by ron evans
I’ve always imagined ghosts being peeping Toms. I mean, what the hell else would there be for them to do except watch us? Damned to float about, often stuck in one location and unable to (consistently at least) affect solid objects or interact with the living. So...they would watch us. Now, nobody likes the idea of being watched while doing our biz in the “office” as it were or whilst showering and making whoopee. Haha. Whoopee, I says. Well, I shouldn’t say nobody.
But exhibitionist kinks aside, if ghosts truly exist then they are violating our privacy every minute of every day. Think about that. You may not want to. The writer of this email I received from a longtime listener of the How Bizarre Podcast (formerly Tales From The Spacepod) certainly didn’t want to either.
For your consideration:
“Hey there. I may have the perfect ghost story for this show. It has it all. Creeps. Sex. Crime. And the paranormal. This is not my story but a dear friend of mine and I have tried to get her on the show to talk about it but she’s not even remotely interested in that. Sadly. So, I will do my best here with the summary version. My friend...we will call her Mary. Cuz that’s her name. When Mary was 17 she moved to an old farm style house outside of town -I’ll leave the town out - with her mom after her parents split up. It was a pretty rough and withered house but the price was right for a single mom with two teenage daughters to feed. Mary liked it well enough but her younger sister Grace hated being out of town so far.
Grace was 15 around this time and was still in that rebellious state so there was a lot of grumbling about the move. All of that was quickly put aside when strange things started happening. The first night of sleep in the drafty old house was a little uncomfortable as they hadn’t really fixed everything up or cleaned up the bath tub etc. But the next night Mary took it upon herself to clean that bath tub so she could soak the draftiness away that night. Later while she was in the tub, her candle blew out. The fact that there was no real breeze that night made it a strange occurrence. Mary reached for the towel in the semi-dark when she saw an old man in overalls watching her near the bathroom door. She screamed and fell back into the tub. The man laughed at her and vanished right in front of her. Mary freaked and ran to get her mom. They all looked through the entire house and found nothing. Chalking it up to exhaustion or stress from the divorce, they all tried to get some sleep.
Over the next few days everyone had seen this man at one point or another. And every time, it was when they were naked. They all assumed immediately that it was a ghost. They knew what they were seeing wasn’t made of solid matter and it didn’t behave in a “walking across the room” manner. He floated. And occasionally seemed to be masturbating. They knew the old man who built the house in the 1950s was a farmer. Little more. So they looked up any info they could find on the place and discovered that the man they were seeing was clearly the ghost of the old farmer. A well known sexual predator in the town. In fact he’s so well known that I won’t say his name because it would give the location of the house away. So Farmer John as we will call him apparently had sexual relations with his niece who was 15 at the time and that was his fi rst encounter with trouble in town. It was the 50s though and he didn’t get into much trouble for that. Later, he did get arrested for trespassing and peeping into a neighbors’ bedroom window while they were having sex. In fact. Farmer John had been spotted looking into windows all over this side of town for years. He was a well-known creep. Eventually Farmer John died of natural causes and the house went to a few di erent owners but none of them stayed long and it remained dormant for years. Until Mary’s family moved in. Here’s the funny part to me though. They stayed there. In fact Mary’s mom is still there to this day...12 years later.
Mary is married now and living in the city but she visits her mom often and she still occasionally sees ol’ Farmer John dropping in for a visit. Usually in the bathroom. I couldn’t imagine how you could put up with the ghost of a dead old creepy peeping tom pedophile farmer watching you every time you are naked or having intimate relations. Yes, Mary’s mom re-married and they are quite aware that there were three people in the room the night they consummated that marriage. They just don’t really seem to be freaked out anymore and haven’t for years. I asked Mary about it and she said it’s made her realize that we are always being watched by ghosts. Some we can see, some we can’t. What are you gonna do about it? Move to another house? Who’s to say there isn’t someone worse there? Who’s to say invisible people aren’t surrounding us everywhere every minute? This whole thing put the family on a quest to learn more about ghosts.
There are lots of theories about why some ghosts can be seen and most can’t. But one that stuck with me was it’ all down to the boldness of the ghost. That makes sense to me in the case of Farmer John. He clearly felt bold enough to fl ash people, peek into their windows and groom young girls for his own interests. He didn’t really hide that in life, why should he hide it in death? And where is he anyway? Hell? Sounds more like heaven to a piece of shit like Farmer John.”
Agreed. Also...yikes. The thought of being watched by ghosts isn’t one that’s always on the top of my head but again, it always made sense to me. I love how this family was like “it’s our house now, bitch” and just kept living their lives knowing full well there was a sexual predator in the room with them. Albeit, a seemingly ineffectual one these days. How would you handle that? Would you move? Hold an exorcism? Get the Ouija board out? Never get naked again ever? It’s an interesting thought isn’t it? Who is in the room with you right now? What kind of life did they live? How did they die? Why are they watching you poop? But more interestingly... What have they seen you do?