Spirits, Poltergeists and Opossums

Occasionally I hear a weird sound or a loud bang that clearly came from within my living room walls but makes absolutely no sense and I cannot figure out where it came from. The other morning, I heard a bell go off near my bed, you know those round bells they put on a counter that you tap to get the attention of a clerk? That’s exactly what it sounded like. But it wasn’t my phone, and the TV wasn’t on. What in the...?

A couple of times out of the corner of my eye I’ve seen a dark mass scurry across the floor and assumed it was my black and white cat Bunny, so I follow the direction I saw her go, but notice that Bunny is sound asleep on the bed. What in the world did I just see then? Sometimes even she seems to see and be aware of something and will be following it around the room with her eyes, yet I see nothing, then she’ll suddenly jump off the bed, and run hide behind a framed picture stored in the closet.

I’m not a superstitious person but I do believe that spirits can linger about and sometimes make their presence known. This may not be a popular belief but there are just too many weird things or bizarre noises that I can’t explain even after considering every logical reason as to what it might have been. After all, anything is possible, right?

I remember a time when I lived in San Marcos and heard this heavy lamp in my living room fall over. I got up, went to the living room and set it back up right and just thought it was peculiar but couldn’t really see what could have caused it. It happened again the next night so I thought it must be one of my cats, but then I realized they were both sound asleep in the bed with me. I’m convinced it was a poltergeist. It took a lot of energy to knock over that heavy lamp, and, two nights in a row? Then one evening, as I’m sitting on my bed, I look over into the hallway and see the culprit... and it’s looking back at me It was an...opossum. An opossum?

Okay, so it wasn’t a poltergeist, it was this little critter, he was the one knocking over that lamp. He ran into the second bedroom and hid in the shadows of the closet. His little white face glowed in the dark and I could see that he was looking right at me so I said “Hello there little fella”. I tried but could not coax him out of the closet even with a little dry cat food.

I had a window in there without a screen and a cat tree in front of it so I decided to open that window overnight so he could climb the cat tree and get back outside. I closed the bedroom door and hoped for the best. The next morning, I was afraid to open the door. He might have climbed out, but what might have climbed in? My imagination took me to the possibility of a cat, a snake or even Sasquatch curled up asleep on the floor; never mind there weren’t very many Sasquatch sightings in San Marcos. I slowly opened the door and...nothing. The opossum was gone, and nothing else seemed to have climbed in, so I closed the window.

I used to feed about a dozen stray cats and I’m sure many were just opportunists who were owned by other people, I didn’t care and often let them in the back door into my kitchen. I think this little opossum ran in with that group of cats and forgot to go back outside when they did. I just don’t know how I did not see him come in! I probably did see him but didn’t look hard enough to realize that it wasn’t a cat.

So maybe that bump in the night you hear may not always be a poltergeist. It might just be a harmless, adorable little opossum.