A weird one when I was a teenager…
We lived in the outer suburbs of a northern Canadian town. Driveways were long, so there were newspaper boxes by the road for the daily delivery. The TV guide came with the newspaper every Friday.
One Friday night I was awake late after my family had gone to bed. I saw a James Bond movie listing in the TV guide and thought ‘why not?’. I remember the picture on the cover (the cast of Dallas), and on the Friday page (Bo Duke and Luke Duke).
I flopped down, put the TV guide to one side and watched a bit. After a brief while, it was clear that this Bond wasn’t an actor I knew (it was George Lazenby), so I looked for the TV guide to see who it was. I could only find last weeks (different cover - autumnal forest shot and no detailed listing for tonight’s movie. No picture of the Duke brothers either). Couldn’t find this week’s. No big surprise - I’m often putting things down and forgetting where I put them.
The next morning, I got up and wandered to the TV room. My sister was watching cartoons, and I asked her what was on next.
Sis: I don’t know.
Me: Well, let’s look at the TV guide and find out?
Sis: Don’t be stupid.
Me: Uhhh…
Sis: The TV guide is still drying.
Me: How did it get wet?
Sis: It fell out of the bundle when dad pulled the newspaper out of the box yesterday evening. It spent the night lying in the driveway in the rain.
I wandered out to the hearth where the paper was drying. Same cast of Dallas cover, same picture of the Duke brothers on Friday, same Bond movie listing.
A rational explanation is “sleepwalking”, but someone would have to sleep walk out of the house down a long driveway on a cool rainy autumn night and get back to bed without getting their sheets wet or muddy. Another possibility is my family was messing with me by getting up in the middle of the night and moving the TV guide. Well out of character - we all loved sleep, especially after midnight when I went to bed.
That’s my very mundane ghost story. A ghost of a TV guide.
