Cue the theme to The Twilight Zone

I'm about to let you in on a not-so-well-kept secret: I love to be scared. I love horror movies. I love telling ghost stories. I love reading suspenseful books late into the night with just a reading lamp for light and then freaking out when the house creaks.

So last night after dinner, Jamie and I settled in with our latest rental. The movie was a little slow, but toward the end, the suspense began to build. The main character slowly and deliberately climbed the steps to the water tower as the music swelled behind her. We were on the edge of our seats when BAM! We both jumped about a foot in the air, and I'm pretty sure one of us screamed. It sounded like a bomb went off in our front yard, and we weren't far off. Turns out we weren't the only ones driven by the record-high temperatures to hole up in our homes cranking the AC. The stress on the power lines caused the transformer across the street to blow.

The explosion turned out to be the least of our problems when we discovered we'd be without power for three hours. The sun was already down, so we didn't die of heat stroke. However, we very nearly died of boredom.

I won't bore you with the details of our boring night. But I will get back to the scary/creepy stories part of this entry.

About a week after I moved to Atlanta last December, while I was virtually homeless thanks to the "perfect" roommate who turned out to be less than perfect, (She turned out to be a psycho liar, if you want to get technical.) I was crashing at Jamie's while I frantically searched for a new apartment. And one morning I woke up to discover that I had lost my driver's license and debit card. I had the cards the night before, and when I woke up they were gone. I searched and searched and searched. I tore about my car, my meager belongings, and Jamie's house. Finally, I gave up, convinced that they were gone forever. I thought maybe I had left them on top of the car and driven off or that maybe someone had stolen them. This led to the drama getting the debit card canceled and replaced. And I had to have the NC DMV send my replacement license to Georgia. Of course this all took twice as long as it should have, given the fact that I lost them three days before Christmas.

So yesterday I was in the bathroom, and I pulled out my travel bag...and there they were, sitting in the front flap. I don't know how I overlooked it back then, since I know I emptied out that bag repeatedly. And I don't know how I've missed it in the interceding months, since I've used that bag at least five or six times in the last eight months. I have no explanation, other than to say that I am blind or crazy. I'm sure the cards must have been there the whole time, I just don't know how I missed them.

Of course, the only other explanation is that they were borrowed by an underaged ghost who needed access to a hot otherworld club.

Right after I found my long-lost cards, I logged on and found that one of my new favorite bloggers had just posted a similar (but far more interesting!) story of items lost and found. Check out her blog and her ghost story.