It was therefore something of a letdown to arrive inside the barn, where Sina was calmly filling the horses’ buckets with grain, and Old Tom and Wilfred were busily forking hay down and paying no attention to me.

“Ghoooooooost!” I hollered for good measure, thinking perhaps that none of them had heard me. How else to explain their greeting this phenomenon so calmly? How little I remembered my own reaction to Sina screaming “UFO!”

Indeed, Sina turned to face me, all skepticism, and said, “Really, Franny. You say banana, I say banahna. Let’s call the whole thing off.”

“What?” I said, still thinking she must have heard wrong. Or, perhaps, finally indulged in a nervous breakdown from the strain of having houseguests.

“I see a UFO, so you have to see a ghost?”

“Are you saying it wasn’t a ghost, that it was your UFO I saw?” I asked, still confused.

“No, I’m saying you are playing can-you-top-this. I’m surprised at you.”

Then I got it. She thought I was trying to make myself important through the medium of ghosts. Suddenly I was less terrified than annoyed. “Are you saying I didn’t see a ghost?” I demanded.

“I just thought you were a little more original. Ghosts are very close to UFOs, phenomena-wise,” said Sina, filling the horses’ and cows’ water buckets.

“Are not!” I said.

“What do you think, Tom?” asked Sina.

“I think Franny thought she saw a ghost and I think you thought you saw a UFO and I think you’ve all got the jimjams. You’re nutters, every one of you. Except Wilfred,” said Old Tom, patting him affectionately on the shoulder as they threw more hay down from the loft. Old Tom had clearly taken a shine to Wilfred after working side by side with him most of the day, and I was suddenly filled with a jealousy so violent that it was all I could do to keep from pushing Wilfred into a pile of manure. Let’s see if that will disturb his phlegmatic calm, I thought temptingly, but, of course, reined myself in in time.

“Nobody likes a copycat,” said Sina.

“Well, excuse me,” I said. “But if we could believe you about the UFO, you might at least entertain the notion of a ghost.”

“You didn’t believe me!” protested Sina. “You did nothing but joke about it.”

“Be fair,” I said. “Only Old Tom joked about it.”

“Yes, but the rest of you obviously thought I was cracked.”

I said nothing. This much was true. It was clear that we were all now less interested in whether these phenomena were real than we were in using them to beat each other over the head for still extant grudges.

We finished watering and feeding the animals in a sullen silence, and then Sina and I took off through the pounding rain to the house. Wilfred ran to grab a buzzing Zebediah and drag him inside, and Old Tom went to make sure all the outbuildings were closed up. Inside, Winifred could be heard scurrying around upstairs. When she came down she had a suspiciously innocent look on her face.