I Smell A Ghost

Over the years, I’ve had quite a few experiences with the paranormal. Many times, I have no proof of what I felt or research ends up inconclusive, but that only makes my experiences unreal to others, not myself. I’ve frequently debunked myself, too, so I know I’m not always right or the things I’m sensing may not be universal.

I don’t normally talk about my experiences unless someone asks, so it’s a bit of a step for me to blog about them. But if they provide a bit of entertainment or someone learns a thing or two in their quest for understanding, then I feel I’ve done the right thing by talking…well…writing.

I’ve decided to break down my experiences by sense. I’ve heard, felt, seen and smelled, but I have yet to taste and I suppose that’s a good thing!

In the scent category, I only have one that I was both certain I smelled and that was not debunked.

In 1998 or so, I was dating a guy who, like me, was very into cars. His friends said he changed cars like he changed underwear. Well, truth be told, he went commando, but there wasn’t anything paranormal about that.

Anyhow, he got tired of driving his mom’s hand-me-down and started looking through the newspaper, Recycler, whatever (this was somewhat pre-eBay and Craigslist) for another Dodge Charger. He’d had quite a few–even still had left over parts lying around in his garage.

After maybe a week or two of looking, he found a ’70 Charger. It was a 318 automatic, but the car was complete and the guy selling it just wanted it gone. It was his grandma’s grocery getter. She’d passed on, the car became his and he got tired of re-parking it on the appropriate side of the street every week due to street sweeping. He lived in an apartment with only one parking space.

My boyfriend bought the car and immediately swapped the 318 for the 440 he had lying around. From a prior car, he’d also saved the chunk of floorpan where the manual transmission shifter comes up through the floor. From the new car, he removed the automatic transmission, cut the right size hole, then installed the manual transmission…and riveted the floorpan chunk in place before putting the carpet back down. For what the job was, it worked beautifully.

When I first got in the car, I wasn’t amazed that it was in such great condition. I mean, if it had been a grocery-getter all its life, it likely only saw the doctor’s office, the store and maybe a relative’s driveway its entire life so far. It should have looked as good as it did. Not pristine, but not shredded, either. Just old.

He wanted to take me for a ride in his new project, so I knew I’d be in for a fun time what with the 440 and 4-speed installed. As we get in, he tells me about how the car might be haunted. He wasn’t the kind of guy to really believe in ghosts, but he’d worked in several theaters and we all know they have lots of ghosts. Anyway, he’d mentioned that there was something a little strange about the car. I asked him about it and he said, sometimes, when he was just driving along, the scent of BenGay would waft through the air. It didn’t matter if the accessories were on or off or if the windows were up or down.

I laughed and shrugged and we got on the freeway. About fifteen minutes later, I started to smell BenGay, but it, to me, wasn’t quite right. There was ’something’ off about it. And it just appeared. It didn’t emanate from anywhere. Whenever I have a paranormal experience, there’s always a certain undefinable ’something’ about it that isn’t quite right…and that has become one of my ways of knowing I’m having an experience.

We both looked at each other, “I smell it, do you?” “Yeah.” It lasted about two minutes and then was gone. We shrugged it off. It didn’t feel negative, so there was no real cause for alarm. Plus, the car ran and drove great.

The following week, my boyfriend said he tore the car apart up under the dash, all through the interior. There was no trace of BenGay. Not a tube, a smear, nothing. And when he’d pulled up the carpet to install the part of floorpan, he hadn’t seen or smelled anything, either.

A few months later, he got it in his head that he wanted to do a complete tear down and rotisserie rebuild of the car. We lost touch when it was still in boxes. It has been a decade. I wonder if grandma’s grocery getter ever got back on the road. I know I’ll never forget her.

Comments are closed.