QUILLBLOG

The tale of the ghostly bookseller

Over at UFO Digest, a site dedicated to the paranormal, extraterrestrial, and the hypermundane (oh wait – that last one’s our beat), there is a first-person account of a woman and her mother being helped out by an “old man” in an occult book store. The man spoke with them, showed them books, and was, in all, a model bookseller.

He explained a lot of paranormal theory to me, heavy duty stuff. He would go into the back room and bring out books for me to read. Incredible books! Huge books!

Every so often the owner would go behind the counter next to the old man to ring up a sale. She was elbow to elbow with him.

The old man took me and my mom around the book store showing us books that would help me in my studies

I wrote a check for about $200 for the books I bought. My mom wrote a check for the books she bought. He rang them up on the till.

Sounds great; the only problem is, the old man didn’t exist.

[The owner] said there had not been an old man working there the night before or any other night. She would not believe us at all. The owner of the store thought we were nuts after that.

It may sound crazy – ghosts chatting up customers, bookstores accepting cheques for $200, etc. – but consider this: every used bookstore we’ve ever been in has contained at least one cat, the most oft-used familiar of paranormal entities. Coincidence?

The truth is out there – it may be hidden behind a teetering stack of unalphabetized paperbacks at the top of a set of too-narrow stairs in a musty room with bad lighting, but it’s out there.