Dan's Papers - March 28, 2008 - Twentysomething...By David Lion Rattiner

I've never been much of a believer in ghosts, but nearly all of my friends have a ghost story to tell. I'll never forget when right here in the Dan's Papers office, claims of a ghost were floating. One of our graphic designers, Joel, had the entire office nearly in tears from laughing when he told us his ghost story. He was here working late and apparently heard some noises downstairs that he couldn't identify. After seeing a shadow and feeling a presence he said to himself, "Got to get the hell out of there," and left for the evening.

I should note that Joel is a 6'6" 325-pound bouncer from Trinidad. He has dealt with knife fights at clubs in New York City, but a ghost - he wasn't going to mess around with anything like that.

The story spread like wildfire throughout the office and rumors began to circulate. "I think a young girl's spirit is here because the shadow was small," somebody said.

I've heard friends tell me that they've seen ghosts in their rooms while on vacation, I've heard them tell me that they won't go to certain places alone because they are haunted and I've always thought that it was all baloney. But about two nights ago, I swear, I woke up in the middle of the night because I saw a ghost.

I wouldn't be saying this if it didn't actually happen. I was lying in bed and woke up to find a class five, full roaming vapor in the middle of the bedroom. It was the exact same ghost described by many employees at the Dan's Papers office - a young girl, maybe six years old, just standing there. I freaked out and tried to get the hell out of my room, but then, I guess because I was dreaming, reality kicked in and the ghost was gone. Or maybe I scared it away.

The point of this is that people seem to believe whatever you tell them. After this dream, or maybe it wasn't, I told a bunch of people and now everybody that I know thinks that my house is haunted, which is never a good thing. In real estate school I learned that they actually had to create a law about "stigmatized properties" because real estate agents wouldn't show homes for sale that they thought were haunted, which is now, thanks to that law, illegal. But I guess you never really know about stuff like that.

What's really amazing about all of this is that I'm supposed to be a grown up now. When I was a kid, thanks to the movie Ghostbusters, I learned that ghosts are funny and not real. But now that I'm older, I'm not so sure. Maybe there are ghosts running around like in the movie The Sixth Sense and most of us can't see them. It makes you think a lot about what is real and what is made up, and to be honest, the made up stuff can easily translate into the real stuff and vice versa. It's pretty ridiculous if you think about it.

Something that this newspaper is known for is making stuff up. I can't tell you how many people have asked me for a Hamptons Subway schedule. "It runs every 15 minutes," I tell them. "But it's closed this week for maintenance."

This might seem funny, and it is, but if you think about it, what do we really know to be true? If somebody says something with authority, it sort of makes it true in some cases, even if you know it's not. It's really the belief that only matters, like believing a place is haunted. What I think is kind of strange is that it is easier for all of us to believe in things that scare us versus not believing in something that scares us. We need absolute, complete proof. If there is any doubt, then we really can't be sure. This applies to everything that is scary, from religious views to political and economic views. On the other side, there are those imaginary things that don't scare us, like the Easter Bunny, which can be dismissed as imaginary. It would be a different world if we found it easy to believe the stuff that isn't scary and hard to believe the stuff that is.