Sixth Sense

A host of ghosts lived in the house at 922 Good Year Street. Of the five household members, some believed in their existence and some did not, and the ones who did were more likely to notice the little things they messed with. The explanation for it was simple. There was a difference in their brains—a difference in their perception—that allowed them to see what the others couldn’t. They had the sixth sense, the sense that could either develop or disappear over time. 

Humans didn’t directly see, hear, or feel anything. They perceived it. Their sensory organs took in information to be processed by their brains, which was where the divide in whether or not they could sense that there was something more going on occurred. There was little the spirits found more interesting.

Some of the ghosts were attached to the land and some to the people with the sixth sense that lived on it. They all had games they loved to play, but they weren’t disruptive. Overall, all they wanted from the living was respect, and here, from the believers, it was generally what they got. Even if their line of communication wasn’t direct, it was always open. 

Today was a special day. A more direct communication line was about to open. 

The youngest member of the house, a teenage boy, had become, in recent weeks, obsessed with ghost stories. Sometimes, as he watched his favorite content creators ghost hunt and recount their alleged paranormal experiences on the television, the ghosts would watch with him. They were comical videos—nowhere close to true, but still just believable enough for some viewers—though some of the ghosts did take offense to their message: communicating with spirits was a game for entertainment. It was not. 

Now, he thought he could contact real ghosts too. 

Sitting in the basement with a friend, both of them eager to hear from any number of the evil spirits they had heard about on the Internet, he unboxed the Oujia board he had borrowed from his sister. They laid it out on the floor and placed the planchette in its center, as the ghosts watched, silent and still. They hadn’t yet decided on a game to play. Maybe they would play no game at all.

They had been contacted this way before—it was how some of them had come to be attached to other household members—but each time was different. 

The boys placed their fingers on the planchette and began to ask questions, but they were impatient. The longer they played, the less time they allowed to pass between each question, some of which started over time to sound more like demands. They asked for spirits specifically, none of which were present, and they asked general questions any of them could answer. They asked everything they could think of, but the ghosts chose not to respond. Rather, they observed.

They felt no need to engage, with the boys asking senseless questions that would lead to nowhere in their world where spirits were either good or evil and death was inherently bad. It was strange, the way that spirits had to be categorized in such rigid boxes: good or evil. It was the same as the way people made characters for their fairytales who were meant to be only one thing or the other—black and white—because how could they possibly be anything else?

The consensus among most was that ghosts were scary, and these spirits could feel in the tension of the boys’ shoulders that they felt no different. Even if they were treating the act of contacting them like a game, they still felt to some extent that they should be wary of what lay ahead. They weren’t wrong; the void where bodiless souls lived was not a place to be taken lightly. However, everything didn’t always necessarily have to be dark, regardless of whether or not it was considered light. There was, after all, such a thing as the color gray.

There were times when things in their limbo space between the living and the dead—just close enough to see both sides but never to touch—were not ideal. Sometimes it was cold, distant, and lonely. They had each other for company but what comfort was one bodiless soul to another when neither could speak or feel? 

It was hard sometimes, and boring, and that was when they resorted to more mischievous ways of entertaining themselves. What better things were there for them to do than move things or hide them or make them fall, set off smoke detectors, or crack open a closed door? Putting all their energy into manipulating physical things—whether they be everyday objects for no reason or the planchette of an Ouija board to communicate—was the closest they could get to feeling alive again. Otherwise, they would be resigned to sit and watch and miss the things that made life worth living.

Some ghosts were pickier than others with who they chose to communicate with and how they chose to do it. Influenced by their personalities in life, how far removed they were from the living world, and their level of and tolerance for loneliness, each individual had their own preferences. The ghosts at 922 Good Year Street enjoyed sending subtle signs but rarely resorted to anything that could be considered an extreme measure. 

Most often, if they did initiate or reciprocate contact, it was with people who had the sixth sense. There was a certain combination of maturity and way of thinking that was necessary to create it in living people, and when it was present, it was attractive. They watched the boys and waited to feel it, but here, it simply didn’t exist.

Discouraged, the boys gave up and said goodbye, closing the bridge to communication the Ouija board had created between their two planes. However, closing the board’s method of communication didn’t close the gate entirely. As long as spirits remained in limbo and there existed people in the world with the sixth sense, nothing could.

So, the ghosts spent their time bridging that gap in their own way.

Small objects disappeared and reappeared at random and rolled off of shelves.

Shadows loomed over beds and darted through doorways. Sometimes, they even lingered in place only to disappear with a double take.

A closed bedroom door creaked open in the middle of the night only to close lightly a moment later. The dog, able to see the ghosts but so used to their presence that he thought nothing of them, sat idly by in the hallway and watched. 

There appeared a set of handprints on the bathroom mirror. They were long, streaking handprints placed high enough that someone would have had to reach above their head and lean awkwardly on the mirror to make them stick. Nobody in the house could claim them or think of a conceivable idea as to how they came to be. 

The ghosts never hurt anybody. They never wanted to. Their actions weren’t about being scary or even making themselves known. They were about finding a way to occupy their time when they were bored, finding a way to have fun while they watched over the house. They were not the demons of horror movies but guardian angels to keep tabs on the world around those they were tasked to protect. In death or in life, they existed to make light even from the depths of death’s darkness.