The Necklace

As a child I was constantly told stories from various family members of being haunted by a rather playful spirit. Named "Hilda" by my grandmother, this ghost supposedly wreaked havoc for years until my mother and her family moved away from her childhood home.

After my divorce, my mother and I moved back into her childhood home with my young son. Everything was peachy for several months. One day my mother revealed that she had seen shadows and that household objects would disappear, only to show up sometime later. I quickly dismissed her claims.

One afternoon I was preparing to go to work. I was alone in the locked bathroom and in the process of placing my necklace around my neck when it suddenly slipped from my grasp and hit the floor. Absent mindedly I reached down to the place in which I heard it land only to discover it had vanished. A little confused, I searched the entire bathroom but could not locate the necklace.

The necklace had been a gift from my grandfather so I was very upset and dwelled on the incident for weeks. I just could not fathom how a solid object could just vanish right before my eyes. I began to research black holes and magnetic fields, but this explanation did not satisfy me in the least.

One day I walked into the bathroom and instantly felt the hairs on my neck prickle and my pulse begin to race. Then I did something I had not done in 20 years - I screamed for my mother. There, on the bathroom floor, was my necklace.

Mom put an arm around my shaking shoulders. With a slight chuckle she announced, "Hilda strikes again!"