“Ghosts aren’t real,” I tell my 5-year-old, Wilder, as I tuck him in for the night, regretting that I let him watch Scooby-Doo. I don’t actually believe what I am saying, but parents will say whatever they have to to get their kids to just go to sleep. Just ask Adam Mansbach, author of the infamous Go the F*** to Sleep.

But back to the matter at hand. “Ghosts are very real,” I tell my husband, Chris, once Wilder is asleep. He doesn’t agree — and always sleeps like a champ. “Don’t worry. If I die first, I’ll prove it to you,” I say. “I can’t wait to haunt you!” (Actually, yes, I can.)

Do I have proof? No, but I have stories.

When I was a teen growing up in a small town in western Massachusetts, my godmother, Aunt Debbie — my mom’s sister, younger by just a year — would take me on weekend shopping trips, east to Boston or west to Stockbridge. She didn’t have kids of her own so she treated me like her daughter, buying me dangling jewelry she called “baubles.” We’d jam to the tunes of Gloria Estefan and Steve Winwood, and she’d regale me with stories from her life, which seemed much more dazzling and whimsical than my family’s boring white-picket-fence, suburban existence. What I didn’t understand at the time was that those seemingly exhilarating moments were part of her ups. She never shared the downs of her bipolar disorder with me.

Debbie was somewhat of a widow. She’d lost her husband, Michael, to ALS, but they’d been separated at the time of his diagnosis, remaining legally married for insurance purposes. As his illness progressed, despite each having new significant others, their friendship became stronger than ever.

Immediately after his funeral, friends would drop in to share memories, drinks and laughs. But then she threw a party akin to the wild ones they threw when Michael was alive, certainly not your typical post-burial get-together.

On one particular godmother-and-goddaughter weekend as we’re on our way to the Berkshires, she spills the details. “I had a cake made with his face on it and put candles in his eyes,” she says. Already, I’m intrigued and we’re both giggling over the absurdity of it all. After all, this was 1995 and face cakes weren’t really a thing yet. “We turned off the lights and had a seance. One of his friends said, ‘Debbie, you shouldn’t do this! He’d be so mad!’”

That night, she continues, a vicious storm passed through, knocking out power and tossing a tree onto her little Honda sedan, which was parked in the driveway. Coincidence? Maybe, but there’s more.

Pictures fell off a stable living room shelf.

“The alarm by the hall closet kept turning on when I would walk by,” Debbie says. Not just any hall closet, but the place where she stored Michael’s suits, soon to be passed on to his younger brother. “I said, ‘OK, Michael. I get it — you’re telling me something!’” she says as we cruise down the highway. “I decided to rifle through the pockets and discovered a watch he didn’t want his brother to have.” And, as soon as she retrieved it, the alarm was silent.

On the morning of April 2, 1996, just as I was getting ready for school, my mom received a call. Her sister had taken her own life — just shy of her 40th birthday — the night before. Though tragic, it wasn’t a complete surprise, although we’d hoped things were turning around for her. She’d found a new love, bought a house with him and was, it appeared, happy. But you never know the demons someone battles.

In the months that followed Debbie’s passing, I looked for signs of her presence everywhere. I watched for lights to flicker or alarms to sound seemingly on their own. I played the Mary Chapin Carpenter cassettes that I inherited from her collection, hoping a message might come through. But no visitations followed and I decided she was finally resting in peace.

Ten years later to the day Debbie died, it is April 1, 2006.

I’m in Maryland visiting my parents with my first baby, 8-month-old Sawyer, who has slept solidly through the night since he was 6 weeks old. At midnight on the nose, something startles me awake: a noise over the baby monitor.

But Sawyer isn’t crying. In fact, he’s cooing and chatting away happily, as if talking to someone. And in that moment, I know exactly who: Debbie, who always loved babies, but never had her own. Debbie, who loved me like a daughter and would have loved this baby as if he were her own grandchild. Paralyzed by this realization — and slightly terrified, if I am being honest — I decide not to go to him. He babbles. He gurgles. He coos. And, as if lulled by an unsung lullaby, he drifts to sleep. I, of course, check on him later and find him snoozing peacefully, the corners of his mouth forming a sweet smile behind his pacifier.

So while I tell a little white lie to Wilder because I’m ready to go to bed myself, I do, in fact, think ghosts are real. And perhaps one day, hopefully 50 years from now if I am lucky, Chris will be telling our grown children and grandkids about the little ways I’m letting him know I’m still around. No matter what, I’ll make a believer out of him yet.