Hi ya'll, Wanda the Psychic here. Contrary to popular belief, I do have a real last name and it's NOT "Psychic," despite what my husband Earl might tell you. My middle name is not "The" either. Earl's been a little huffy ever since I was on that radio program a few months ago and the DJ started joking that I should legally change my last name to "Psychic" since that's what everybody calls me anyway.

This month I'm tackling the age-old question of how to handle a ghost in your home. Well, not your home in particular--I have no idea if your home is haunted...I'm psychic but I'm don't have magical powers!

 

Dear Wanda,

Now that I'm convinced my house IS haunted, what should I do? It scares the crap out of me to think that the undead are lurking around me.

--Freaked out in Philly

Dear Freaked,

First of all, stop panicking. There isn't much you can do. No amount of "white light" or smudging is going to convince a ghost to leave unless he or she really wants to. Besides, they're already dead-what do you want to do, make them deader? Ghosts have rights too, you know. How would you like to be not only dead but persecuted against? Talk about a bad day. Or century. Or however long ghosts choose to linger on on this earthly plain. 

  I like to think of ghosts as that strange man in the neighborhood who wanders around with his fly open and grease stains on his shirt, drunk and mumbling to himself. You just tend to ignore him until he knocks over your trashcan or pees on your mailbox or something. We all have our boundaries, you know.   At that point, you tell Earl to go out and have a word with him, which is sometimes not the wisest idea since Earl apparently thinks that a little 'hair of the dog" is a the best medicine in that situation. And of course a man shouldn't drink alone. . . but I digress. . . that's only happened once and Earl really regretted it the next morning when he had a cheap beer hangover and still had to go to work.  

What are ghosts, really? Why, just plain everyday folks like you and me who just happen to be dead.    Ghosts really have a bad reputation. Think about it -- doomed to spend all eternity drifting from room to room in the same suburban house, seeing the same rooms, furniture and people for years on end. Drifting endlessly through the place cooking, cleaning, married to a man who is so clueless he doesn't even notice your new haircut and perm until a week later and only then because you get your hairbrush stuck in your hair because they hairdresser made the curls too tight and you look like Shirley Temple on crack, and he has to cut it out with a pair of nail clippers because he couldn't find the scissors because he never puts them back after clipping his big yellow toenails with them, which doesn't even make sense because there's a perfectly good pair of nail clippers in the bathroom but he's too lazy to get up and go get them. . . phew, I think it might just be time to renew my Valium prescription. . . .

The way to handle a ghost in your home is this--just tell him or her straight out that you don't mind them being there as long as they don't throw, rearrange, move, or otherwise disturb your belongings. Also remind them if they insist on clomping around upstairs in the attic with their ghostly footsteps, please take off their shoes and just stomp around in their socks.   Tell them to use their "indoor footsteps."  It will be a lot quieter that way.

If you have a ghost of the arranging variety (for example, you wake up in the morning to find all your kitchen chairs stacked up to the ceiling like in Poltergeist), request that if they must arrange things to at least arrange something that needs arranging, like the underwear drawer or that pile of magazines on the coffee table that never stays neat.  

If things are disappearing and then reappearing in odd places, then ask your ghostly resident not to hide the important stuff like car keys, but tell them to feel free to make off with that pile of 12-year-old porno magazines your husband thinks you don't know about under the sink in the bathroom.  

And if, Heavens forbid, you have a ghost who is fond of waking you up in the early morning hours by standing at the foot of the bed and staring at you, let them know in no uncertain terms that you can't even stand looking at yourself in the mirror that early in the morning, much less a half-materialized being from the Other Side. 

 

         Psychically yours,
         

         Wanda

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Be sure to keep up with Wanda's past columns in the Archive section.