DO YOU BELIEVE IN GHOSTS?

Even if you don't watch a lot of television, chances are you have some favorite program. Maybe you just like to sit with your feet up for a while. Maybe you and your sweetie like to share a program as a "together" activity. Maybe it seems a little silly but you like it anyway. Mike and I have our favorite reruns, which we record and watch together before bedtime. Brother Chuck watches old Perry Mason episodes which come to him on the BYU channel commercial-free at 10:30 p.m. But I was a little surprised to learn that Hallie enjoys Ghost Hunters on the SciFi Channel and even more surprised at her interest in pursuing a little ghost hunting herself. While she and Nick were here over the Thanksgiving weekend, she bought a digital audio recorder, and Friday evening they headed over to the Gilbert Cemetery to sit in the dark and the cold, waiting for some sign from a departed relative. I tried to tell her – as did Harriet – that our Dobson family ghosts would not stick around the cemetery when they could haunt the house, but she was undeterred. I don't think she gained proof of definitive ghostly activity at the cemetery, but she and Nick seemed to enjoy the evening outing.

Is the house haunted? Or, to put it another way, have we noticed odd, inexplicable happenings around the house and grounds? Odd, yes. Inexplicable, no. And when I walk through the door of the house, I don't sense a presence. But, I think a lot about the family that built the house and lived there – perhaps more than I should -- so sometimes I do feel as though they haunt me. That's using the word "haunt" as a figure of speech. I know, for instance, that my dad approves of the work Mike and I have done at the farm and so does my mother. I don't have to communicate with them to know that. However, I struggle with Grandma Ina over rights for "woman of the house." I'm there and she's not, so I win, but that doesn't make it easy.

Even though I am not a believer in ghosts, it was hard not to say, "Hallie, don't stir them up!" KW