It is wonderful that five thousand years have now elapsed since the creation of the world, and still it is undecided whether or not there has ever been an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after death. All argument is against it; but all belief is for it. — Samuel Johnson

I was about six years old when the trouble started, and I retain only fragmentary memories of what happened: I remember the sound, big and booming. To me, the noise suggested something was angry—and trying to break in through the roof. Once, I can remember, the sound woke me up out of bed. I shared a room with a big brother, Dave. He had already stood up and turned on the light. Our sisters were down the hall. We could hear them, hollering to us. But the booms seemed to come from the roof over our heads.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

In response, Dave stared up at the ceiling and put his hands over his head—the way I’d found stressed adults sometimes did to keep their heads from, you know, popping off. “I don’t know,” he said.

His voice sounded weak, enervated from his own sense of not knowing. The banging stopped for several long seconds. Then a particularly loud thump sounded, and for a moment I held my breath. I don’t remember much else, except that eventually we all gathered out in the hall, like tenants turned out by flooding in our apartments.

My parents came up with a cover story for me, the youngest. And now I can see the ways they tried to give that story legitimacy. I had just got home from school, and my mother was in the front yard, talking to a neighbor, who knew of our trouble. “How’s it going?” she asked. “Is it still happening?”

“It’s still happening,” my mother responded, then looked at me: “Right honey?”

She smiled, still turned toward me: “There are raccoons that jump up and down on the roof!”

I went and found a hole in the ground. I called my mother and our neighbor to look. “It’s a raccoon’s footprint,” I said.

My sisters claimed worse things than banging. One suffered frequent, awful nightmares. Both claimed the covers were pulled from them at night—their sheets and blankets seemingly clutched away in unison, to fall on the floor in a heap at the foot of their beds; an old woman appeared in their bedroom and walked right through the door.

The banging started in 1975 and lasted for nine months, maybe a year, emanating from the roof and walls. Morning on the last day we ever heard it started strangely. My mother put on a dress and makeup on a Saturday morning, like she was going out for dinner. Then she explained that our parish priest was coming over, to bless the house. “We never got the house blessed when we moved in,” she said, lying to me about what was really going on. “So we’re having him do it now.”

Father Crowley showed up maybe a half-hour later, sprinkling holy water in the corners and praying in Latin. I remember that vividly, but I recall only a few details of what happened that night. Mostly, I just remember being scared. And the thumping going on above me. I’ll get back to that. But first, a little context is in order.

Looking back, we had what believers would refer to as a “classic poltergeist experience”—a spirit making itself known by either moving objects or making noise. Skeptics would likely hear this story and think our “trouble” emanated from malfunctioning water pipes and overactive imaginations. The impasse between these two conflicting views is such that, since college, I have told this story only rarely. “The Family Ghost,” as I call it, is a subject probably best kept to myself. I’m a reporter, after all, and my own professional credibility hinges on my reliability as witness. I have not a doubt in my mind that there might be some potential employers, down the line, who won’t like this book, even if they never actually read it.

So, you might ask, Why do this?

Of course, I asked myself that same question. And my response starts with something fundamental: I’m going to write about this, the Family Ghost, because these stories are with us, whether we like them or not.

***

Since the beginning of recorded history, men and women have told tales of ghosts and hauntings and things, in our case, that went boom in the night. These events are, I’d argue, a part of who we are—if not as individuals, then certainly as a species.

Besides that, as a journalist, I adhere to a code of ethics that requires me to explain any personal connections I might have to the subject at hand. It just doesn’t seem right for me to write a book about the paranormal without letting you know where I come from. Most of the events and places that colored my childhood have fallen away. My family stopped attending any regular organized religious ser vices when I was twelve. I’ve moved more times than I can count. But I’m resurrecting the Family Ghost, so to speak, because as a society, we hear plenty of ghost stories from people who believe everything they hear, and from people who don’t think anything labeled “paranormal” could be possible. I think it’s time to hear one of these stories from someone who, no matter what he believes, is prepared to focus on what he knows. And folks, that ain’t much.

Consider my own memories: every last one of them could be false. In one of the most famous studies demonstrating the unreliability of memory, 120 people who attended the Disneyland theme park were shown an ad in which Bugs Bunny was depicted. Then they were asked, “Did you shake hands with Bugs Bunny when you attended Disneyland?”

One third said yes, they had shaken hands with that wascally wabbit.

Problem is, Bugs is a Warner Bros. character—not a Disney creation at all.

So Bugs had never appeared in the park. The researchers had created a false memory in their subjects merely by suggesting the idea of this impossible meeting. In another study, researchers convinced half of the participants that they had taken a hot air balloon ride that never occurred.

The functioning of an adult’s memory is suspect. But childhood memories are the most highly suggestible. The most famous example is given by psychologist Jean Piaget, whose 1951 book, Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood, includes the following passage: “I can still see, most clearly, the following scene. . . . I was sitting in my pram, which my nurse was pushing in the Champs Elysees, when a man tried to kidnap me. I was held in by the strap fastened round me while my nurse bravely tried to stand between me and the thief. She received various scratches and I can still see vaguely those on her face. Then a crowd gathered, a policeman with a cloak and a white baton came up, and the man took to his heels. I can still see the whole scene, and can even place it near the tube station.”

Piaget believed in the reality of this event, which he had heard as fact, till he was fifteen years old, when it was discovered that his nanny had made the story up to get a reward. In setting out to write this chapter, then, I considered the testimony of everyone older than me more reliable. And I further considered the collective picture they presented to be more important than individual accounts. In sum, when they agreed on the details I granted those details more validity.

In that sense, the Family Ghost story sails right past Piaget’s kidnapping. The accounts of the close witnesses agree on the details related so far, for instance.

Over the years, as I mulled over whether or not to ever write about the episode, I had conversations with my older siblings, parents, and some other relatives. I spoke about it to my oldest brother, Jerry, in fact, the last time I saw him before he died. He recounted the basic particulars I describe but resisted searching his memory any further than this: lots of banging over lots of nights, more stories from our sisters, the appearance of the family priest. Then he confessed that he didn’t want to talk about it at all. “I don’t know why,” he said, multiple times, until finally he admitted, “It freaked me out.”

A cousin, and my aunt, still remember hearing about it. They learned some of the details as they happened—including the banging, and the bit about the blessing of the house. My other brother and my sisters retain their own memories. But for our purposes, the most detailed account came from my parents, who were charged with figuring it all out. Shortly after I graduated from college, many years before my mother died, I sat down with them and talked about the whole thing. And this is the story they told me.

***

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