We are getting ready to put our house on the market so we can purchase our “forever home” so I’ve been doing a lot of online searches for houses. I really love the old brick farmhouses. I watch Rehab Addict on HGTV like it’s porn. I fantasize about my family living in a great big old house in the country and I have a garden and my goat, Goaty O. So I have been spending a lot of time on Realtor.com looking for this fantasy house. 4 bedrooms, 2+ baths on at least an acre. Oh, and, of course, no ghosts.

Here’s the conundrum: I LOVE old houses and antiques but I hate thinking about the people who used to own them. I know that if I even think about those people, their spirits will immediately arrive at my house to tell me their problems, the greatest of which is being dead. My feelings on ghosts are pretty close to my feelings on kids– if they’re not mine, keep them the fuck away from me.

I can handle thinking about the ghosts of relatives or friends, as long as they don’t mess with me. If a ghost of a relative started moving shit around and trying to scare me (ha ha Aunt Mildrid…) I’d be dragging in the spirit guides and psychic mediums or ghost doulas or whatever your job title is where you wave around burning sage and cleanse my house of annoying dead relatives that try to scare the shit out of me. Dead friends and relatives can visit me in my dreams or leave me pennies from heaven or play songs on my radio to let me know they are still with me; however, if they start stacking chairs on my dining room table? Girl, bye… I don’t want none of that shit.

So this is my great fear when buying a new old house. You know that the majority of old houses HAVE to be haunted, right? Well, it’s just one of my great fears. The other one is that we will buy an old farmhouse that, unbeknownst to us, has the worlds largest, undiscovered spider spawning site in the basement crawlspace. And is haunted by demons. God… can you imagine? Sooo freaking scary…

But lets just imagine ONE of those things happen in our new old house. Say the demons are haunting my 1890’s brick farmhouse… That’s why we can afford such a nice place. Because the place is just infested with demons. And, God, demons are SO much worse than normal ghosts. I mean, normal ghosts will, like, walk around loudly or have rude conversations while you are trying to sleep. Demons, man, those guys will try to possess your children and make them stab you! I bet Lizzy Borden lived in a demon-haunted house! But this house I buy that is probably infested with demons, lets imagine that, like, every door you open slams in your face because, well, because ghost demons are dicks. But they won’t do anything when we’re touring the house. They’ll be nice and make the place smell like flowers and whisper nice things in my ears like, “Girl, you have such skinny ankles!” and “I really like your purse… where did you get it?” and I’ll be so pleased with the compliments that I won’t even notice they are coming from disembodied voices. And would you just LOOK at those leaded glass windows?! We’ll take it!

And the second we move in our first box of crap, those ghost demons are making the walls bleed and the toilets won’t flush right. And then… when I’m are sleeping…. they will jerk the covers off of me and spit ghost spit in my hair so it looks all stupid in the morning. They’ll stand at the end of my bed and say mean things, like “I lied when I told you your ankles were skinny” and “You are the ugliest sleeper I’ve ever seen.” Then they will get really close to me while I sleep. They will put their face really close to my face and just wait for me to wake up so I can shit the bed. I’ll feel their cold ghost breath on my cheeks and I will open my eyes and see a fucking demon face an inch away from my face. And it’ll open its mouth and scream and I will die from fear. Hell, it could say, “Hey, how you doin’?” and I’d still die. My heart would just fucking stop in my chest. And then my ghost would be added to the list of other ghosts and I’d be stuck haunting this crowded house with a bunch of other assholes.

No, really though, ghosts are scary as shit and while my stupid heart wants a beautiful old farmhouse, my head says, “Girl, you so stupid. Just find some nice pre-fab house and BAM! Live.”

The only benefit to having ghosts would be getting the people from Ghost Hunters to come to your house and investigate. I mean, Steve is my DUDE! But Devon, you say… if you are so scared by ghosts why in the world would you watch a show about haunted houses? Good question, me pretending to be you! I guess it would be for the same reason people watch Hoarders  or murder shows (of which I watch both). To learn how to live in the following ways–

-You watch Hoarders to motivate yourself to clean your house before it’s too late. You watch the show, look around your house and realize you are on a downward spiral to hoarder-ville. You immediately fill four trash bags with things to bring to Goodwill.

-You watch Hoarders to feel better about the level of hoarder you are, I.E.- she has three rooms full of old newspapers and dead cats but I only have one room of newspapers and dead cats. I’m going to be okay.

-You watch murder shows to learn how to not be murdered. List: Don’t have a boyfriend, husband, girlfriend, mother/father, or children. Also, don’t have friends or neighbors… basically, don’t talk to anyone. Ever.

-You watch murder shows to learn how to not get caught for murdering. List: Don’t have a boyfriend, husband, girlfriend, mother/father, or children. Also, don’t have friends or neighbors… basically, don’t talk to anyone. Ever.

-Bonus reason I watch– to solve the murders before the end of the show because I think I’m smarter than all detectives everywhere even though the majority of the time I solve incorrectly. Plus, I like Joe Kenda. He’s cool.

Now as for ghost shows, I watch them as a warning to myself. A warning that is if I move into a house that is haunted or even visit a house that is haunted, I will die. I will be so scared, I will cry, pee/poop my pants and then my heart will stop beating. This is why I always end up crying when I watch ghost shows. I get so scared, I just cry.

This is the moment in my childhood that defined me. Large Marge sent me. Image: https://extrapolater.wordpress.com/2006/10/29/underrated-moments-in-horror/

Large Marge is the first ghost that made me cry… I was going to put an image of the the scary dead girl from The Ring but I got so scared looking at the pictures I peed a little. So you get Pee Wee’s Large Marge instead.

Crying and losing bowel control all the time because my house is haunted would suck, but Steve from Ghost Hunters is pretty hot, so maybe it’d be worth it? Do you think he would come over? Does anyone have his number by chance?

Really though, I have this bizarre fascination with old houses and, perhaps, with ghosts too. Is it possible to want an old farmhouse in the same way I want a ghost? I’m fascinated with seeing these things but I’d never really want one of my own? I love the idea of old, original woodworking in the same way I love the idea of existence continuing postmortem? Would I really want to be responsible for all that history? All that cleaning? All that work cleaning up goat poop? Meh, not really. And I know I don’t want to be responsible for dead people I don’t know floating around my house. I don’t want to deal with ectoplasm. And I know I don’t want to clean up all of my poop whenever I hear something that goes bump in the night… So I watch Rehab Addict and pretend that I want an old house in the same way that I watch Ghost Hunters, to live vicariously through people on TV? So maybe I should start looking for a nice house in a quiet subdivision?

Did I just talk myself out of something? Huh? What’s that, Heart? Go look for more old houses on Zillow? Mmmokay!