We have a haunted house.

Well, I can't say that definitively because I've never met the ghost or ghosts in person formally; they just kind of drift here and there. And I'm not sure you can, actually, meet a ghost "in person" as they are no longer a person, but the ghost of a person who used to be alive. Still, you can see a ghost, if they want to be seen, and honestly, that is proof enough for me. Not to mention the doors that slam shut on their own, the books that mysteriously fall to the floor, and all the other unexplainable and somewhat scary things that ghosts tend to do to get your attention.

Such as hanging around while you're doing the dishes, like mine does.

That's when we decided our ghost was a kitchen ghost.

Apparently, something went down in my kitchen many years ago and now some former occupant wants to right a wrong or find a culprit or bake a Bundt cake. There were no stories of anything major that happened in the 120-year-old kitchen of my house. But whatever it was, it was enough to make a ghost haunt my kitchen. I'm generally OK with this, but my feeling is that if you're going to linger about while I'm doing the dishes, then you should at least dry some pots and pans while you're there.

It is also possible that the ghost was hungry, or thought it was hungry from a time in the past when it was actually hungry. But what would a ghost want? A peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Macaroni and cheese? Borscht? There was really no way to find out. And I don't keep any borscht in the house, anyway.

Then the holidays arrived, and with them, my teenage children and their friends. Soon we had more guests than you could shake a bedsheet at, and I found myself spending a lot more time in the kitchen with my ghost, catering to the enormous appetites of ramen-loving college-somethings. In between feedings, I told the kids about our ghost. They all thought it was cool, but they couldn't see it, so it was a hard sell. Someone broke out a Ouija board to make contact, but our ghost stayed quiet, off, presumably, in the kitchen looking for some pierogies or something else I didn't have.

Eventually we ran out of ramen, and I had to go off to the market to buy some more. I was only out for half an hour, but when I got back, I went into the kitchen and found an enormous mess. Dirty pots littered the stove, half-filled glasses in and near the sink, food spilled on the floor. It looked like a tornado hit it, or ... a very, very angry ghost.

"Oh my god," I bellowed. The kids came running. "Did the ghosts make this mess?!"

"What?" said my son. "No, we did. Sorry Mom. We'll clean it up later."

I shook my head and looked around. That's when I realized there are some things that are scarier than ghosts.

Teenagers.

Tracy Beckerman is the author of the Amazon Bestseller, "Barking at the Moon: A Story of Life, Love, and Kibble," available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble online! You can visit her at www.tracybeckerman.com

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