After my brain kicked in and I remembered that I was the father of two boys and that one of those boys was crying because he was scared of something, I sat down on the bed to try and comfort him. Eventually he relaxed and stopped crying.
"Dad," he began, still breathing hard from the crying. "Are ghosts real?"
I'm something of a no-nonsense kind of guy when it comes to this sort of thing. "Nope," I told him. "Ghosts aren't real." I see no reason to beat around the bush with questions like this. Mine will be the kids who, when it comes time for the ghost stories at Halloween parties will say things like "There is no empirical evidence for the existence of free floating specters of the kind you are referring to as 'ghosts', therefore your story involving the teenagers and the haunted house makes no sense and is, I am sorry to report, a complete fabrication and totally not scary in the least." Unfortunately they will also be the kids who are only invited to these Halloween parties once and then forever shunned.
Not satisfied with my answer, he continued, "But there are ghosts in Scooby-Doo."
"True," I said, "but how many of those ghosts are real and aren't just a person in a costume?"
There was a slight pause. "None," he said. This was followed by another slight pause and then, "Oh. Good point." There was another, slightly longer pause, and then he asked, "But how do you know there are no ghosts?"
"Because there is no evidence for ghosts," I said, confidently.
"Really?"
"Really."
Still not convinced he asked, "How do you know there is no evidence?"
As a science teacher I was excited by this question because it means that he isn't just going to blindly accept what people tell him. As a father who just wanted to go the hell back to bed, I was less than thrilled. I then spent a few minutes discussing with him how there is no quality evidence to support the idea of ghosts, and that the few experiments that have been done have shown that the existence of these entities is extremely unlikely, and, just as I was about to enter into a discussion of observational bias combined with visual and auditory hallucinations brought about by environmental factors such as carbon monixide, I noticed that my lecture had put him to sleep.
See? Science is good for something.
Later the next day while we were riding out to a park in what Ethan now refers to as our "Swagger Wagon" after the Toyota commercial, ghosts were brought up once again.
Ryan got us started by asking the same question he asked at 4am. "Are ghosts real?"
"Nope," I replied, just like at 4am, "they are not real."
"But what if a real ghost was in my room?"
I started to answer his question, "Well, you don't have to worry about that because..."
"I'd punch it," said Ethan.
"Really?" I asked, shocked. I thought he was asleep and now he is describing how he would take down a fictional monster. Maybe Jen and I need to stop discussing "24" in front of the kids.
"I'd punch it, too!" said Ryan.
A few seconds ago there was one sleeping kid and one kid afraid of ghosts and now I had two fledgling ghost-busters on my hands. "Wait. How would you punch a ghost? They don't even have bodies."
"In the testicles," said Ethan as though this was the simplest thing in the world.
"Yeah," agreed Ryan. "In the testicles!"
"Bam, Bam!" said Ethan. "Get away, ghost!"
"And I'd punch it in the butt," added Ryan, laughing.
"In the butt and then the testicles," said Ethan, also laughing.
It basically continued like this until we got to the park at which time the boys promptly forgot about their strategy for ghost bashing and ran to play. Hopefully they will remember it the next time they feel the need to wake up at some godforsaken hour and worry about ghosts. I am now, however, a little more wary of these two when they come into our room at night and I try to look even less like a ghost now than ever.
