God has a sense of humor

Do you have a spooky experience that made you think twice about the possibility of haunting?

This experience took place in the late 60s, and is absolutely true.

Barbara and I had gone to bed and each of us was reading.  Not often in our lives have we read to each other, but this night we did.  I read her the story from the Saturday Evening Post about a haunted house.  Some Hollywood sound man claimed his house was haunted.  His wife was some pretentious second rate actress, and they lived in a wealthy neighborhood.

After they were in bed, they could clearly hear the scooting of chair legs and the jingle of silverware emanating from their dining room.  Whenever he would creep down stairs to see what was happening, no one was there.  After this happened several times, he rigged a tape recorder and strategically placed a mike near the dining room at the foot of the stairs.  Sure enough one night they heard the sound of a party, complete with silverware, glass clinking and several people lowly murmuring.  He cocked his pistol, crept quietly down the stairs and turned on the light, only to find the room still and quiet as he had in the past.

He couldn't wait to check his tape, and sure enough there were the party sounds.  He even heard the stairs squeak under his feet, the click of the light switch, and his nervous clearing of the throat.  It was a complete mystery.  He checked for the possibility of neighbor dinner parties with the intrusion of sound into their dining room.  There was no known explanation.

When they had occasion to go to Europe for a few weeks, this man asked a detective friend of his to stop by the house a time or two to see that everything was okay.  When he returned from Europe he was told this strange story by his friend.

"I was finished with my errand one night, so I stopped by your place.  As I approached your address I saw your house with every light in the joint fully ablaze.  I pulled into the driveway and ran into the house, but just when I reached your front door, every light in the house suddenly went off.  I checked thoroughly and there was no one there."

The next day when he greeted his next door neighbor he was asked, "Hey, who was that guy you left in charge of your house while you were gone?"  He answered, "My detective friend stopped by a couple of times."  "Naw," the neighbor corrected, "this guy seemed to be living there.  I saw him out by the pool.  He was rather heavy, balding and he sported a big black mustache."

Later when his wife was entertaining guests, someone asked, "Aren't you going to introduce me to your house guest?"  But she corrected, "We have no one else in the house."  Her guest insisted, "But I saw him in the kitchen doorway just now.  He was a large man, balding and he had a black mustache."

There was some other creepy stuff in the article.  It ended with the home burning to the ground.

Barbara and I talked about it for a while before going to sleep.  Is there a possibility of poltergeists?  If there were such things, they would have to be angels or demons.  We know that departed souls go immediately to be with Christ (if they are believers).  Perhaps demon spirits enjoy distracting the attention of people who ought to be thinking of the things of God.  Curious, but we are safely in the hands of our Heavenly Father.

Then about 3 in the morning, our hall light suddenly came on.  You'd better believe we were rather spooked by this.  It had never happened before (nor has it happened since).  We don't give in to ghost explanations, so I examined the light switch.  We had the type of switch that slowly moved to engage or disengage the connection, and the switch was not fully thrown when we went to bed.  So when the temperature and humidity changed during the night, the switch made contact.  Problem solved.

But why was it that particular night that this happened?  The only night in all our married life that I read a ghost story to my wife was also the only night in our entire lives that a light switch mysteriously came on in the middle of the night.  Since we believe in a God of providence, this was not an accident.  I concluded that God indeed has a sense of humor.