A Ghostly Appetite

It was past 3:00a.m. when I was woken up by a mysterious sound. I switched my bedside lamp on and scanned the room, but no one was there. I grabbed the metal bar and mace can I always kept next to me and stepped out of the bedroom, switching on each light as I made my way downstairs. Snow, my cat, also tagged along as I inspected every inch of the house. To my luck, I was alone.

“Maybe it was a rat,” I wondered as I went back to bed, but as I switched off the lamp, the sounds returned. I repeated the process, and there was another noise yet again. This time, I was certain it was from the kitchen. Before entering, I yelled out and said the cops were on their way. There was no reply. I searched the kitchen next, but like before, I was alone. However, something strange stood out: there was a sweet scent in their air, with hints of chocolate and nuts pervading the room.

I opened the fridge and looked at the chocolate bars I had recently bought; two of them were missing. “What is happening here?” I thought. “Rats can’t open a fridge and steal candy.” Snow suddenly started hissing and making noises while staring at the other end of the room. She only did that if a stranger were to annoy her, but there was nothing there except for the sink. I also looked around and found that there were no chocolate wrappers in the garbage bin or anywhere else in the kitchen.

Wondering whether someone had been in the house, I called the police. They searched the entire house and found no signs of forced entry. I was told that it was likely a pest problem, but my instincts said otherwise. However, given the lack of evidence, I didn’t know what to believe. I had moved into this house just three days ago, and what a couple of my neighbours told me on my first day in the neighbourhood began to reemerge in my mind. “That house, be wary of it,” one of them said; “Some of us believe it’s haunted,” the other said. But not all my neighbours believed it to be true since there have been no cases of violence reported from previous tenants. I shrugged the events of that night off and went to bed. My sleep was not disturbed after that.

The next night, however, the noises returned. I searched the entire house again and found nothing, but strangely enough, the kitchen was brimming with the scent of chocolate again—and Snow was hissing at blank spaces as well. I was beginning to wonder if those two neighbours were right. I opened the fridge again and found something strange. Two more chocolate bars had been eaten, but one empty wrapper was still inside. I pulled it out and found a message written inside it with melted chocolate. It said, “Thank you.” Was this a ghost with a sweet tooth? That was ridiculous. 

I set up a hidden camera in the kitchen the next day to see what was really happening. Like clockwork, the sounds were back the next day, around 3:00a.m. again. I found two more chocolate bars missing, so I took the camera and checked the footage. I felt chills course across my entire body as I watched a humanoid distortion in the air approach the fridge and take two chocolate bars from it. The ghost had no discernible face; it just looked like an extension of the room itself, bending space around it as it moved through the air. What the ghost proceeded to do was even stranger, and I felt more confused than scared at that point: it ate the chocolate bars. I couldn’t fathom how a ghost could eat chocolate. I wished it were just a weird dream, but no, it was real. And it was right then that a voice emerged from behind me.

“I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help myself.”

I sprung from my seat and looked around, grabbing my metal bar and raising it up. “Who’s there?”

The air before me then began to distort, and I instinctively swung my weapon at it; the bar passed right through the humanoid shape that took form before me.

“Sorry to startle you, but now that you know of my existence, I might as well introduce myself.”

“Wh-who are you?”

“My name’s Grace. I used to live here a decade ago, but I got terminally ill and passed away alone in this house.”

“How…Or rather, why, are you going for my chocolates?”

“You see, I wasn’t allowed to eat sweets towards the latter stages of my illness because I had diabetes. But since I’m dead now, I don’t have to worry about health issues anymore.”

“But you’re a ghost. How can you…” I was getting too nervous to finish my sentences.

“It’s okay, just have a seat. I won’t hurt you, I promise. And as for the chocolate, well, I can’t really consume it, but I can recreate its taste through my memories. The room smelled of chocolate because it evaporated for of the spiritual pressure I exerted upon it.”

I didn’t know what to say anymore. I just sat there, quietly, listening to this ghost explain everything. But then she said something interesting.

“If you don’t mind, I would like to remain here and have more treats. I won’t bother you in any way. In return, I can offer you cash and jewellery I stored away in a safe inside a hidden compartment. It’s quite literally right under your nose: the first floorboard to your left under your desk.”

I was suspicious of her statement, but decided to check anyway—and to my surprise, she wasn’t lying. There was indeed a large safe there. Grace gave me the code to the safe and I found thousands of dollars worth of money and jewellery inside it. Given her honesty and politeness, I decided to allow Grace to remain in the house, but I asked her to at least be quiet during her late-night snacking. She laughed and agreed. I went to bed that night smiling at the fact that this strange string of events led me to finding a friend in a ghost of all things. From that point on, the two of us would even sometimes have late-night snacks together.