You remind me so much of myself, written by Rick Gray.

My ghost was not your normal everyday ghost.

He didn't walk through walls, rattle chains or move things around in the room.

In fact, perhaps he wouldn't find him scary at all, but he terrified me and only me.

Every night I would wake up at 3.12 am.

For the first few nights my dog growled and barked at him,

but at some time my dog came to expect his nightly visit.

I too was scared early on, but after a time I would simply join him in the kitchen,

sometimes making myself a cup of tea, because it wasn't his appearance that scared me,

but his words. He would tell me that he used to live in my apartment,

my dingy unwelcoming one bedroom apartment, and that he spent his whole life here.

He never married and rarely socialized, and he came to grow comfortable in this apartment,

and Sony found that he hardly left.

The few friends that he had slowly disappeared, weekends alone slowly turned into weeks.

Weeks turned into months, and eventually he realized that it had been years since he'd step foot

outside. And he would tell me the same thing every night, word for word, with the same lament in his

voice. And just before he would disappear, he would tell me the same thing.

You remind me so much of myself. I wasn't like him, I would say. I was different. I was better,

but lonely weekends turned into lonely weeks. Lonely weeks turned into lonely months.

For years we had the same conversation, every night, for 64 years.

I can't remember the last time I saw him. One night he disappeared and never came back.

And I sat at the kitchen table, waiting for him, but he never returned.

...