It was a Ghost story that. I had just written.

Here 'tiz, see if it works now

I was working in Exton Pennsylvania, debugging peoples programs over the phone. I got to be quite friendly with my customers and one day one of them asked me if I'd be interested in a job.

He wouldn't tell me much about it but asked me to meet him in Wilkes-Barre one evening.
He pronounced it Wilkesbury. I always thought that it should have been pronounced Wilkes- Bar. But I guess that, seeing as he lived there, he maybe had it right.

So I dressed up in me best pinny and set off on the assigned evening. It was in the fall so it soon got dark and, as my luck usually goes, it started pissing down with rain. Now I don't know if any of you
have ever driven in Pennsylvania, but there aren't many road signs and the few that there are are placed where you can't see them so if it is dark and raining, you have to get out of the car and walk right up to them with your flashlight.

Eventually I arrived there, LATE! I found somewhere to park and walked the block or two to the hotel meeting place.

It turned out that it wasn't really a job interview after all but one of those damned pyramid schemes, you know the ones where you buy household products to sell to your friends but in reality, you make your money by roping your friends into the scam. Well I gave him a piece of my mind as I had turned down that very same scheme just a few months before.

He was not too pleased but I didn't care that much and set off home.

Well the rain was coming down worse, of course, and the wipers weren't really keeping up with it, so I missed my turnoff to the highway. (Did I tell you about the road signs in Pennsylvania?)

I struggled an along the back streets for a while and when I saw a VACANCY sign, I finally gave up and turned in to what I thought was a Motel.

It turned out that it wasn't a motel after all but a bed and breakfast in an old Victorian house.

So, any port in a storm, I braved the rain up to the front door. The proprietor was an old guy and he told me that he had just the one room left. I asked, but no, they didn't have a restaurant or, more
important, a bar.

He showed me into the living room/lounge or whatever it was, and then my luck changed for there was a roaring log fire in there. He said he would try to rustle me up a Sandwich, so I sat down and steamed before the fire. I was just getting warm when he came in with a tray of ham sandwiches and was trailing a three quarter full jug of Jim Beam in his other hand. He wasn't allowed to sell liquor but he said he could give me a glass or two as long as he didn't charge for it. So I paid for the 'sandwich' and left him a healthy tip and we sat down and polished off both the food and the liquor.

A very enjoyable evening it was in all and it was close to midnight when I wobbled up to my room.

Now I want to point out here that I was a little tipsy, but I was in no way drunk.

I undressed down to my skivvies (I hadn't come prepared for an overnight stay) and climbed into bed. I had just pulled the cover up when a naked woman came into the room and climbed in next to me. I was still sober enough to think that this was unusual. It couldn't be that old joke because I had just turned down a job as a salesman.

The poor girl was freezing cold and she asked me to turn up the heater. So I climbed out of bed and turned on the light, that was when I made the mistake of looking at her. She was transparent. I yelled "A Ghost" and headed for the door, not caring that I was still in my skivvies.

She called out "Stop, at least turn on the heater before you go" Well she sounded so sad and cold that I turned the heater up as far as it would go. And she said "Come and keep me warm, I wont hurt you"

I said "Why don't you just put some clothes On?" That was when she gave me that look, you know the one, all girls learn it at an early age, a mixture of pity ans scorn. It is the same look that my Granddaughter gives me when I pretend to put her socks on her hands instead of on her feet.

She said "I am a ghost silly, let me explain"

Then she started telling me her story, so I climbed into bed next to her and held her while she explained.

She said that she had been murdered in that very room over a hundred years ago. She was wearing a beautiful blue silk dress with an embroidered bodice. Her killer had come up from behind and strangled her; and in her own words "I looked down at my body on the floor, in that beautiful dress, but when I looked down at myself I saw that I was completely naked and of course it dawned on me that, as beautiful as that dress was, it didn't have a soul so it couldn't rise up like I did"

I interrupted her at that point and said "But what about the ghostly coach and horses that are supposed to gallop past here at midnight"

"Nonsense" she said "Horses, yes! coachman, yes! but a rattling old stagecoach, NO WAY! A stagecoach doesn't have a soul so it absolutely cannot come back and haunt you"

I asked her why she hadn't crossed over "Didn't they catch your killer?"

"Oh yes, they caught him alright and I had great fun haunting him before they hanged him, he went to the gallows screaming in terror. Not at the thought of being hanged, but because I was haunting him"

So I asked her again why she hadn't crossed over and she said that it was because she was so very cold and she had to get warm again before she could move on.

I held her close for the rest of the night and a gentleman doesn't tell tales. But at about Six O'clock in the morning she climbed out of bed, kissed me goodby and said "Thank You, I am warm now" and she
walked into a bright light that had just appeared over near the wall and disappeared.

She was never seen again.