There are few things more unsettling than being yanked awake at 2:22 a.m. by your phone announcing: Motion detected in fireplace cam.

Not “package delivered.”
Not “garage door open.”
No. Motion. Near. Fireplace.

The fireplace is inside the house.

And because our security camera is tucked behind the spiral staircase in the bookcase near the fireplace, aimed toward the old church sanctuary, the resulting image looked exactly like the sort of grainy black-and-white evidence that launches fourteen seasons of a paranormal cable show.

A burst of light. A blurry shape. An unexplained presence.

Tyler told me he zoomed in approximately 17 times while still half asleep before sneaking out of bed to investigate. I rolled over and when back to sleep.

Now before the practical people among you explain that headlights probably reflected through the front windows, let me point out one important fact: cars drive by every single night, and yet our camera does not issue dramatic middle-of-the-night alerts every single night. So if this was merely headlights, why did the camera suddenly decide this particular moment deserved our immediate attention?

Curious.

Of course, this isn’t the first time the subject of ghosts has come up since we moved into our converted church eight years ago. Back when we first bought the building, people sometimes asked whether I thought the church was haunted. One particularly skeptical person even asked whether I planned to burn sage.

At the time, I scoffed.

“Harrumph,” as I wrote in Church Sweet Home: A Restoration to Warm the Soul. “Sage. No.”

I genuinely could not understand why a ghost would choose to haunt a church. Churches are places where people gather for baptisms, weddings, Christmas programs, potlucks, hymns, laughter, and yes, funerals—but funerals filled with people who believed their loved ones were headed somewhere far better than the church basement.

Still … I did eventually Google sage smudging.

Just in case.

And honestly, if our old church does happen to have a spirit drifting quietly through the sanctuary now and then, I’m not especially worried about it. I’ve never felt frightened here. Never sensed anything dark or angry. The building has always felt warm to me—peaceful, even when it creaks and groans in the night the way old buildings do.

So perhaps the camera merely caught a reflection.

Or perhaps some long-retired Methodist lady just wanted to check whether we finally dusted behind the spiral staircase.

Either way, she seems harmless.

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Copies of Church Sweet Home: A Restoration to Warm the Soul will be available along with all my books—including my latest Prime Time: Ups & Downs of a Minnesota TV Man—when I appear from 3–7 p.m. tomorrow May 22 at the Genoa City Farmers Market.

One quick reminder: because of construction on Fellows Road, the market has moved this year. You can find me at 171 S. Carter St. in Genoa City. Stop by and tell me whether you think we captured headlights … or a holy haunting.

Today’s blog title was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, a 19th-century master of Gothic horror and psychological suspense best known for dark tales like The Tell-Tale Heart, in which a murderer is driven mad by the imagined sound of his victim’s still-beating heart.