Bell mystery

Sometimes unexplained things happen around you. It does not make much sense when you try and relate it to other people. Logical and scientific minded folks think it is your addled brain that is conjuring up such scenarios. Especially when you have travelled half way across the globe, locked up for 10 hours in an airplane, and have emerged red eyed and jet lagged. But the fact is that life is stranger than fiction. 

Take the case of the ringing bell, for example. I have an old call bell in my house that was installed more than four years ago. Now the thing is, this was fixed inside my home, in the downstairs lobby area. Why there? Well, sometimes when you were indoors and if you needed to catch anybody’s attention, this was a perfect way of doing so. You just had to press a button on a handheld remote and a loud sound would echo around the house, making everyone rush towards the atrium. 

It was supposed to be as easy as that. But like most things associated with my life, simple things get complicated from the word go. And so, from the day it was connected, save for the couple of minutes when the mechanic showed me how it functioned, it refused to work. I tried pressing it from different angles, facing north, south, east, west and all the rest of it, but the bell remained as silent as a mouse. 

The ringer box I had artfully hidden behind one of the potted plants, the wires camouflaged around the palm leaves. It was so well concealed that after a while I forgot about its presence. Completely! I had taken to using my voice to call out to the others and it never failed me. That was the other reason why I could not even recollect its precise place and location. 

Our daughter worried about me, as daughters usually do. Whenever I was ill, she would fish out the thin wand of the remote and place it next to me on the bedside. Both if us knew that it was a useless activity but it reassured her to think her mum could ring for assistance if needed and I pretended that I would do exactly that. The soundless bell could start ringing, who knows? 

And then one evening, that is exactly what happened and it rang! We were all assembled downstairs in the sitting room. Some guests were visiting from out of town and suddenly the loud notes of the bell chimed out. It was so unexpected that it made us jump up in surprise. 

In the general confusion, I never got around to investigating how this unusual thing happened. We even forgot to ask each other as to who had gone upstairs to press the remote button. I assumed one of us must have done it. A few days later while I was marvelling at how the bell had finally sorted itself out; we figured that the bell had not only fixed itself but in some weird manner, it had also pressed itself. 

Since then four more times it has rung automatically. 

“Our house is becoming mysterious,” I told my husband. 

“And spooky,” he noted. 

“I know who is pressing the bell,” I claimed.

“You?” asked spouse

“Casper,” I replied. 

“You’ve changed your name?” he quizzed. 

“That friendly ghost,” I reminded. 

“You are a spirit?” he queried. 

“Yes, a kindred one,” I said, giving up.