Our house is haunted.We saw the ghost...

Our house is haunted.

We saw the ghost late Tuesday night.

“Go away,” we said, and pulled the bedcover over our head.

“Used to live here,” the ghost said. “Used to sit in this very room and read to my children. A long time ago. What year is it anyway?”

He was surprised when we told him.

“It’s awful to be dead,” we said.

“You don’t know a thing about it,” he said. “You hardly know anything about living, at your age.”

That burned our ears.

Hadn’t we seen our share of relatives and friends come and go, some in an untimely way? And then there was the funeral for Grandfather Jack.

“Gentle Jack,” who for years kept to himself in a basement apartment, taking his coffee regularly every night at 7 o’clock sharp.

And so, there at the funeral, was our aunt, wailing in her grief, saying over and over again, “Pop, do you want your coffee now?”

The ghost studied us for a moment.

“Geez, how did you get so darn morose?” he asked. “I know dead people who’ve got more on the ball than you. What’re you doing there lying in bed anyhow?”

Because it was half past three in the morning, we said.

The ghost made to leave. He had a poker party to attend. Potluck.

“It doesn’t stop on the other side,” he said. “But the color’s all gone out of it, know what I mean? The little things in life are what I remember now.”

He apologized for carrying on. “Ever since that Frank Capra fellow arrived . . .”

But what about the Best Bets? About where to go and what to do?

Choose anything, he said. Any one.

But choose.

“And remember,” he said, “God is in the details.”

The California Coastal Commission will sponsor a “Coastal Cleanup Day” for residents to clean up their local beaches, 9 a.m. to noon Saturday. For beach meeting sites call (213) 546-8856.

The Autumn 1991 Sidewalk Sale will be held in Larchmont Village, Rossmore Avenue between 3rd Street and Melrose Avenue, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday. For information call (213) 469-6269.

“Drawings of the Nude,” an exhibit at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, will be on display from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Reservations are required. Admission is free. For information call (213) 458-2003.