Phantoms

Dear Ghostbusters,

Please help me. My estranged great-grandfather recently passed, and he left me his crappy old apartment in New Jersey. The roof leaks, the water runs rusty, and the neighbors are all cranky old geezers. Don’t ask me why, but it’s mine now, and I can’t leave because I’m a broke college graduate drowning in student loans.

Why am I contacting you about repair problems, you ask? Well, you see, the apartment’s dump of a condition is the least of my problems. As it turns out, my grandfather was haunted by a barbershop quartet of ghosts.

I’m not kidding. They literally sing as a barbershop quartet. Constantly.

Apparently, they LOVED my grandfather (cranky old geezer that he was, between you and me) but they harbor no lost love for yours truly. I guess they blame me for my grandfather disappearing and having me move in instead.

So they’ve dedicated their afterlives to making my life a living hell. The one silver lining is that my grandfather hasn’t come back to join them- yet. Though if he did come back as a ghost, they might actually leave me alone.

Until that happy day, I need you guys to do your thing and GET THEM OUT OF HERE. Seriously. I can’t stand it anymore!

To illustrate my struggles, let me introduce you to Billy, Willy, Milly, and Joe.

Billy is their leader, and seems to take great pleasure in bellowing in my ear just as I begin to fall asleep. He leads the ghosts in a rousing rendition of “My Body Lies Over the Ocean”. Every. Single. Night. And morning. And whenever I think I can get away with a little catnap. Honestly, the worst part isn’t even their singing-  they almost sound mildly okay after the fifty-second repetition-  but it’s the bungling of the lyrics that bothers me the most.

Willy is the prankster. He greatly enjoys pulling chairs out from underneath me, throwing things out the window at passerby, and emitting rude noises at completely inappropriate times. The other day, I was talking to the woman on floor 2B, you know, putting on the charm, and right as I was inquiring whether she’d like to join me for lunch, Willy crept up behind me and let out a huge, smelly, squeaky emission of–  well, he farted. The woman, of course, stomped away muttering about how men are pigs. I was not a happy camper.

Milly, however, is even worse than the other two. The only female of the group, she somehow has the deepest singing voice of all. Her voice is a shocking bellow that explodes from her mouth right into my ear. Her chosen method of torture brings me right back to high school. She laughs at me constantly. No matter what I’m doing, she’ll point at me and giggle. Whenever she sees my outfit, she rolls on the floor positively convulsing with laughter. Not a pretty sight for a ghost, I tell you. And her comments are so–  so mean. She somehow knows about my deepest insecurities. She even teases me about that time in second grade when the class pet snake escaped and I wet my–  well, never mind.

And Joe, he’s the worst of them all. No, he doesn’t throw things, or make loud noises, or even call me names. He floats around my house and whispers things in my ear. Questions I don’t know how to answer, just as I fall asleep. Those keep me up all night as surely as “My Body Lies Over the Ocean”. Sometimes he shape-shifts into my unpaid bills. Sometimes he turns into my childhood crush, Sydney Rufflesburg, and chases me around screaming “COOTIES!” But the worst part is when he puts on his wire spectacles, a wrinkled striped vest, and a kind smile. He whispers, “Hello. I’m your guidance counselor, and I’d like to talk to you about your future.”

Please help me. I can’t take this much longer. I’m running out of excuses to avoid talking to my guidance counselor!

Sincerely,
Desperate Dave