The Spook

I've never seen a ghost and hope never to see one, but in the mid-1990s strange things began to happen in my house, or more correctly, in my life. At first my husband and I tried to ignore them or explain them away, but eventually that became impossible. We could brush off the first few weird events, but after a while we simply had to admit something sentient had entered our lives. A regular occurrence was the presence of mystery nose prints on windows and bathroom mirrors. Items would go missing and then return either in an inappropriate place or in the very place we had searched for them exhaustively. Things we hadn't seen or thought of in years would show up in a prominent place. Doors frequently locked themselves from the inside. Things we hadn't bought would appear in the refrigerator or the laundry basket. I've had this presence in my life for about twenty-five years now. My husband has passed on and I've moved to another house, but the weird activities continue, although not nearly as frequently as before. I've become accustomed to the Spook, and I've learned some of its ways, but I have no more idea who or what the Spook is than I did when it all started.