Do you believe in ghosts?

You bet I do. It happened over thirty years ago, while I was visiting my aunt in southern Italy. Her house (which was reputed to be several hundred-years-old) was so tiny; I had to sleep on a bed in her basement.

The house belonged to my aunt, and I was there with my family to attend a cousin’s wedding. I was sleeping in my tiny basement bedroom one night when a rustling sound woke me. There was a shadowy figure near the foot of my bed, and I shot up, terrified, and turned on the bedside lamp. A tiny, ancient looking woman dressed all in black was smiling at me. I remember the wave of relief I felt, thinking she was just another distant relative I hadn’t met yet. I couldn’t understand how she’d found her way into the basement in the middle of the night, however. I tried speaking to her in Italian, but she didn’t respond. Instead, she shuffled herself over to the side of my bed, still grinning happily, to get a closer look at me. Her pale blue eyes were identical to my father’s. As I smiled back at her, all I could think was this woman was really happy to see me. I also knew that somehow, we were related. I watched her shuffle out of the room, turned off my light and fell back asleep.

The next morning over coffee, I casually brought up my late-night visitor to my aunt. I will never forget the look on her face. Besides turning pale, she jumped from her seat and immediately started squawking about, frantically opening drawers and rushing around the house as if it were on fire.

“E morta, e morta!” she yelled, gathering little plastic bottles of holy water from drawers stuffed with palm crosses and prayer cards.

My father insisted I tell her that I’d been dreaming. (But I hadn’t.) Then he suggested the front door hadn’t been locked before we went to bed. (But it had.) The more excuses he came up with, the more agitated my aunt became. I tried to calm her down, but it was too late. She had headed to the basement, her hands filled with religious objects, ignoring my apology. It was clear she knew exactly who the woman was. 

Later that day when I told my cousin what had transpired she nodded understandingly, completely nonplussed. “Oh, yes,” she explained. “That woman is some nosy ancestor of ours who sometimes visits when relatives from America come to stay. But you know my mother, Maria,” she added, nonchalantly. “She doesn’t like dead people in the house, even if they are relatives.” 

I have been back to my aunt’s hometown many times since that incident, but I have never slept in that house again.