Every Halloween, I sit on the front porch, waiting for trick-or-treaters, and reread Robert Frost's "The Witch of Coös," one of the truly great ghost stories.

It was about 10 years ago, on Halloween night, I was asleep in my bed, when I felt a presence come into the room and sit at the foot of my bed (the left side, near the door). It just sat there a while, and I was too groggy to wake up or open my eyes; I just felt the pressure weighing down and depressing the mattress to the left of my legs. It was a few days later that I received the phone call informing me that my friend Greg had died instantly in a car crash in St. Petersburg that night. It was probably his spirit travelling around saying goodbye to friends.

It was a few days before Halloween just last year that my brother-in-law Dick died suddenly of a heart attack, while in Quebec, Canada. It it difficult to bring a dead body back into the United States, so he was cremated in Canada, and his ashes were shipped back to New York state. They arrived home on October 31--Halloween evening. Now, Dick lived in an old, deconsecrated Catholic church, so we just put the ashes in their container up front on the altar. (He was an artist who used that space to paint). I was to sleep in his bed--in what had the choir loft or balcony at the back of the church. But before bedtime, we all sat around in a circle about the ashes, with a guitar, and sang for an hour or two, all of Dick's favorite songs. It felt like he was there, enjoying the singing. I have never gone to sleep so confident of expecting a visitation of a ghost (given the intersection of unburied remains present in the room, returning home in a deconsecrated church on Halloween evening), but apparently our song circle had made him feel welcome at home, and he let us sleep peacefully.

--Charlie Baum