I’m a bit freaked out. I went on a ghost walk last night, which was a tour of the Customs House, one of the city’s historical buildings. The guide told all kinds of stories about death and murders that had occurred in the building since the 1850’s. It was creepy, but also a bit hokey. Some of the stories were a bit suspicious, and my BS detector went off a number of times. For instance, there was the story of the ghost of the so-called Black Lady, who was supposedly murdered in the basement and sealed up behind a brick wall, which is just now starting to break away. The Black Lady’s ghost has appeared numerous times to different people, and is accompanied by the strong smell of sulphur. My problem with the story is that her body was never found, and no one ever broke down that wall to look for it. The murderer got away with the crime. How do they know the body is behind the wall, and if they do know, why don’t they look? There was an explanation that the building is a heritage building, and it’s too difficult to get permission to take down a wall. However, there was a period of about a hundred years, during which the building didn’t have heritage status, and it would have been perfectly OK to tear down a wall to investigate a murder. The guide’s come-and-go Kevin Costner-esque British/Scottish/Irish accent, and his claim that he has given the tour over a thousand times–despite the fact that he’s only been working there for four years, and the tour only runs once per weekend–cast some doubt on everything else that he said.

In any case, that’s not what’s freaking me out. I’m more concerned about a cheque I had in my wallet from a photo client. It was in the billfold, along with my cash. I distinctly remember folding it so it would fit in there. I was intending to deposit it later. Well, when I went to deposit it tonight, I opened my wallet and the cheque was gone! All of the cash was still there, so I doubt it was stolen. What thief would steal a cheque made out to someone else, and leave the cash? I don’t see how it could have fallen out. I haven’t really used my wallet much in the past few days, other than to put stuff into it. Since the Great Wallet-Losing Event of June, I have been hyper paranoid about my wallet. I don’t see how I could not notice a cheque falling out.

My best working theory right now is that a ghost stole it. The most convincing stories told by the guide last night were of mischievious spirits who haunted the workmen that did the renovations on the building in 1998. Every day for a week, they would come into work in the morning to find their tools scattered randomly about the building. They thought it was neighbourhood kids playing tricks on them, so one night they scattered the tools themselves, only to find the tools stacked impossibly in a six-foot high tower, defying the laws of physics. When one of the workmen tried to approach the tower, it collapsed to the ground with a crash. There were also stories about locks that would unlock themselves, vanishing black cats, and basement doors that slammed shut without anyone near them.

So yeah. I believe that a poltergeist must have opened my backpack, removed my wallet, taken the cheque, and then replaced my wallet in my bag without me noticing. It’s the only logical explanation.