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Susanne was in the living room on the couch late one night when she heard what she thought was a light tap-tap-tap of one of our kids running down the wood stairs. She then heard a child's voice that whispered "mom" or "momma."

"Who's awake?" Susanne called upstairs. It was about 11 pm and I was in Charlie's room, testing his blood sugar.

"Huh? What do you mean? They're all asleep," I said, poking my head downstairs.

She sat wide awake and erect on the couch and looked at me very seriously.

"I think we have a ghost."

But wait, there's more.

The idea of a ghost child roaming our halls may have frightened me even more than Susanne. You see, I had a little secret. One that I had been keeping from Susanne for about three years. Soon after we moved into our house, I asked our next-door neighbors about some of the families who had previously lived in our home. When I asked how many kids one family had, my neighbors paused and looked at each other, clearly reluctant to respond.

"You can't tell Susanne this," they said. And they were right. What they were about to tell me was not something I needed to share with Susanne. They told me that 16 years ago, a baby boy died in our house. He had hemophilia. He bled to death.

"Where?" I asked.

Again, they reluctantly responded.

"In Charlie's room."

No, Susanne didn't need to know this. We were nervous wrecks to begin with as far as Charlie's diabetes was concerned and Susanne was seven months pregnant with Ben.

But wait, there's even more.

I recently went back to the neighbors to get some more information about the boy who died and to let them know that a.) Susanne is hearing creepy, ghostly sounds and b.) I told her about the baby. I told her just before Christmas. Nice timing, Carey. Merry Christmas, darling. The sounds you are hearing may be the ghost of baby that died in our house. Can you please pass the eggnog?

The neighbors told me the baby's name and that he was 18 months old when he died. They wanted to leave it at that, but I pressed them further.

"Anything else I should know?"

"Well , I'm sure this was really nothing, but there was another family that had an "experience."

They went on to tell me about a couple who owned the house prior to the people we purchased it from. The Sinclairs. Apparently one day in the bedroom, Mr. Sinclair had a chilling encounter with a shirt. A shirt that was hanging on a closet door behind him suddenly became draped upon his back. And it tugged slightly like a small fish on a hook.

Meanwhile Susanne continues to feel a presence occasionally and has felt the subtle and inexplicable movement of air all around her. One night she felt as if the comforter was being pulled over her head while she slept. What if it is a spirit of a baby? What if it's looking for its mommy? What if it thinks Susanne is its mommy?

The only way I can even write about this without my heart jumping out of my chest and splattering onto my keyboard, is to keep telling myself that our little visitor probably looks like a cartoon character. Like Casper the friendly ghost or the glutinous green Slimer from the movie Ghostbusters that springs from a street vendor's cart with a mouthful of hotdogs.

But if we're really going to try to make this new living arrangement work, it wouldn't hurt if ghost baby pitched in a bit and made himself useful.

If he's going to be awake anyway doing some haunting and stuff, why not give us a break once in a while and take the 2 am blood sugar check.

Better yet, why can't our ghost be trained like one of those medical-alert dogs that detect hypoglycemia? Slam some doors or smash some china plates into the walls. We'll wake up. Just don't do the thing with the comforter.

Susanne ain't diggin' that.

So tell me. Do you have ghosts? Should ghosts be trusted to operate your child's insulin pump? How do you incorporate ghosts into the management of your diabetes?

Creepy stuff. Well, I hope you all have a nice wee ...

Crap! Did you hear that???????