My Side of the Story

Some girl has been following me around, like a stalker.  It’s creepy.

 

I had gone with Francy to the cemetery to tend to the gravestones when I spotted the top of a white hat behind some obviously fake bushes. 

"Pathetic," I muttered to myself. "If she thinks she's got anything on me, she's got another thing coming."

 

 

She showed up to my parents’ house at about 7 that evening, just as Andy had walked in from selling snacks at the stadium. 

 

 

Then she has the nerve to start digging in my trash can. 

 

Just so happened, while that was going on, Neil was walking in from his job at the supermarket. 

 

"What are you doing?" he'd asked her.
"I'm going to bust your aunt," she said. "Apparently she's been stealing gravestones and making synthetic ectoplasm."  I’m told Neil looked at her like she was nuts.  And for her to make THAT claim, she was.

 

She walked right in past Neil, and then out of the corner of my eye, I saw her come towards me in the kitchen. 

She had the gall to walk into my kitchen while I was cooking dinner, with my husband standing right there. "Who are you and what are you doing here?" I asked her.

 

“I’m Mary Keene,” she said, “and I’m a private investigator hired by the proprietor of the mausoleum.”

“What do you want?”

"Miss Savannah Plumb," she began, "I have it on very good authority that you have been conducting personal experiments on ghosts in the cemetery."

I laughed in her face. "What do you mean by "personal experiments?"
"Oh come now, your whole 'ghost hunting' thing is a complete farce, and you know it."
"It's what I do, just like you do what you do.”

"You've been creating fake ectoplasm with food coloring and corn starch, and you've been stealing gravestones and urns from the cemetery."
"What are you talking about? I'm a paranormal expert, for crying out loud. I've been dealing with spooks and banshees since before I was even born. I learned I could talk to ghosts as a little girl, and at times I feel like I’m more at home with them than with the living."

I tried to explain to Mary that I have no need to make fake ectoplasm, that the ghosts secrete it themselves.  I told her that the food coloring and the corn starch was to authenticate the ectoplasm, and that ever since my mother had revealed some secrets to me about my heritage, my curiosity had gotten the better of me and I wanted to find out what had happened to my grandparents.