A spirit in the night

An uneasy chill hung in the air, exacerbated by a cranky furnace that coughed and wheezed and randomly blew gusts of invisible wind up through the metal grates of the living room floor, causing the window curtains to dance.

"I do not believe that anyone dies alone," he said, behind a snow-white beard that gave him the resemblance of a modern-day Walt Whitman.

In life, he believed a person created their own personal karma - through positive and negative behaviors - and there always existed the possibility of a person changing themselves toward a greater good. In death, he believed a welcoming committee waited on the other side to greet us all.

He believed in an eternal energy and that the ghostly form was as inevitable as death itself. The man who spent more than half of his life studying ghosts, last week, became one of them.  

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