A million years ago, I wrote a book about a murder trial. You can still buy it (just look to the right).

The year the book came out, the historic site where the murder (and the trial) took place held a fundraising event inviting people to spend the night there. The site manager gave me the opportunity to deliver my first lecture about the book at this event. You can read about it here: https://arwenbicknell.com/2016/11/02/my-first-lecture/

This was probably the best chance I ever had to experience something paranormal. Nothing happened.

The only other even slightly bizarre thing I’ve ever had happen to me occurred when I was about 7. We had just moved from California to Illinois, where my mom had selected a giant barn of a house. It was two stories not counting the basement and attic, and it had been built in 1890. High ceilings, wooden parquet floors, stained glass, a creepy front foyer with a winding stairwell, an even creepier maid’s back stairwell from the kitchen leading up a tiny maid’s bedroom; this place had the works. It was a far cry from the small, one-story mint-green stucco modern job we had lived in for as long as I could remember up to that point.

So one day not long after we landed there, my dad was at work and my mom was in the basement doing . . . something; I can’t recall what. She spent a lot of time down there—laundry, refinishing window frames and doors, assorted repair jobs. Whatever she was up to, I had no desire to help, and she, having no desire to put up with me, had left me to my own devices. So I was poking around doing kid stuff, reading, playing, examining things that weren’t mine, whatever. I got hungry and decided to make toast as that was slightly less messy than peanut butter and jelly.

I wandered into the kitchen, put the bread in the toaster, got out a plate, a knife, and the butter—and then our dog, Anjin, skidded in and made it very clear that he needed to Go Out Now. This involved grabbing him firmly by the collar, opening the kitchen door, walking three paces, opening the porch door, going down maybe 4 or 5 steps, then walking ten more steps to the fenced part of our back yard, opening the gate, and finally letting go of the dog’s collar while shutting him in. I was not the most coordinated child, and I lived in terror of the dog bolting from me and going walkabout, so this little 30-second task always took me a ridiculously long time; maybe a minute or two—even when the dog was pulling me along because he really, really wanted to get into that yard and do his thing.

So after this hassle, I went back into the house—and there was the toast, on the plate, buttered, knife on the counter, in a completely empty kitchen.

I stared at this still life, perplexed. My mother did not much believe in doing for others—especially little brats who didn’t help with her chores du jour. My mother was more the type to start hollering that I had left the butter out instead of putting it away before dealing with the dog. Still, it had to be her, right? Maybe this was a test. Or a guilt trip. But why had she run off (and left the butter out)? Why wasn’t the knife in the sink? And where was she?

I rinsed the knife, wiped off the counter, put everything away. Picked up my plate and trekked through the house. She was not in any of the bathrooms. She was not in her bedroom. She was not lying in a puddle of blood on any floors. I went down to the basement.

And there she was, huffing and cussing away on whatever project it was. She looked up and asked if I had come to help. I asked why she hadn’t put the butter away. She asked what I was talking about; if I make toast it’s my job to put everything away. I said yes, but she had actually made the toast. She got testy and told me that I needed to get better at telling jokes that made sense. I told her she didn’t make sense; I had put bread in the toaster, taken the dog out, and come back to actual toast. She rolled her eyes, then told me to finish eating and bring the dog back in before he started barking.

Nothing else like that ever happened to me in that house, creepy as it was. I asked my mom about all this a few years ago, and she had zero weird experiences and less than zero recollection of that particular basement conversation. So apparently she did not have a panic attack about random toast-making strangers sneaking into the house. And if she did make the toast, there’s no way to know now.

But hey, maybe it was the ghost of the maid from the 1890s, doing one last task?