A couple of months back, when I was in phase one of my quarantine online shopping frenzy (I’m in phase four now, just bought a new couch) I bought us a new pair of bedside lamps. I’m so far into first world problems that I’d been complaining for months about how I have to stick my fingers under the lampshade and click the button to turn the lamp off. It drove me nuts. Jerimiah suggested “The Clapper” as he side-eyed my craziness one Tuesday evening. “The Clapper,” I scoffed, “you’ve got to be kidding me.” I knew there was a more regal, more grown-up, more elegant way to turn a lamp off than “The Clapper” so I went to Amazon.

Three days later I unboxed a beautiful set of small, matching lamps with brushed silver bases, and creme shades. I quickly screwed in the energy-saving bulbs that came with them, plugged one in, and called Jerimiah over. “Wow,” he said, obviously not wowed. “Watch…” I teased, as I gently touched the base of the lamp with my finger. As I did that, the lamp lit up. I touched it a second time, it went brighter. A third time! Even brighter! “Cool,” he said as he walked away. I mumbled “Asshole” under my breathe as I carefully marched the lamps up to our room.

Now, today, about three months later the lamp on my side of the bed randomly comes on. Like, it just turns on. No rhyme or reason. It will be two am and the lamp will come on and I will assume it’s the sun coming up, and I will start to wake, only to see that it’s in fact the damn lamp. Nothing is by it, I’m in the middle of our bed (that’s where I sleep, just ask Jerimiah) so there’s no way I touched it. It’s bizarre. Then the other day I was in my office and I saw it turn on. My office is connected to our master bedroom, so when I sit at my desk I can look through our closets into our room. There I was writing away (read: doing a crossword puzzle in the back of an old People magazine) and the lamp came on, and just as sudden as the flicker of the lamp, I knew why.

I ran downstairs to tell Jerimiah the light came on while I was watching it. He stopped typing and looked at me. I looked at him. He looked at me. I looked at him. “You know what this means?” I asked. “Please don’t say ghosts,” he said. “Ghosts!” I shrieked.

MFing ghosts.

M.