Life? With Harry

In a previous post, I touched on the fact that The Perfect Man and I lived with a ghost. The new house we moved into was owned by a single family since it was built in 1964: Harry, Lily and their three children. Harry passed away in the summer of 2005. I think he took care of Lily while he was alive because she suffered from Alzheimer's. When he passed, she went to live with her daughter and the house was put on the market.During the house buying process, we were fortunate enough to meet Lily and her daugther and son-in-law and they are lovely people.

Shortly after moving into our new house, four events occurred which lead us to believe that Harry was still around:

1. The day we got the keys, we went to our new home and ran through all the rooms, laid on all the carpets and generally acted like fools in our joy of joint home ownership. While there, I closed a kitchen drawer no less than three times. The first time, I hardly noticed. The second time I mentioned it to The Perfect Man, and the third time, I was slightly creeped out. Neither of us had opened that drawer at least two of the three times.
2. After moving into the house, I took my coat out of the front closet. Hanging from my pocket (on the outside) was a bottle of watermelon scented shower gel with a hook for hanging over the shower spout. Neither one of us had ever seen the shower gel before nor did we ever use shower gel. Neither one of us could explain how it got there.
3. I let Stealer out of the house one morning. It was very cold outside so I only left him out for five minutes. When I went to get him, he didn't come to the door. I tried five minutes later and shook his treats to entice him to come in. He meowed when he heard the treats rattling in their cannister. But he meowed from inside the house. I was the only one awake at the time.
4. Before we installed a programmable thermostat in our home, The Perfect Man and I had to manually put the thermostat up and down. Up when we wake, down when we leave for work, up when we get home from work and down again at bed time. I started noticing that the thermostat was already turned up when we got home from work. At first I thought we were just forgetful in turning it down before leaving for work -- except that it was at 23 degrees. We never, ever put our thermostat at 23 degrees. The highest we go is 21 degrees. When I realized it was probably Harry, I said, "Thanks for putting up the heat, Harry -- but please no higher than 21 degrees." Since then, it never did go higher.

Believe my tale as you wish; I believe it and it makes me feel good. Harry was thoughtful, playful and helpful; not threatening in the least. His actions have gone a long way to making us feel welcome in our new home.

Unfortunately, it's been some time now since we have noticed anything out of the ordinary and it's our feeling that Harry "checked us out" and has now gone to whatever place was waiting for him. Perhaps secure in his belief that his house will be as loved and cared for as when he was alive. I think he'll be back from time to time, like when he "saved" Stealer from the heating vent.

Thanks for the time together Harry!