Sunday night I was cleaning up the kitchen after a nice meal. The kids were in the den playing with toys and Kelly was in the office doing a little work. As I was loading the dishwasher, the smell of smoke practically knocked me over.
“Kelly, I smell smoke again!” I yelled as I put dishes away. “It’s back and it stinks!” I said, my voice rising with the recognition that this was actually happening.
The smell was stronger than I’ve ever smelled it. It was as if my clothes were saturated in smoke, like I’d just spent hours at some smoky club. In that respect it was different than the faint whiff I’d smelled before.
Kelly got up from the office and walked over to me, sniffing the air. Just as suddenly as the smell arrived, it vanished. I find that even stranger than the smell’s arrival! How can a smell be simply turned off, with no trace left?
I checked the obvious choices, sniffing the disposal, the dishwasher, and the gas oven behind me. None smelled of smoke. Also curious was the total lack of any psychic feelings of ghosts: no hair standing on end, no feeling of being watched, no feeling of another presence. That tends to favor a logical, physical explanation, though that explanation is just as elusive.
“Damn it!” I said, stomping my feet as Kelly returned to her work. “I want to know why that happens!”
Thinking back on it, the one thing that comes to mind is the relaxed state of mind I am in when I’m doing dishes. I think that state of mind is conducive to psychic receptivity. The first amazing time Kelly’s mind was read by our young Hallie, Kelly was standing at the sink absent-mindedly doing dishes. I was in a similar frame of mind during my smoke incident: my hands on autopilot while my mind drifted.
I am also called back to the first time I smelled phantom smoke – at the ghost hunt at the North Carolina State Capitol two years ago. Has Zebulon Vance been inviting himself to dinner?