At first I was afraid...

Right. Well, at least I wasn't met with a stony silence on my requests post. Not that I ever worried about such a thing...

In answer to, er, Nameless's(?) question, you can just ask a question once and I'll try to remember/check back. But equally, don't feel like you're nagging if you want to ask again because you think I've forgotten. Right?

So today, because it's topical, I thought I'd go with:

Lupe said...

In the spirit of Halloween and All Saint's Day and Día de muertos, what about a scary story? Something weird or could-be supernatural that's happened to you? :D Have you ever been inside a haunted house? Have you ever seen a ghost or something that could be a ghost? :3 Or maybe a local tale from your home town? :D Please? *v*

So firstly, I don't believe in ghosts.

But there was one moment when if you'd paused time and asked me, I might have said I did. I hadn't been in the job very long, I was walking my beat, it was nearly Christmas, and it was getting dark.

I was stopped by a woman in the street saying her kids had got home and said they'd seen a body.

So the choices are - call for back up straight away, risk getting laughed off the watch if you're wrong and it turns out it's a shop dummy or something - or go and have a look.

I went and had a look. (because I'm dead brave, me). There was indeed a dead body

 It was in an old building, disused. Homeless man - tramp, as we said then - dead under an old coat in a heap on the floor. Looked like he was asleep, so I very tentatively did the checks, and he was definitely dead. And stank of booze.

So I called the station, reported it, and then had to stay there, guarding the body, waiting for other officers and the meat wagon.

Obviously the bloke was already dead, so no one was in a rush... 

And it got properly dark. I stood in the doorway, because there was a bit of streetlighting getting in. 

Then the moaning started.

At first I thought it was some of my watch, dicking about, trying to scare me. I walked a little way down the pavement, but there was no one there.

Then the horrible rattly breathing started.

Finally I turned around, after a few scrapey-sounds...and saw the body stand up and start lumbering toward me, hands reaching out for me... I yelled.

Other people might have uncharitably called it a scream. It was definitely a yell.

The 'ghost' coughed and spat on the floor... I may have exited the building fairly swiftly.

Anyway, once I was out in the light I could see it wasn't 'my' body. This bloke had a big beard and was wearing a hat, for a start. Turns out they'd been drinking together, and the bloke who was still alive was just so tucked up in all the crap lying about on the floor I'd never noticed him. He'd been sleeping off his booze and then woke with an almighty hangover, hence the groaning.

But yeah, in that moment, when I first saw him, I would have sworn blind the corpse had come back to life...