Sometime around Halloween I noticed a cool road sign on my morning commute. Someone  had added some sort of graffiti or decal to a sign that seemed to have made it into an eerie haunted mansion sitting atop a hill. I found it to be quite fantastic! I wondered how long it would remain, since it was certainly illegal and would surely be reported to the Department of Transportation. It probably wouldn’t last more than a few days.

Well, weeks went by, and I continued my daily drive-by of the haunted mansion on the hill, always trying to glean a closer look through the darkness of early morning. Christmas is almost here now, and yet the haunted mansion road sign still remains!

I just drove by the sign in actual daylight for the first time, and to my horror, it became evident that it was actually a “yield ahead” sign that had been oddly boarded up. The whole thing was an optical illusion! I felt cheated. I thought that darn haunted mansion sign was so cool, but it was really just my dumb imagination all along.

You know what, though? I can’t be the only person that saw something that wasn’t really there – something better than what was actually there.  Having an open mind and  being imaginative is a good thing.  It’s something I hope to see in my own children. So promise not to tell my kids, because if we should ever drive by this particular road sign at night, they will be warned about  how the scariest haunted mansion in the entire world is right around the bend.