The Not Scary Ghost Story

Last night I saw a ghost. Cutting through the overgrown cemetery is the quickest way to my apartment complex, where I share rent with a roommate. Some people think I'm weird for choosing to be a night shift janitor, but I love my job. Complete empty ambience all for myself to enjoy, also, I enjoy cleaning. Sure, sometimes a flickering light or unexplained sound in the dark hallway can be spooky, but I don't have a natural tendency to get antsy about it. Do I believe in ghosts? Sort of. I believe that our physical bodies decay, and our leftover energy from life becomes something else. So no, I wasn't scared when I spotted that whooshy apparition last night.

It was a woman, I think, with see-through gray skin and long limbs. Her floating dress was draped in dirt with dried blood and crumbled leaf bits. I watched her carefully from behind a tall gravestone. The gravestone was the shape of a cross that sat on top of the stone base. On the cross was a naked Jesus being crucified. The frozen religious figure had a cloth around his groin area and the iconic thorns on his crown. But while his eyes were turned down to his tied feet, mine were completely focused on the wandering lady ghost. Watching her aimlessly pass through the mossy terrain affected some sadness in me. She looked like a weeping cloud in search of something. I wondered if her body had been buried here, or if someone she once knew but did not remember. I didn't leave my spot until her ghostly figure disappeared. It was almost dawn by the time I arrived home. The pale indigo sky was waking up, as was my roommate.

She sluggishly slurped instant coffee from her white mug with a cat's face on the front as I retold last night's supernatural events. My fingertips were ice cold from sitting in one place too long in the night, so using my hands to tell the tale hurt. She didn't believe me and finished getting ready to head to her office. Something about a marketing presentation, and she didn't want distracting ghost stories to get into her paranoid head. I apologized, and then she left, leaving me to my thoughts.

I think the ghost encounter awakened my savior complex. After my night shift, I always took a long nap to replenish myself, but today I became obsessed with the internet's ghost sighting rabbit hole. At least fifty Google tabs were open on my laptop. The internet was okay, but it lagged behind due to my excessive researching. All this typing had warmed up my fingers and my imagination. Just who was she? I don't have a third eye or any spiritual connections, so I can't just conjure up her name.

The moss-invaded cemetery was brighter during the day, completely open to the sunlight. The sun came and went with the long streaking clouds that stretched across the sky. Her name might be on one of these stone hedges. I thought back to her long, grayed-out dress and her short side-swept hairstyle. I think the dress was once a creamy yellowish color, but somehow it had faded away.

When I made it back to the Jesus gravestone, I walked the path she had taken last night. Obviously, a floating ghost couldn't leave footprints, so I played the guessing game. I checked the names and dates on the sitting stones. 1920-1977, 1898-1984, 1800-1965...it went forever. I came back around and tripped on a root. My head banged on the hard grass, causing me immense pain but no serious damage to my brain, I think. Because right after that fall, I caught a glimpse of the ghost again.

I got up and was about to run to her when I realized that my legs felt weird. Everything about my body felt weird. I looked down and processed what I was looking at. My body was knocked out in the middle of this cemetery. I touched myself; my hand passed through my stomach. Then I touched my body on the ground. I could feel it, the physical flesh, but it felt fuzzy to my spirit fingertips. This was my first out-of-body experience, but I didn't have time to freak out or be amazed.

The ghost only appeared whenever the clouds blocked the sun, which made it hard to follow her. She was walking very slowly but somehow kept ending up in entirely different directions with every blink. It became dizzying to follow her. Out of the cemetery, deep into the woods, she finally stopped teleporting. Quietly, I approached her. If I were in my physical body, I would be on my knees panting and thirsty for hydration. The sun was blocked once again by a stretch of cloud, and she turned her tear-stained face to me. I looked behind her. The headstone looked ordinary if you remove the vines, moss, and big cracks from it. The ghost stepped aside, and I crouched down to read it:

ANA FERNÀNDEZ-CASTRO

1974-1949

My head hurt like hell when I woke back up in my body. The living world felt so surreal, and I somewhat stumbled my way back into the trees where her grave stood. I found it, took a picture with my phone, and headed back home to prepare. My laptop heated my mattress as I dug deep into online resources. Ana's full name was searched in every search bar until I found a record of some old fashion column from the late 1960s. Her name was listed with other girls, and in the picture next to the names were lined up young women smiling and shy to the camera. I found the familiar face, and unfamiliarly she was smiling in this one. The column focused on potential new models for a modeling gig I had never heard of before. Something about diversity and accepting their first Hispanic models. I followed her name to a news article. Good news, she had been hired as a model, bad news...she was murdered for it. Another girl killed her out of jealousy. One stab to the lungs was all it took.

I didn't come back to the gravestone until a week later. I put on rubber gloves and began deep cleaning her resting place with brand new supplies. The substances were strong, so I had to wear a mask and tie my hair back while my arms tirelessly scrubbed the muck off. I splooshed a bucket of cold water on the grave and repeated the scrubbing. The tools I used were ones I've used before to clean tough spots. My janitor duty kicked in, and it wouldn't stop until this stone was shining. By the time I was done, the sun was setting, and my back was just dripping in sweat. The stench of chemicals that came off me was stronger than bleach. Not really, I think that would be too hazardous.

After taking off my already worn-out gloves and mask, I reached into my pocket for my phone. I tried to get that beautiful sunset lighting right as I crouched down to one knee for a pretty angle. I'm a janitor, not a professional photographer, but still I wanted to do my best. My camera focused just as the orange light hit right behind the low trees and the gravestone. I opened up the picture and smiled down at my phone. Ana was sitting on her headstone, livelier than I expected any ghost to act like. She looked beautiful, and it made the sad feelings from when I first saw her fade away. I took another picture, but she wasn't there anymore. That was fine. I never saw her ghost again.

I was lounging on the couch on my night off. On the TV played an old SpongeBob episode just because. The front doorknob shook wildly and rushed open as my roommate stumbled inside. Her bag fell to the floor, and instantly I ran over to her with every concern in my body. "What happened?" I asked with my hands stabilizing her shoulders. She inhaled a lot of air to calm herself down, but still her voice shook erratically. "I think I saw a ghost".