When I was a young boy living in Caribou, Maine, back in the 1960s, we had two rocking chairs in our living room. I spent a lot of time in that room, playing with my Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars on the floor, building with my Lincoln Logs, and generally lost in sweet illusion. Life was sweet and completely innocent and I was the master of my own imagination. But something happened. Something I did a lot of the time, without thinking, has haunted me up to this day. It was something I knew nothing about, something that I couldn’t possibly have guessed.  You see, when I was lying there on the floor, my foot would invariably find its way to the leg of one of those rocking chairs and then, without the slightest thought, I would start that empty chair a rocking, back and forth. The rhythm soothed me and gave me a sense of peace. Then, one day, my mother was walking through the room and saw what I was doing, rocking that empty chair with my foot, and she stopped cold, dropped the clothesbasket she was carrying, spreading its contents all over the floor, and she cried, “Tommy! Stop it!” I looked up at her, confused. What was I supposed to stop? Stop playing with my toys? I didn’t think, couldn’t possibly have imaged, what caused her so much concern. “Stop rocking that chair with your foot!” I stopped. But then, like any kid might, I asked “Why?” She looked at me with wide eyes and said quietly, in a voice that was a warning, “Never, never, ever rock and empty rocking chair. It’s bad luck.” “But what will happen?” I asked, still confused. “When an empty rocking chair rocks, it means that soon, someone will die.” And a million thoughts ran through my mind. I thought back to all the times I rocked that empty chair and in the simple faith of my youth I wondered, “How many people have I killed by mindlessly rocking the empty chair?” I never did it again. Even though I know better now, even though I realize that it was only my mother’s belief in a superstition that gave me many sleepless nights, even though I am educated and know better, I still make it appoint never to rock an empty rocking chair. Just in case… Ghost stories aren’t usually easy to research. They don’t happen to several people at once. They never occur when you have a camera or a recording device. I have seen one ghost in my life, which I will not discuss here, not yet at least, but I am certain that if I had such a device in my hand at the time, the last thing I would have done would have been to have the presence of mind to point it at the apparition. Besides, ghosts exist in the corner of your eye and at the very edge of your hearing. They care little for our modern devices. So when trying to research a good ghost story, you won’t find the kind of documentary evidence that would make a skeptic happy. No. People who tell their stories don’t usually want to and often only do so after someone pleads with them to share, to get it off their chest, so that they won’t feel like they’re so alone. It does a person little good to share an experience that they can’t explain and that keeps them on the very edge of being considered a fool by the world because, yes, once, perhaps more than once, they saw something that they cannot possibly explain. And then you listen and even though you know better, there’s something ancient deep down inside you, something innocent and even though you know better, you can’t stop yourself from listening…and believing.  Such is the story of Tina and Kenny Lusk of Waterbury, Connecticut, two professional pilots who moved into a charming Victorian home in Waterbury in the spring of 1990. As they were signing the papers, the seller of the house, an elderly fellow who had lived in it for years, gave them a quiet warning about a ‘disturbing presence’ within, and to expect to experience it at some point. But a story is only a story and after a year