AJ Alanson Author

The lights flicker and wink out. I freeze, mid-step, and wait. And…they’re back. This has been happening for a month. Just the hall light at first, then the bathroom, the laundry, and finally the whole basement. I rack my brain, “I’ve been painting walls. Did I cause this?” Good grief. I know the answer. Unless someTHING doesn’t like dusty teal.

Now the switches all over the house don’t work, and the furnace won’t kick on until I push the reset button. Oh, and some outlets intermittently die and miraculously spring back to life, until finally, my office goes dark. That’s my computer, my writing, and, gasp, the internet! Ghost, spirit, ghoul, vampire, zombie, I don’t care. He’s sooooo dead!

Obviously, someone was trying to tell us something so we lit a few candles (didn’t really have a choice at this point), dust off the ouija board, et voila! Electrical geniuses show up, trace wires, reconstruct the crime, and swear – a lot. Half the original house panel, now the subpanel was dead. Did I mention only about three breakers on any of the three panels in this house are labeled correctly? Almost like someone was trying to trick the unsuspecting humans into fleeing the safety of their home for the garage filled with running chainsaws and a chipper-shredder.

But I digress. Did I mention the sparking and crackling sounds? Tiny echoes coming from somewhere in the basement, at random times, and only when everything was quiet in the house. Anyway, the half panel seems like a dropped leg (more horror references), which, when traced back to the new main panel, leads to one ancient and occultish breaker. The WRONG breaker. The WRONG brand. Homeowner 101, hell, renter 101, says never put a penny in a fuse box and NEVER substitute another manufacturer’s breaker! This combo created a wide gap for the electricity to arc across. Yes, it worked for awhile, but sparks in a panel whenever the furnace tries to kick on ARE BAD. Families get dead this way, and if you want to be haunted to the end of your own horror story, kill mine!

Okay, I’m calm. $100. New breaker, in and out and Bob’s your uncle. Was the house trying to tell us something? I think so. Those flickers were morse code. The crackles were herculean efforts of an inanimate object calling for help, but stopping me from working was…risky, on any level. At any rate, I bring evidence. Exhibit #1. If you compare the left side of the breaker to the right, and you squint a little, you can just make out the little devil giving up the ghost and dissipating into a cloud of ectoplasm. I’d say there’s a story in here somewhere, but it’s too scary even for me. Er…sorry for the long ghost post.