Scanned from The Week, Dec 6, 2002

Originally published in The London Independent © 2002

When novelist Chuck Palahniuk invited friends to a haunted-house party, he was more prepared to snicker than hide behind the sofa. But his murdered father had other ideas.

A friend of mine lives in a "haunted" house. It's a nice, white farmhouse in the country, surrounded with gardens, and every few weeks he'll call in the middle of the night to say, "Someone is screaming in the basement. I'm going down with my gun, and if I don't call you back in five minutes, send the police!"

It's all very dramatic, but it's the kind of complaint that smells like a boast. It's the psychic equivalent of saying, "My diamond ring is so very heavy." Or, "I wish I could wear this thong bikini without everyone lusting after me."

My friend refers to his ghost as "the Lady," and he complains about not getting any sleep because the Lady was up all night, rattling pictures on the walls and resetting the clocks and thumping around the living room. This is a practical man who's never believed in ghosts. I'll call him Patrick. Until he moved out to this farm, Patrick was like me: stable, practical, reasonable.

Now I think he's full of it.

To prove this, I asked him to let me house-sit his farm while he was away on vacation. I needed the isolation and quiet to write, I told him. I promised to water the plants, and he went off and left me there for two weeks. Then I threw a little party.

This man, he's not my only deluded friend. Another friend -- I'll call her Brenda -- says she can see the future. Over dinner, she'll ruin your best story by suddenly drawing a huge gasp, covering her mouth with her hand, and rearing back in her chair with a look of wide-eyed terror on her face. When you ask what's wrong, she'll say, "Oh... nothing, really." Then close her eyes and try to shake the terrible vision from her mind.