Do you believe in ghosts?

I was out of reading material, so I hit the local public library.  After debating checking out a biography of Rutherford B. Hayes (to whom I may be distantly related), I found a bunch of "true ghost stories" books and took them all!  Most of the ones I've read so far aren't impressive - lots of weird mists and funny noises - but they have me wanting to share my own ghost experiences.

My mother's brother Art died nearly ten years before I was born, but I knew him.  He was the family ghost.  We heard him all the time, walking down the front hall from the kitchen and then up the stairs.

I had a friend over one day, playing a board game in my room.  We heard someone on the stairs and when she looked, no one was there.  I told her it was just Art, the family ghost.  She mocked me and then flew down the stairs when "someone sat on edge of the bed".

It was common knowledge that I believed in ghosts.  One day at school, a classroom door opened all by itself and someone said "Hey, Jean, your ghost is here."  I glanced over and said "Shut the door, Art."  The door closed right away!

I woke one night to see a non-menacing human figure standing over me.  "Art?"  The figure nodded and I went back to sleep.

Now, I am willing to admit an errant wind may have moved the classroom door and the figure standing over me might have been a dream.  His sitting on the side of the bed may have been her imagination.  But Art's footsteps in the hall and stairs was not the house settling - he had a recognizable tread, just like the rest of the family.

Now for a tale of Art that I personally did not experience.  Once upon a time, the entire family went out for a day trip.  The next day, a neighbor teen confessed (to my brother) having planned to break into our house, but a man glared at him through the window when he tried.  From his description, we knew it was Art.

When Art was a child, his father died.  He told Art to take care of his (Art's) mother and sister, that he was the man of the house now.  My mother and grandmother both died in the late 1990's and I believe Art has moved on.  Taking care of Mom and Marian was his Unfinished Business.