Every ghost has a secret wish they need fulfilled in order to be laid to rest. And I think every one of us is followed by ghosts that need laying to rest. The quest is always to uncover the secret and satisfy the need in a meaningful way.

Oh yeah, did I mention I’m living in a haunted house? I know ghosts got to have their own living quarters while they poke and moulder about. But sheesh, I never get used to the chill blasts of air while I’m looking through my still-packed boxes for that wildebeast map I thought I knew the location of.

I notice the apparitions grow calm and content as I come across my “naughty bits” coloring book. Lands sakes, the things I collected when I was living on the west coast. But since I’m listening to the dialogue of this spooky, terrifying haunted house experience, I’m not putting it up to coincidence. Zoinks, Scoob, we have a clue.

I start to imagine that what the UFOs, Bigfoot, and the Amityville Horror really want are hot babes. Mars needs women. Bigfoot needs a heroine to carry off like in Donkey Kong. The Amityville Horror needs some love backstory to make the drama more urgent. Crumbs, is this really what it all comes down to, the unknown forces of doom want me to be their dating service?

Oh, for crying out loud.

I have to remind myself of both the seriousness and the humor in this situation. What would Gomez Addams be without Morticia? What would the monster be without their victim? The monster has always been a symbol of lustful desire embodied in a form and a story we can relate to. Love is both a blessing and a torment, a uniting force and a destructive one – what is Romeo and Juliet but the story of two enemies falling for one another? The divine force of love overrides all human requirements and tosses aside whatever towers of Babel we have built for ourselves.

Being the living being in this arrangement, of course it falls to me for the physical accommodation of this dialogue. I have to hire the musicians who will play the Monster Mash, and I have to set up the monsters with their willing victims or lost love compatriots. While I might be the living facilitator, I’m going to need a host for this haunted house party.

That’s where I have to own up to my terror and explore what lies beyond that. The source of the psychic disturbance which apparently needs me to lay something to rest, by getting it a date.

Out of nowhere, I remember my first crush. A native American dancer who stunned me with her looks and her moves. I’ve never forgotten her, and it appears that neither has the unknown. For some reason, I think of a Count Dracula like figure, watching events unfold from his musty castle. While I may have seen this dancer from my perspective, so too might have the vampire. I put this thought away for now.  It’s time to change the cat box.

I firmly believe that even a creature of unrepentant evil is fair game for Cupid’s bow, at least in principle. In reality, what do I know? I don’t make monkeys, I just train them. Who knows the depths of darkness in the breast of a heart of stone that has been overridden by providence?

Time to go into the basement, and find out what’s really there in the seemingly empty “mysterious room”.