My folks live in an old farmhouse in a very small town in a county with just one stoplight. We frequently kid them that it MUST be haunted and my mom doesn’t dispute this but my dad just rolls his eyes.

Last weekend, we had a bit of a chilling night in that old farmhouse; presented for your Halloween pleasure…

L and I usually sleep in the same room, which has a double bed and a small twin bed. The house is heavy and solid and comforting, and I always sleep well. However, that night, several hours into my REM cycle, I was jolted awake when Miss L sat bolt upright in bed, saying repeatedly and insistently, “What? What? What?” Not panicked, but urgently. I was sleep-muddled and mumbled, “Who are you talking to? Go back to sleep,” to which she responded, at a somewhat louder volume, “WHAT?”

And, undeniably, a small, somewhat curious, mild voice whispered back, from somewhere in the room, “What?”

Miss L immediately lay back down and went back to sleep. I, however, was rigid in my bed with my hair standing on end. My heart was pounding. I must be half asleep, I told myself. She said it, just very quietly, it was L, not anyone else…or anything. I didn’t really believe this, but I managed to rationalize myself back to sleep.

Until a few hours later, when I was roused – gradually, not all at once – from slumber by Miss L’s quiet murmuring from the bed across the room.

“What are you doing?” I groggily hissed.

“Asking a question,” L replied.

“I’m sleeping! To whom are you asking this question??” I said.

“Not you,” L said, and in the chilly silence that followed, in which my hair stood up again, L subsided back into sleep.

The next morning, she remembered nothing of the conversations, and because my mind can’t actually grasp that I heard something else whisper that one single word, I’ve convinced myself that it was her, or my own sleep-befuddled brain. Or that my 20 Days of Horror, or Marianne on Netflix have caught up with me and are playing tricks.

Did my sleep-talking daughter commune with a ghost? We’ll never know. But I also don’t know that my sleep in that old farmhouse will be as blissfully untroubled as it has been.