HALEY KENNEDY: My favorite ghost story

Chains rattling in the attic. Spectral footsteps in the hall. A shadow passing just out of the corner of your eye. It’s spooky season, y’all.

I love those ridiculous ghost investigation shows where people go traipsing around abandoned buildings in night vision and scare themselves and each other. I love creepy paranormal movies and good old-fashioned ghost stories. It’s good entertainment. My personal beliefs about the afterlife are based on a variety of different sources, my faith, and my upbringing. To say I’m in two minds about the subject would be an understatement. Is it strictly entertainment? Or is there really something out there beyond our knowledge and comprehension?

I’ve always been a scaredy-cat. I’ll definitely be the first one to hide under the covers during a scary movie. You cannot count on me in a supernatural crisis. If I were in a horror movie … well I just wouldn’t be in a horror movie. I can’t even go in those Halloween haunted houses because my fight-or-flight reflexes are stuck entirely in the “fight” position. I told my husband I’m just too darn big to be fleeing from a threat, so I better be ready to knock some ghost heads together. I’d really hate to sucker punch a teenager in a scary costume, so I’d better just leave that sort of thing to people with cooler heads than mine.

I say all of that to say that, yes, I am afraid of ghosts and spooks and haints and things that go bump in the night, even if I’m not sure I actually believe in them. In fact, the only experience I’ve ever had that I can even remotely classify as “supernatural” was really one of the most soothing and heart-warming experiences of my life thus far.

It goes back to the morning of Nov. 9, 2020. The day before had brought news that I’ve dreaded for years. My beloved Pop, my lifelong birthday buddy and partner in mischief, had left his earthly suffering behind. It was a Sunday, and even though it had been coming for some time, we were all reeling. I wasn’t with him when he passed, and I was feeling so guilty about that and just generally miserable at the situation that I felt paralyzed. It had been an indescribably hard day, and the night wasn’t much better. I finally forced myself to put on my CPAP mask and just lay down and get some rest. I tossed and turned miserably for a while before finally falling asleep.

I slept so soundly that it seemed like just minutes had gone by when I awoke. I realized the sun was up, but I turned over and pulled my then-4-year-old closer to me. I just wasn’t ready to start the first day of my life without my Pop in it.

My husband was snoring, so I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to go back to sleep. My sweet cat jumped up on my belly and snuggled in with us. My daughter, my husband, my cat, and I fill up a king size bed pretty well, as you can imagine. At any rate, a few minutes later, I felt like someone grabbed my foot. I opened my eyes and all of the occupants of my bed were accounted for. I asked my husband if he had grabbed my foot, but he just grunted at me. All of a sudden, I had a flashback to all the times I had lain on the couch at my Meem and Pop’s house and all the times my Pop had grabbed my foot as he walked by, smiling his twinkly, mischievous smile at me. His smile was always one of my favorite things. I smiled from ear to ear just thinking about it. It genuinely felt like a casual check-in with my Pop.

In that odd little moment, I genuinely felt like Pop had given me just the push I needed to be able to cope with losing him. It wasn’t some grand, emotional, cinematic dream sequence where I got closure and envisioned him standing at the pearly gates. It was just a brief statement like, “Hey, I’m OK. I’m still around.” It felt like a quintessentially Pop thing to do 0 — to make a little pit stop on the way to his eternal rest to check in with me and make sure I knew he was OK.

And whether it was in my head or it was a dream or his spirit really did swing by for a visit, it has honestly been an endless source of comfort to me since his passing. I’ve felt like every time grief seems heavy and his absence is a little sharper than usual, I can harken back to that moment and remember that he’s not gone — not really, anyway. His love for life and for his family and all the beautiful parts of him will forever color all of our lives. He’s a part of the universe around us now, and there’s a little bit of the goodness and kindness and silliness of him in all of my family members now. I’ll never stop missing him, but he is stamped forever in all of our hearts, so in that way he will always be with us.

So instead of creaking floorboards and mysterious mists, my only “ghostly” encounter seems to have been one that has helped me have some perspective on life and death, some hopefulness in processing my grief, and a better understanding of what it means to have truly had a life well-lived. For that reason, it will always be my favorite ghost story.