All My Old Haunts
By JENNIFER FINNEY BOYLAN
Published: August 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/18/opinion/boylan-all-my-old-haunts.html?_r=1 (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/18/opinion/boylan-all-my-old-haunts.html?_r=1)
For someone who does not believe in ghosts, I've encountered more than my fair share of them over the years in my parents' house in the Philadelphia suburbs. The first day I set foot in the place, I saw, or imagined I saw, an unseemly blue mist drift through the dark basement.
[...]
As a transgender teenager in the 1970s — a boy in body, a girl in spirit — I remember lying in my bedroom, up on the third floor, thinking that I heard footsteps creaking in the attic. I would whisper, "You're not real. I don't believe in you." To which I always imagined the ghosts replying: "That's all right. We don't believe in you, either."
What I've learned over the years is that you can be haunted by lots of things; actual ghosts can be the least of them.