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I am not easily alarmed, except when I look in the mirror to shave, but my house is. That's because the alarm keeps blaring. According to Judy, who works for the alarm company, the reason is simple:

The house is haunted.

"What other explanation can there be?" Judy asked after she called me at 1 a.m. on a stormy night. The call woke me out of a sound sleep in which I dreamed that the alarm was blaring.

Actually, it was, as Judy helpfully pointed out when I picked up the phone.

"I can't hear you," I told her. "The alarm is blaring."

"Turn it off," Judy politely instructed me.

"What?" I said.

"TURN IT OFF!" yelled Judy, whose ears must have been ringing even more than mine.

I went to the keypad in the kitchen and punched in the security code, which in my semiconscious state I temporarily forgot (when you have 147 different passwords for various things, it's tough to keep track).

After the alarm stopped blaring and my hearing was restored, I told Judy about the storm.

"Do you have a lot of wind?" she asked.

"I did after dinner," I responded, "but I'm feeling much better now."

"The problem is coming from Zone 12," Judy reported.

"I'm usually in the Twilight Zone," I said.

"Is that where you are now?" Judy asked.

"Yes," I said. "It's the family room."

"Check the slider," she said.

"We have French doors," I told her. "And I don't even speak French."

"Is the door ajar?" Judy inquired.

It was all I could do to keep from making another stupid joke, so I checked it and said, "Yes."

"Do you want me to call the police?" Judy asked.

"No," I said. "I don't want to go back to prison."

"You were in prison?" Judy spluttered.

"Yes," I replied honestly. "Rikers Island."

"For how long?" she wanted to know.

"About six hours," I responded, explaining that I was there several years ago to talk about writing to young detainees who were in school at the maximum-security facility. "My columns are criminal," I added, "but I was paroled anyway. I must have been a bad influence on the inmates."

"If nobody forced the door open," Judy theorized, "it was probably the wind."

"This isn't the first time it's happened," I said. "We've gotten calls from the alarm company about the motion sensor in the living room."

"That's Zone 10," Judy said. "Did anybody break in?"

"No," I said. "The person who called the last time said it could have been the plants on the windowsill. It was during the day and I was out, so I had to rush home to see what was going on."

"What was going on?" Judy wondered.

"I guess the plants were having a party," I said.

"Maybe they needed to be watered," Judy guessed.

"They were probably headed for the liquor cabinet in the dining room," I said.

"That's Zone 8," Judy told me.

"Why does this keep happening?" I asked.

"There's only one logical explanation," Judy said. "Your house is haunted."

"That would explain the spirits in the liquor cabinet," I noted.

"Or," Judy said, "your sensor in very sensitive."

"It must have heard the bad things I've called it after the alarm has gone off so many times," I said.

"Make sure all your doors and windows are tightly closed," Judy said.

"Thank you," I said. "You've been very helpful. I'm sorry you have to work so late, but I'm glad you're alert."

"That's my job," said Judy. "Have a good rest of the night."

"You, too," I said.

"Now," Judy said, "you can sleep easier."

"I will," I said with a yawn. "Unless the alarm starts blaring again."

-Jerry Zezima

Jerry Zezima writes a humor column for Hearst Connecticut Media Group, which includes his hometown paper, theStamford Advocate. His column is distributed by Tribune News Service of Chicago and has run in newspapers nationwide and abroad. He is also the author of four books,Leave It to Boomer, The Empty Nest Chronicles, Grandfather Knows BestandNini and Poppie's Excellent Adventures, all of which are "crimes against literature." He has won seven awards from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists for his humorous writing.