen, they were done when you woke up in the morning? Seriously

If I had a ghost in my house, which I suspect I do, I'd ask favors of him or her. Myself, I have designated our storage room as "the ghosts". People are only to go in there briefly to retrive stored items and the rest of the time they are to respect that space as "occupied".

I was having trouble with the ghost coming in my room, sitting on the bed and touching me on the arm or leg. It would also flip papers up on the wall or drop pictures pinned up to hang by one corner. The picture would flip and then sag down with the tack still in the wall and the hole unripped where it was pinned up before. Anyway, this ghost we believe is of the man previous who took great pride in the property and died of a heart attack while repairing the roof . One of the main things we heard when we first moved in were footsteps on the roof of the main house and the mother in law unit down the lane a bit.

So anyway, my daughter had my room before we switched and she reported the same nightime visits, sitting on the bed etc. So when I was cleaning the room to reclaim it when she moved into the mother in law unit, not once but twice as I was vacuuming, the ghost pulled the pinned picture stunt. Finally I turned off the vacuum, unruffled and said aloud, "look, it's nice that you come to visit and all, but everyone needs their own space here. How about this. How about I promise to give you the spare room if you promise to leave my room alone and not come back in here ever. I'm alive now. You are dead. Dead people need to move on. But if you cannot move on and are fixated here, at least have the decency to respect others' space! Also, I need help from time to time. I need you to look after the kids when my eyes cannot be upon them. You being dead and all can step in when I can't see them heading for trouble."

And so, from that day forward not one single event has happened in my bedroom. Since then there is this feeling in the spare room of urgency, like "occupied please take what you need and get out". Which is fine. And, both my kids have reported since then that weird things have happened when they're screwing up. For instance my daughter would often be tardy to school previuos. She just couldn't wake up early. Several times when she tried to oversleep since then, she reported hearing footsteps down the hall, hearing her voice called out or hearing an ungoldly unexplainable racket just outside her bedroom window. Once she even saw a tanned arm reach over to her and shake her to get up! I explained that was the ghost just doing his job and she accepts it. She even laughs it off. It's all how you approach the situation.

My son has experience a harder run with my helper. He has gotten cocky as he became a teen and when he gets out of line he gets tripped or things fall on him! Once he reported being shoved. I just said to him that his attitude was getting some attention from beyond. He now is well rounded or getting there anyway and also laughs at the prospect of the ghost helping him stay in line while his hormones turned him into Mr. Hyde.

I wonder if any of you have problems with a ghost that seems to like a certain behavior? I've always joked that I'd love a ghost to not just rattle the dishes, but to wash, dry and stack them too. If your ghost rattles chains down the hall, ask him/her to vacuum while they're at it? Or if they show up in the bathroom mirror behind your shoulder. Ask if they can scrub the toilet or clean out the shower drain? If they're seen on the front lawn, ask them to weed the marigold patch. Include them in the family. I wonder then how much trouble they'd be? Or even if they'd help. Mine does. I think I actually negotiated a ghost.

Edited October 24, 2013 by SSilhouette

[TheVeryFirstDinosaur]

[StarMountainKid]

So interesting. Yours must be a kindly ghost. I wonder how far you can take your relationship? I believe ghosts exist, but have never experienced a human one, although I do think my cat who died about 10 years ago still lives in my house as a ghost. She always slept with me, and when I'm in bed I often feel the bed move in the same way as when she would jump up on it when alive.

Hope you post updates on how you and your ghost are getting along.

[SSilhouette]

Well he has his busy times and down times. We've been experiencing a lull lately. Maybe he thinks we don't need him anymore?

[EnderOTD]

Only if you pay them dead presidents.

[Simbi Laveau]

If ghosts could do chores, my house would be spotless.

They will follow some commands, but not usually of the please do the ironing nature.

[Skep B]

seems mostly like you just need to move that picture till the nail isn't falling out of the wall.

[freetoroam]

"and the mother in law unit down the lane a bit"

love it!!!

[DancingCorpse]

it's a fair question and whilst I believe in ghosts, both in an 'active' and 'recorded/playback loop' sense, I wonder what keeps the actives from interacting more. Perhaps there really IS a handbook like in Beetlejuice lawl.

On the topic, my friend's house is haunted legitimately, several instances of activity and bizarreness without rational explanation, old mill house and atmosphere to boot. His brother came home one afternoon, the only person in the house were the two of them. They talk and his brother takes his top off and throws on the floor (just came back from playing football), he goes upstairs and my friend turns back to his computer, five mins later he comes back down and asks why the hell he folded up his sweaty top? The shirt was on the side of a chair and neatly folded haha. It's not the first example of weird but playful activity nor will it be the last. So they have been known to involve themselves in chores!

[SSilhouette]

seems mostly like you just need to move that picture till the nail isn't falling out of the wall.

You didn't read what I wrote. I said, the pictures would fall at one corner, swinging back and forth. When I went to retact them, THE NAIL WAS STILL IN THE WALL WHERE IT WAS AND THERE WAS NO RIP AT ALL IN THE HOLE IN THE CORNER OF THE PICTURE ON THE CORNER HANGING DOWN AND OFF ITS PIN. This has happened several times. It is physically impossible unless "someone" pulled out the pin and stuck it back in. I've actually watched it happen out of the corner of my eye, when no one was around but me. I went to investigate it and found what I've described: an impossibility, unless a ghost did it.

[Skep B]

hanging like a picture in a frame, or a poster?

[SSilhouette]

it's a fair question and whilst I believe in ghosts, both in an 'active' and 'recorded/playback loop' sense, I wonder what keeps the actives from interacting more. Perhaps there really IS a handbook like in Beetlejuice lawl.

On the topic, my friend's house is haunted legitimately, several instances of activity and bizarreness without rational explanation, old mill house and atmosphere to boot. His brother came home one afternoon, the only person in the house were the two of them. They talk and his brother takes his top off and throws on the floor (just came back from playing football), he goes upstairs and my friend turns back to his computer, five mins later he comes back down and asks why the hell he folded up his sweaty top? The shirt was on the side of a chair and neatly folded haha. It's not the first example of weird but playful activity nor will it be the last. So they have been known to involve themselves in chores!

Oh if I could get mine to fold the laundry!..lol And the dishes. I'm staring at a pile of them stacked up to the ceiling. The Fall is hell on our ranch, so many chores to do. The dishes pile up. So Sundays instead of kicking back with a crossword puzzle and contemplating my navel, I'm stuck at the sink with my sleeves rolled up for half the day. God I love it when Winter sets in, all the wood's split and hay in the barns, roofs mended etc. Just was pulling some broken boards off a small deck I was having to replace only to find that the entire front room of the house has to be torn apart and rebuilt. It's so rotted out in the floor joists that it's about to collapse and pull the roof down with it. *groan*

I think ghosts have limited ability in the physical world and this is why they don't help more. I think to be in that state and muster the energy up to densify enough to move objects takes a great deal of energy for them. That's why you get the extreme cold and batteries go dead just before an object moves. This phenomenon I would study, as a physicist [if I was one] in order to find the link between matter and energy. They're chasing subatomic particles when a more expansive and perhaps easier route to finding the clues is right before them in an old spooky mansion just down the street.

Edited October 27, 2013 by SSilhouette

[bbanmen]

The only thing I have experience along the "helpfullness" of a ghost was once I was tucked into my blankets.

It creeped me out, but it didn't seem evil or anything....

[SSilhouette]

I like this topic because there's always so much focus on ghosts being mentally ill, bummers, or even violent. But sometimes I think if you treat them like a member of the family, they can warm up to you and even start healing some of their old pain and stuff. Maybe even get the guts to move on with time?

And while they're doing this, they can do the dishes!...lol... I think the menacing types of ghosts sort of get off on people's fear of them. It makes them feel powerful when in life they may not have. Or, they were and exist to still try to exert that dominance. To be mundanely welcomed in, not feared, given a place to hang out sort of diffuses all that. It might even pull them up to wonder if the path they're on or were on was the right one?

[Vanished Templar]

The ones in the old family house do, generally, while the ones at the "beach house" don't do anything. So much for good he lp, dead or alive.