Something strange and a little bit unnerving happened last night. We live in an antebellum home in rural Louisiana. The house, named Dogwood, was built in 1802 and was a working indigo plantation up until the civil war. In order for you to get the full effect of the story, we have to flash back a few months.

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Sometime in late February/early March, 2003. It is a Saturday, and I was at the school, working in my lab. The nuclear wife was at home, working in her rose garden. Sometime around the middle of the morning, an old car enters our driveway, and comes about half way down to the house (our home sits a few hundred feet off of the road). A youngish black male gets out of the car, and approaches the nuclear wife. She is a little bit bemused by this, because the guy is wearing orange fluffy bedroom slippers. As he gets closer, he asks her "Is your house haunted?". The nuclear wife, who has always wanted to live in a haunted house, tells the guy about a couple of incidents we have experienced - doors flying forcefully open, etc. The fluffy orange slipper guy then tells the NW that his mom used to work in the house, and often saw the spirit of what she presumed was a former slave on both the stairwell and the front porch of the house. He claimed he hadn't been to the house in a long time, and was just driving by and wanted to stop and ask about the spooks.

One of the side benefits/tribulations of being a veterinarian is that you end up with a ton of abandoned pets. About this time, all 6 of our adopted dogs come tearing around the house, see this guy, and go crazy. Even our black lab, who usually doesn't bother anyone, had her hackles up and was barking at the guy. Fuzzy orange slippers, clearly discomfited by the appearance of the pack of dogs, told my wife to have a good day, got in his car, and left. She recounted this story to me when I got home later that afternoon, actually more intrigued by the haunting information that anything else.

Fast forward to May 28th, 2003===========================

It is about 9pm. I am sitting on the couch in the sitting room, playing "Baldur's Gate" on Xbox. The NW is in the bedroom, watching one of the news channels. I hear her coming down the hall, and she enters the sitting room. I keep playing Baldur's Gate, until it dawns on me that she is just standing there. I look up, and see that she is visibly upset.

NW: "Remember that guy in fuzzy orange slippers, the one that asked if the house was haunted?"

NW: "Not 100%, but I really think it was him. I thought it looked like him in the still pictures. But watching the video coverage of him being returned to Baton Rouge makes me as certain as I can be that it was him."

RNS: $%%^%$#@#$#@%^$#@!

This whole thing is really pretty surreal. The nuclear wife is not one prone to hyperbole or an overactive imagination (those both fall under my jurisdiction). If she says she thinks it was him, then she really thinks it was him. I think I may need a few more dogs, and one or 2 of those .50 cals that AK was mentioning.

We would do well to remember that not all monsters are make believe.