A Ghost in the House?

By: Jerry Blackerby

A couple of nights ago, I almost began to believe we had a ghost in the house. Maybe Cocoa was telling us he was not ready to leave us yet. We had just had our about 14-year old miniature Poodle, Cocoa, put down a few days before. Here’s the story.

Since Billie takes water pills around the clock, she does get up and go to the bathroom during the night. She normally tries to not walk barefooted. She puts on her Crocs, which she keeps right by the bed at night. I usually wake up enough to know when she gets out of bed or back into bed.

She got up about midnight and went to the bathroom and came back to bed. Two or three hours later, I felt her sit up to get up again. Then I realized she was saying, “Turn on the light. I can’t find my shoe.” I turned on the lamp on my side of the bed.

She looked around and could not find her shoe. I got up and turned on the overhead light. Then I looked and I could not find one Croc either. She had one on already. I got her another pair of shoes and she went to the bathroom.

I walked to the hallway, bathroom and up to the den, turning on lights as I went. I did not see her shoe anywhere. I knew there was not anyone else in our house who could have moved the shoe. Even Cocoa is no longer here, unless maybe his ghost, and he never moved her shoes anyway.

Then I remembered that a time or two, she had put her feet under the cover with her shoes on, realized it and took the shoes off. Sure enough, I reached all under the covers and found the one shoe about the middle of the bed near the foot under the covers. I set the shoe with the other one next to the bed and told her when she came back to bed.

It wasn’t a ghost after all, just her neuropathy causing her to not feel the shoe on her foot when she put her foot under the cover.