Google Search: "What if Ghosts..."

Another quality post brought to you by Steve!

Hey everybody!  First of all, to answer the burning question on everyone's minds: no, we're not dead.  Far from it.  Brenda and Abby both ran into unexpected situations and had to bow out for the last two blogposts.  Not to worry, guys.  As we all know, everybody gets one:

Just kidding, of course.  We're a pretty easygoing blog and life happens.  I'll be flip-flopping my slot with Abby this week and she'll take August 7.

It's my turn for a Google search post!  I may have mentioned this before but I'm sort of half-assedly working on a haunted house novel.  So weighing on my mind lately has been the question, "What if ghosts were real?"  For those of you who don't know me in real life, I am a supreme skeptic about basically everything.  That means God, ghosts, karma, chi, and ear candling all go basically in the same basket for me.  (That is: the bullshit basket.)  Naturally I mean no offense to any of you who are believers, just as you doubtless can respect my opinion while not sharing it.  That's the beauty of freedom of conscience after all.

Anyway, I digress.  Rather than Google "What if ghosts were real?" I decided to just google "What if ghosts" and let the algorithms do the rest.  Here's what I came up with:

It seems Google either knows me or most people are like me, and a couple of those hits were the exact subject I was thinking of: what if ghosts were (or are, depending on your tense) real?  More interestingly the first hit was "What if ghosts are aliens?"  I actually saw an episode of "Doctor Who" about that once.  Trust me, you do not want ghosts to turn out to be aliens, if the BBC is anything to go by.

However, I was feeling lucky today, so I indicated that to Google, which ended up choosing the last option, apparently, and took me to this site:

Those of you who are interested can go to the link directly.  But I thought I might save you all some trouble and ply you with my own listicle on that very subject:

8.  Tell the ghost, "Are you a ghost cop?  Because if you're a ghost cop, you have to tell me."

7.  See if the ghost will take a message to one of your deceased loved ones.  Then spend half an hour giving really explicit directions on how to reach their house in Heaven, i.e. "Turn right at the Dairy Queen but if you see a stop sign you've gone too far."

6.  Ask, "What's it like being dead?"  Ghosts never tire of that old chestnut.

5.  Never, ever throw a sheet over your head and cut eyeholes out of it.  Ghosts consider that "ghostface" and it is extremely offensive.

4.  As subtly as possible, lick the ghost.  If no saliva remains behind, it is a real ghost.

3.  Ask questions about current politicians and sports teams who have moved to different cities to see if the ghost has been paying attention.

2.  Start making a vase on a potter's wheel and if the ghost just so happens to come up behind you and semi-erotically join in, so be it.

1.  Netflix and chill.