Ghost Stories, Continued

In order to relieve my mind from operation "Fix-a-Fang" (scheduled for tomorrow--*gulp*) I thought I'd write about another Ghostly experience from my past.

Shortly after I graduated from College, I went to work as a Nanny to a 3 month old baby girl. It was one of those "gotta get a job to pay for new apartment and necessities like FOOD and GAS", jobs that I ended up staying at for 3 years.

The childs home was located in a prestigious neighborhood of Minnesota. The parents were upwordly moving Yuppies who drove BMW's and filled their white washed double decker house with Wedgewood, Berber carpets and a neurotic Golden Retriever.

Money and affluence, I've learned, does not protect one from tragedy. The Father of the child had lost his little sister in a sledding accident in Switzerland when she was 12. His parents (who lived in a Mansion along side their private lake) had an oil painting of her above their marble fireplace. The child, whom I was a nanny to, resembled the dead sister...eerily so.

When I would put the child down for a mid morning nap, I would often times lay on the sofa located outside her nursery and catch a quick kat nap, myself. I discovered, after my first attempt to kat nap, that I must put the neurotic golden retriever downstairs in the Den or he would pace the kitchen and annoy the heck out of me with the clacking of his toenails on the tile floor.

One such kat nap morning, I had locked neurotic dog downstairs, placing the child gate at the top of the stairs so he couldn't escape, then lay down on the sofa. I turned on my side, facing the sofa back and was just drifting off to sleep when I felt warm breath on my neck followed by a firm nudge on my shoulder blade. I moaned sleepily and told the dog to leave me alone. I lay there for a few seconds then heard a panting and more breath on my neck. I rolled over to admonish the dog for escaping from downstairs and saw...nothing.

No dog.

I swung my legs off the sofa and sat pondering this strangeness, feeling my heartbeat start to speed up. I called out to the dog and heard him whine from the top of the stairs in the kitchen. My palms became sweaty and I crept slowly to the kitchen. The neurotic dog stared at me plaintively from behind the child gate at the top of the stairs.

What had been breathing on me?

What the hell had nudged me?

Strangeness, I tell you. Eerie strangeness.