Today’s LiveJournal Writer’s Block piqued my interest.

Would you rent or buy the home of your dreams if a brutal murder had taken place there? What if you got to live there rent-free? Would you think twice if neighbors warned you that it was haunted?

I’m reasonably sure I have lived in a house where something pretty awful happened (maybe not a murder, but someone died). And it was, at least, somewhat haunted. But the people in it were fairly friendly. I think they liked the fact that a family with kids and pets had moved in. Seeing normal kid and pet stuff made them happy.

I don’t believe in ghosts in the Halloween sense but I do believe that the spirits of the departed still walk among us. I routinely saw and talked to my father until a couple of years ago, when he told me that he was proud of the person I’d become, that I didn’t need him anymore, and that it was time for him to go on to what came next.

I’m not the only one who saw and talked to him. Nor am I the only one who saw the prior residents of that house. I won’t speak out of turn but other members of my family had encounters and the dog and cat were definitely aware of them. It was eerie, but it was never really scary.

So would I believe the house may be haunted? Yes. Would that stop me from living in it? No. It doesn’t scare me because I know that, after something horrible happens, being around normal living can be very healing…even if you’re no longer in the physical world.