When it comes to the subject of ghosts I had always been a skeptic. When my children asked if I believed in ghosts I had told them "no, but perhaps its just that ghosts don't believe in me."

Our two girls shared a room at the "old" house we lived in. Separated by 9 years, Rebekah was just about 13 and Deborah was a talkative and imaginative 4-year-old. Rebekah liked to tell scary stories to her little sister which, I'm certain, usually wound up giving Rebekah bad dreams. It was not uncommon for the girls to wake me out of a late night's sleep with "Dad, there's someone outside our window". I would dutifully go into their room, look out of their window into the quiet darkness and declare it was just their imagination. However, to further reassure them I would go to the front door and open it as if I was going outside. After closing the door loudly enough to reassure them that I had checked around the house, I would return to bed telling them it was nothing and to go back to sleep.

One cool fall night their worried calling seemed especially plaintive. I stumbled to their door through the darkness and as I stepped in to their room the girls gasped and shrieked. "Dad, it's trying to get in!" Peering through the dark I clearly discerned a ghostly white hand clutching and clawing it's way down their bedroom window. I gulped and skipped my usual admonishment groping the wall for the elusive light switch. Of course when the light was turned on the hand vanished, but the scrapping on the screen continued and the adrenaline began to waken my mind as I tried to decide what to do next. The girls whimpered in complete terror and my heart began to race. If I turned out the light would the hand reappear?

At this moment this terrifying apparition added a new and somewhat more familiar sound to the bedroom din of terror. Meowwwww. When I turned off the light, we all laughed in huge relief as our white cat continued it's clawing descent of the window screen.

This became one of my daughter's favorite stories and for a moment, I was almost a believer!