From down the hall, Jean Williams heard her toilet flush, but she knew she was alone at home.

So she forced herself to go investigate, creeping down the hallway she could

could see that the door to the bathroom was open and nobody was there.

But the toilet tank was filling up confirming that the toilet had indeed just flushed by itself

Again as Jean headed to the kitchen to calm her nerves, she thought that she saw a shadow

flip past her out of the corner of her eye.

Did it duck into her granddaughter Carly's bedroom or into the room she shared with her husband Ben.

This was supposed to be their dream home. Jean forced herself to drink a cup of tea and

scolded herself for overreacting to bad plumbing and the light playing tricks on her eyes.

Then she heard it. The TV had turned on, by itself, again.

Please, please, please,

shein thought to herself.

Please, let this all have a rational explanation. Welcome to Death in the afternoon, a podcast about all things mortal from the order of the good death.

I'm Caitlin, a mortician and educator, and as always I'm joined by my fellow researchers and writers Louise Hung and Sarah

Chavez. Today's episode or maybe it's a ghost. The Williams' family reported that all those events, the

toilet flushing, the Williams'

was told there with some of my dramatic license.

The Williams family reported that all those events, the toilet flushing, the

shadows running around, and the TV turning on by itself, actually happened in their suburban

Houston home, but probably not exactly in that order. But the real question is, given

how I feel about ghost stories muddying the waters of the pristine death conversation, is why are we talking about ghost toilets and shadow people today?

Well for one thing it's fall so ghost stories are actually in season you curmudgeon.

...