Who You Gonna Call? Hugh Hefner.

Story Sent in by Stephen:

In college, I was on my first date with Kelly, and we had a pleasant dinner. It was late when we finished, though, and I asked her if I could walk her home.

She shuddered, and I detected that something was wrong. She said, "I don't really want to go home. Not yet, anyway."

"What's wrong?" I asked her.

She replied, "My sublet house is haunted." I must have given her an are-you-kidding look, because she went on, "It's the truth. More than half of us living in the house have seen or heard something... but it seems to love me best. Every several nights, I go to sleep, and then I wake up, naked, on the couch downstairs."

I snorted. I couldn't help it. She raised her voice. "It's really scary, all right? How would you feel if you woke up on a different floor from the one where you fell asleep? We've even told our landlord, but he says he has no idea what we're talking about."

"No one has seen you move downstairs and... lose all of your clothes?"

She shook her head. "No. One time, we woke up to find our whole fridge emptied. Lots of other little things go wrong, too, like with our electricity. I'm the only one it moves and undresses, though. I find my clothes all over the house. It's happened about three times, now."

"You should set up a videotape."

"Uh... no. Then, there'd be a nude video of me around somewhere."

"You don't have to show it to anyone. Look at it yourself and see how it happens."

She gave me a funny look, and didn't say anything for a while. When I had walked her back to her house, I asked her, half-serious, "Could I come in to investigate?"

She laughed ruefully and said, "You just want to see me naked."

I said, "I'm not going to stick around until you're asleep. I just wanted to check it out really quick, if it really is a haunted house."

She let me in. Nothing was out of the ordinary, aside from a faint mildew aroma. I wasn't there for a minute when she pulled me back towards her front door. "You have to go now," she said, "I'm going to go to bed, and in case the ghost makes me naked again, you have to go."

"Uh..." was all I said. No goodnight, no hug, no thank yous. She effectively shoved me out of her house and closed the door.

The next morning, a text arrived from her: "It happened again."

We went out one more time, after that, but she turned out to not be my type, weird ghost stuff notwithstanding. I found out later on, from one of her roommates who I befriended, that Kelly was a major alcoholic who would drink non-stop in the house, empty the fridge, and fall asleep naked wherever she happened to pass out. Spooky.