In all the horror movies I’ve ever seen, the haunted are powerless to the ghosts who do the haunting. Ghosts invariably arrive on their own terms: a quick flash of their reflection in the bathroom mirror when the victim wipes away steam; a vase that, unprovoked, falls to the floor and shatters at the living’s feet; a shiver that raises goosebumps all over a grieving lover’s body on the hottest day of the year; a disembodied moan outside a widow’s bedroom window on a windless night. So when my mother died after threatening to haunt me for eternity in her last voicemail message (which I immediately deleted) if I didn’t return her call, I expected to be haunted in all the usual ways and, knowing how creatively spiteful my mother was in life, in ways I could never imagine.

But it’s been nearly six months now with nothing: not the wisp of an unusual shadow; no unearthly echoes; no unexplained tappings on windowpanes, paranormal breakages, or strange bodily sensations. Nothing. Unless the unpaid bills she left behind could be considered a kind of haunting. While I did expect my mother to stay true to her word and haunt me throughout eternity for not returning her call, I never once expected her to leave me with anything other than many years’ worth of therapy topics. But unbeknownst to me, my mother had used my social security number and good credit score to acquire half-a-dozen credit cards in my name, all of which had hefty outstanding balances. As a consequence, I’ve been forced to rummage through my own possessions in order to raise the necessary funds.

All the white elephant Christmas and birthday gifts she gave me to emphasize my bachelor status—such as a set of tiny frying pans for single eggs, a pair of Bigfoot slippers, a bathrobe embroidered with the word “HIS”—go to the top of a pile that includes my father’s beat-up golf clubs my mother was sure I would want after he died, bags of unfashionable clothes I had packratted away, stacks of vintage MTV-era records, and all manner of outdated electronics.

When I come across an old answering machine from the ‘90s, I feel a shiver run up my spine. I stare at it the way someone might stare at a snake they find in their backyard as they try to determine whether or not it’s venomous before I finally pick it up, its power cord uncoiling behind it to an oversized two-pronged plug. I pull the cord to me and plug its fangs into the nearest socket. The label on the tape inside reads “60 minutes.” I take a deep breath, just the way my dad had taught to me to do before pulling the trigger when we used to go deer hunting, the way I imagined he took a deep breath the last time he pulled the trigger, and press the “PLAY” button. “This is your mother. . . .”

– Kip Knott

Author’s Note: Ghosts are real. We are, all of us, haunted every day by the sudden appearance of a long-lost relative one morning when we look at our own face in the mirror; or by the particular mannerism of a departed mother or father that reveals itself in times of stress; or by a forgotten photograph that rises from the deep waters of our photo stream; or by a familiar—yet distant—voice preserved in an old voicemail message that causes us to pause for a moment before we press “Delete.”