Quite Literally A Puzzle

This happened a few years back, during the Summer holidays of school. I would have been around 14-15 years old, and my brother, James, a year older than me. You should know that our dad passed away in 2005 from lung cancer, and we believe he's still with us since most of our family have seen him and also smelt his aftershave.

We decided to buy a jigsaw puzzle. We'd always loved them as kids and our mum and dad would fix them with us. The one we bought wasn't brand new, but we actually counted out the pieces several times over (I know, so tedious) to make sure we weren't going to be wasting our time with it. All the pieces were there, so we were good to go, and after just a couple of days, we'd finished the puzzle. Well, with the exception of a few pieces, that is.

The box with the pieces had remained on the dining room table for the whole duration of the jigsaw-fixing time, and it was empty. Immediately, I accused my brother of doing it as a prank so that he got to be the one to finish it. He denied it, as did my mum who'd been helping us, and obviously it wasn't me. This was when I started to become a little freaked out by the whole thing. I was very confused as to how the pieces were suddenly gone when we were absolutely certain they were all there to start with.

Now, it was possible that they could have been dropped, so naturally we looked all around the floor for them and found, as I suspected, nothing. We checked every, and I mean every, surface, nook and crevice those pieces could have ended up, and I'm telling you, there was no sign.

Eventually we gave it up, figured we must have counted wrong. The days and weeks of the Summer went on. Floors and surfaces got cleaned and tidied over and over, things were moved around by us as they do when you're in a house with things that you, you know, use on a daily basis...

One day, just an ordinary day with nothing much going on, I was sat at that very table with my laptop in front of me and the jigsaw, still almost finished, on the table behind it. I'd been there most of the day since the internet is, sadly, over 50% of my life. Several times I'd been up to make drinks or use the toilet, and the floor beneath my chair was empty, clear of all jigsaw pieces.

Except then it wasn't. There, directly beneath my chair, smack in the centre of that square piece of laminate flooring which was sheltered by my chair and my humble body, was a jigsaw piece. It had the nerve to show up out of the blue uninvited and sit there, waiting for someone to see it and be like, "Oh! There's a jigsaw piece we've been wanting! Quick, fix it right on in!"

Joking aside, I was very, very disturbed. I picked it up cautiously, like I was afraid it would spontaneously combust in my grasp, and took it to show my mum and brother. "Did one of you put it there? You said you didn't take them!" I said to them, but of course, they both denied it. As you should with a jigsaw piece, we found its place in the puzzle and put it in. The situation was only about to get much, much stranger.

Over the next few days, the last of the pieces showed up. Several more were on the floor - one by the sofa in the living room, one by the sink and cupboards in the kitchen, and the last... Oh, the last. The last was outside, across the road, and on a path leading to the next street. Every day before, it had rained, and the ground was still absolutely soaking. Yet, when we went to the piece and gently plucked it from its resting place on the concrete, we found it to be bone dry and not damaged in the slightest. It clearly hadn't been there for long at all. We finished our jigsaw puzzle, even if it was weeks after we planned to.

The thing is, moving the pieces is something our dad used to do when we were little. As I assumed with my brother, it was so he could finish them. Concluding the whole experience, I didn't rule out the possibility it was him, and I still don't dismiss the idea now. Like I said, our family are well aware of his presence as we've all encountered him in one way or another.

I feel like I should say, despite my light-hearted attitude towards the whole thing now, at the time it was quite unnerving. It was very real and very spooky that they vanished and came back like that, and objects doing so is a very common occurrence and often reported by people who claim their houses are haunted. This account, as are all of mine, is 100% true and honest, and my family can vouch for that.

I'd love to know your thoughts. Thank you for reading.