My dogs don't just bark at noises I can't hear. One time Zenith, my older dog, stood at the hallway door, barking down the hallway to beat the band, with her hair up. We thought the cat was in the hallway. Nope. Nothing there.

They like to bark and run into the front parlor as if someone were at the door. They have done this several times. The front parlor was where my landlady's Uncle Shipley lived the last days of his life confined to a wheelchair, with what sounded to me like Lou Gehrig's disease. She said his mind was all there but he couldn't move, so he watched television. This is also a room around which we hear a lot of knocks and pings but of course that could be attributed to the settling of an old house.

Just recently both dogs did that barking down the hallway thing, and even several minutes after they dispersed, the cat would not go into the hallway. He'd stand there in the door, looking down the hall, twitching his tail.

I think I told this before, and it's not a ghost story, but it weirded me out. First of all you have to know that while I am not given to seasickness (except for the time I took the hovercraft across the English channel in Extremely Choppy Water), I am not a beach person. I am a landlubber from the word Go. Typical earth sign Virgo. Feet on the solid ground. Never had any desire to own a boat except for that canoe I've been wanting. Anyway a few years ago I got totally utterly captivated by sea music. I just loved it. I didn't know why. It just sounded good. And of course I got interested in finding out where those songs came from, etc., etc., etc.

About this time my landlady's daughter had a 40th anniversary party for her parents. She had old pictures of her mom & dad, grandparents, and so on. On her front mantle was a very old picture of a sailor. I asked the landlady, who's the sailor on the mantle?

Oh, she said, that's my daddy. He was in the Navy in World War I. Daddy just loved the sea.

Did I mention that I live in what was Daddy's house?

Coinkydink, probably. But it gave me the creeps.