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I've never really confronted any of the ghosts I've ever seen before. It never occurred to me that I could do that until now when it was so close. Mom told me I've talked to them before when I was a lot younger when I didn't know the difference between humans and the ghosts I was talking to. However, I finally quit when my parents gave me a long talk and told me I was talking to beings that weren't there.

My parents were actually really accepting of my ability and were always trying to make things more comfortable for me.

Talking to that ghost was probably the only thing I could do now to try to give myself a normal life. I mean, I've watched enough scary movies to see that if you give the ghost what it wants then it usually leaves and you get to go on having a peaceful life. Usually all of the ghosts I've ever seen were just visions into the past, into what they were doing before they died. None of them ever actively messed with anything like this one was.

I sat on my bed as I texted the only person that I really considered a friend, Liam. He was a little freaked out by me when I first told him that I could see ghosts. And then he went into a denial stage where he thought I was lying about it for quite awhile. Until I described what his great grandmother looked like without having ever seen a photo. Apparently she was still hanging around his grandpa’s house the night I was there for a Christmas party.

He asked me to get on my laptop to video chat with him. He wanted to see my new room and chat. Personally, I was pretty sure he just didn’t want to text because he’s lazy.

I opened my laptop and opened the chat client’s video test to make sure my camera was still working with the program. But as soon as the video popper up, it showed me a view of myself and the room behind me but became incredibly fuzzy.

I seriously hoped that my web cam wasn’t shorting out. But when it came back, there was a second face staring back at me from behind my chair, giving me a strange, sick grin. I jumped from my chair and quickly whipped around to face the ghost from earlier.

“Wh-what-?” I mumbled stupidly. In an attempt to move backwards, I stumbled and knocked into my laptop that was perched on the desk. The apparition stood in the sunlight that flooded through the window, allowing me to see through him and view the bookshelf behind him. Now that I was getting a good look at him, I could see that his clothes were a dated fashion. If I had to guess, they were probably from somewhere in the nineteenth century. He wore black slacks and a baggy, white long-sleeved shirt with suspenders over it.

He just stood there, giving me a terrifying grin that chilled my bones with a fear that ran down my spine. I could practically feel my heart beating in my throat. It was terrifying to be this close to a ghost. I never had been before. They were usually just ghosts that were repeating whatever they did before they died. But this one was different. I knew he could sense the fear in me. I knew he could think and act for himself. I’d seen him do it before.

“This house… is mine!”

I let out a short scream as papers and small knick-knacks fell off the shelves before taking a short trip around the room before landing as soon as the ghost was gone just a few seconds later.

“Harper? Get off the floor, bro!” I heard someone call. I realized it was Liam and I quickly scrambled to get back up to my desk. “You didn’t even clean up for me!”

“Uh… yeah, sorry,” I mumbled. I was almost too shocked for speaking, but somehow I managed. I lifted myself back on my desk chair and tried to calm myself down. My guess was that Liam hadn’t seen anything. “I-I was plugging my laptop in.”

“You’re such a liar,” he chuckled. “I can tell you’re obviously scared of something. So what is it? Wait, let me guess, a ghost?”

I clenched my teeth and he immediately knew that he was right. “How ironic. You move away from the coolest guy you know so you can get away from ghosts and you end up walking right back into one.”

“You’re so full of yourself, Liam,” I sighed. “But… this ghost… it’s… different.”

“What do you mean?”

“It… knows what’s going on and it trashed my room and Lacey’s too and I know that Kory’s seen him,” I told him.

“So you’re saying this ghost is… sentient?” He questioned.

“I’m not sure… all I know is that it hates us.”