Slob by Ellen Potter

supernatural stuff, like ghost sightings and UFOs. Nine times out of ten they prove that the story was all nonsense. Well, I had the show on, but I wasn’t paying that much attention when all of a sudden something caught my eye. One of the places where ghosts had been spotted was The Black Baron Pub.”
    “This the same pub right next to our apartment building?”
    “The very same. It turns out the guy who owns the pub had a wireless surveillance camera in there that kept capturing these weird, fuzzy images of people milling around while the place was closed on Sunday. But there was no sign of break-ins, and nothing was ever missing. He said that when he bought the place three years ago, he had heard some stories about the building being haunted, but he thought it was a lot of nonsense. Now he was beginning to think it was true. So these scientists tested his story right on TV. They checked his surveillance camera and receiver to make sure it wasn’t rigged, and they hid in a backroom on a Sunday night, watching. They didn’t see a thing. But when they checked the surveillance camera recording in the morning, there were those fuzzy-looking people, milling around. You couldn’t make out faces or clothes or anything, but they were definitely people. You could only see them for a few minutes, and when they were gone, the place looked completely empty again. It totally stumped the scientists. It almost stumped me too. I mean, it really seemed like this guy had ghosts in his pub.”
    “Ah.” Nima nodded. I waited for him to scoff at the notion. Or at least make a joke. He didn’t. He just listened, looking down at the spot between his black sneakers, frowning in concentration.
    “You don’t really believe in ghosts, do you?” I asked him.
    “Oh, sure, sure. Unhappy spirit. Tibetans call such kind of thing Hungry Ghost. It is very unfortunate to be a Hungry Ghost.”
    Once in a while it was disappointing to hear Nima’s beliefs.
    “Of course the guy didn’t actually have ghosts in his pub,” I said. “There are no such things as ghosts. When people die, they are just gone.”
    Nima looked at me but said nothing. No, not looked at me. He watched me. His cigarette drooped between his narrow, brown fingers, forgotten for a few moments. He was thinking, not about the TV show, I was pretty sure, but about me. It made me uncomfortable, and he seemed to realize it suddenly. He took a puff on his cigarette and nodded, his eyes averted. I went on.
    “Like I said, I was stumped at first. But they replayed those surveillance recordings several times as they were interviewing the pub owner, and that was when I noticed something strange. In the recordings, you could see out one of the windows to the opposite side of the street, where Fuji Towers is. You know how there is that twenty-four-hour supermarket on the ground floor of Fuji Towers? The one with the giant tomato sign?”
    “Sure, sure.”
    “Well, when you saw the ghost figures in the surveillance recording, the supermarket wasn’t there. All you could see was scaffolding and the outline of the giant tomato-shaped sign. The supermarket was being built. But when the ghost figures went away and it was just a dark, empty pub again, you could see the supermarket in the background, totally built and lit up, with people coming in and out.”
    Nima shook his head. “Something wrong with the videotapes?”
    “There were no tapes. They were digital recordings. The scientists checked out all the equipment, and there were no problems.”
    “So, how can be?” Nima asked.
    “That’s what I wondered. I asked Mom about when the supermarket was built, and she said it had been built two years ago. So, here’s where things get real interesting. Have you ever taken a really good look at Fuji Towers? Have you ever looked at its roof?”
    “It a funny shape,” Nima said, making a scooping motion with his hand.
    “Exactly. It’s shaped like a giant parabolic dish, like a