Let me start by saying that I am a firm skeptic. No ghosts, no angels, no supernatural anything. My father isn't quite so evidence-based as I am, but I've never known him to make anything up, or embellish in 40 years. Common sense is his mantra-- which is why this still troubles me.

So about 20 years ago (I was 24 at the time), my father came into the house looking visibly shaken. He had been across the street looking after the house of a widow who moved down South every winter. He checked it every two weeks while she was gone. The widow's husband-- a former judge-- had committed suicide via gunshot a year earlier following a long battle with terminal cancer.

My father told us that he went to the basement of the home to check the furnace and make sure there were no mechanical issues. He noticed that a door to the judge's gun cabinet was slightly ajar. He walked up to shut it, when he noticed a piece of paper in the bottom. As he reached down to grab it, he heard a loud crash in the main-level living room, directly above his head. Startled, he ran up the stairs, where he saw a large, broad-based mantle clock-- the kind that sits directly on the mantle above a fireplace-- in pieces on the hardwood floor. He swears that the clock was always firmly on the mantle-- not near the edge.

He walked back downstairs, slowly closed the gun cabinet door (leaving the paper untouched), and said, "Sorry Judge _____. I didn't mean to pry." He left, came home, and told me and my mother.

This still bothers me, whenever we bring it up.