Ghost Step

copyright 2005 Dale Hansen - no reproduction without permission

They say that there are two types of ghosts, the type that haunts a particular place and the type that haunts a particular person. I have my ghost that follows me from place to place and shows up on occasion.

This ghost is not the spirit of a person: it’s a step.

As in stairs.

I’m not the sort of person who likes to look at his feet as he walks. I look straight ahead to see what’s in front of me, and very rarely does this present a problem as the ground beneath me doesn’t change.

Usually.

That’s when the ghost step strikes. It happened again just the other day; I was walking down the stairs where I work, out the back door, and to the truck in my bid for freedom. I have taken this flight of stairs twice a day (lunch), five days each week for the last five years. I know these stairs, I know them well, but the ghost step showed up again.

I saw the step as I descended. I know it was there, I saw it, I saw the shadow it cast, I saw the odd little tread grabber on the edge of the step. I STEPPED ON THAT STEP. It wasn’t until I brought the other foot down that the ghost step played its trick on me. That foot encountered cement about 11 inches sooner than my poor befuddled brain thought it should.

The impact of that sudden stop rattled my teeth and collapsed one of my sinus cavities. The sound of the shoe slapping the cement exploded like a shotgun in the cavernous stair well and somewhere in the back of my mind I could hear a malevolent little stair-step chuckle.

As jarring as that is, it’s at least better than when my personal poltergeist conceals the last step when there really is one more. In these cases, my foot goes out a great deal further than the width of the last step and I end up doing the teeter-totter on the gripper edge of the step. In these cases I either start running on the landing so my body can catch up to my legs, or I have to make a little mini-paratrooper jump, feet together and sway for a moment until my momentum goes away.

Taking the step that isn’t there is a little easier to cover up. The person on the stairs next to you, except for the minor explosion of shoe leather sound, can’t tell that you’ve just shaken your molars into your throat. The paratrooper hop is harder to disguise. People tend to look at you as though you’re crazy for doing that, and explaining a personal poltergeist in the shape of a stair step following you around from building to building does nothing to ease their fears about your mental stability.

Yeah, like I’m the only one it happens to.

I hear that little step chuckling even now.