The Ghosts We Know

A little background. I am a slider. Or at least I claim to be a slider. Sliders can only claim slider powers. There is no scientific proof that we exist. 

For years, I didn’t even know that there was a term for my totally useless super power. I did know there had to be others with similar experiences somewhere out there. I might have met one or two of them in my lifetime. The topic doesn’t come up in conversation easily or often. And, it is not met with universal interest. 

Then, over twenty years after the Internet arrived—being quick on the uptake is not one of my super powers—it occurred to me that I could search for people who turn street lights off. And that is when I discovered the term slider.

Street Light Interference. Scorned by science. Debunked by experiments. A phenomenon whereby individuals by their mere presence cause street lights to go off well beyond a frequency that chance would dictate. 

I demonstrated this ability to a friend one night in the parking lot of a suburban office building making him walk with me back and forth under a street lamp. Walk under it. It goes off. Walk under it again. It goes on. Repeat. Many times. The experiment never failed. I am not sure he was convinced. Actually, I am pretty sure he wasn’t but he was kind enough not to debate the issue, then or when it came up a few times in the course of our friendship.

Within a year or two, our friendship came to an abrupt end. We argued. I assumed I would never see him again.

Then came the worst thing possible when you have unresolved issues with someone. He died. Unexpectedly. Before he even got to have a fortieth birthday. 

So, although I do not routinely try to communicate with the dead, one winter night on a cold beach I sent an unspoken message. “I know you have a big family and a lot of closer friends to get around to, but when you have a minute, could you drop by and give me a sign that things are good between us?” I did not expect a response. I didn’t even feel sure about the whole afterlife thing.

Not long afterwards I was at a restaurant in Boston that we had visited together. I saw the seats at the bar where we sat were open and took one of them. He had only been dead for a short time. Maybe only weeks. 

So, he was on my mind when I was in the restaurant and when I went to retrieve my car from a multi-level parking lot. 

I got in the elevator with one other person, a businessman who positioned himself in a back corner as far away from the button panel as possible. I stood in the middle on the opposite side nowhere near the panel. The doors began to shut and suddenly bounced open, the way they do when they hit the arm of a latecomer trying to hold the elevator. But there was no arm. There was no latecomer. No one got in. We could see no one was in the lobby. We were alone. Or were we?

The other passenger uttered a sentence I’d never heard before. “Looks like we’re riding with an invisible man.”

“Don’t worry.” I told him. “I think he’s with me.”

We both chuckled.

I exited the elevator liking the idea that I had an invisible man in tow. 

Smiling, I walked forty yards down the ramp before I realized I was going in the wrong direction. In the instant that I turned to reverse direction, undeniably simultaneously, the overhead light at the top of the ramp turned off. Not my doing. I was too far away.

An overwhelming feeling of relief washed over me. 

Do I believe the light going out was my friend telling me all was good, we were good? I did at the time. Over the many years that have passed, did I consider that the light’s snapping off was a mere coincidence? My brain did. But I remember the warm feeling I experienced. Do I believe I got a message from the other side saying all was okay?

I choose to believe I did.

© 2024 Jane Kelly