Haunted Halloween: Do you believe in ghosts?

Days grow short, fog-filled nights creep into the valley. Afternoon winds rustle trees, sending showers of gold from winter branches, gathering on the ground. Pull warm sweaters close, set a fire on the hearth. Put the kettle on and settle before the fireside.
Summer memories float away, ethereal as the fall breezes pushing through the basin that lies beneath our gentle hills. Standing on the cusp of winter, bidding adieu to warm weather, beaches and bathing suits.
Is it a trick of the light or do our eyes take liberties with what we imagine to be the stirring of spirits inhabiting the autumn mists? Do phantoms walk among us, waiting for the opportunity to slip inside our psyches? Because it is, after all, the season of Halloween.
One late October weekend I escaped with girlfriends to a beautiful Queen Anne Victorian bed and breakfast. One friend owned the business, a lifelong dream of hers to fill a home with antiques and open it to guests.
They built their home next to a tiny, ancient graveyard where the remains of two individuals rested in their eternal slumber, the wind ceaselessly whipping, shrieking around the corners of the house. I found myself brooding over the young man, violently stabbed at the tender age of 26 and buried there, whether he grieved for the little girl buried alongside him.
If you’re given over to such things, have a mind that reaches into realms unseen, you may also have felt a spell of disquiet when an odd event leaves you wondering if …
Some people have a sense of otherworldliness, where things occur that can’t be explained, when a sense of foreboding may be a predictor of things to come. In October of 1989, a good friend complained of headaches, an uneasiness of attitude, a moody feeling of dread she was unable to shake. I get nervous when Rosie feels this way because, in the way of animals that sense things, her radar is usually exact.
When phone service was restored after the Loma Prieta quake that killed 63 people and injured more than 3,700, I heard from Rosie. “That was it,” she said, all she needed to say, because I understood. And no, Rosie isn’t a “woo-woo” weirdo, free-spirit type. She has operated a large state-run facility for 30 years. Although she doesn’t know why, she senses things that most of us can’t.
But nothing was stranger than the experience that happened to us the day my mother died in October 1997. Comatose for months with Alzheimer’s disease, her death occurred the day my father was to board a plane for San Jose to visit us here. The people who were to care for my mother after her passing assured my dad he could still visit with us, and we could hold her funeral when he returned.
We drove to San Jose to fetch my dad at the airport. Everyone deplaned but still we waited. My father was missing although his luggage arrived. Frantic, I called my brother in Colorado who assured me he had put my father on the plane to San Jose.
Conferences with the airlines revealed that my dad was in San Diego where they put him up at a nice hotel, treated him to dinner and a limo. How did this happen? The airlines had no idea but they were extremely sorry for the inconvenience. My father said he deplaned for a few moments in Las Vegas to stretch his legs, leaving his camera bag in his seat. He re-boarded, found his seat and his camera bag where he’d left it. He got off the plane when it landed, having no idea in the world that he was in San Diego.
Again: how did this happen? Well. My father promised to take my mom to San Diego, her favorite vacation spot, before she died, and sadly, he never got that chance. At least not until the day of her death when – and you’ll never convince me otherwise – the spirit of my mom boarded that plane with my dad so they could spend one more night together in San Diego. Spooky? Oh, yes.