There are two phantom boards in Chateau Travolta, one upstairs and one downstairs. They don't sound like all the other squeaky boards in this house: These sound like a sigh of disappointment.

I just stepped on one.

I found the one in the kitchen about a year ago. Initially, I thought it was Petunia making just the merest meow, but then I'd look around and find her nowhere near. Once I heard her jump off the bed seconds after the sigh and felt my skin crawl. I walked back and forth across that same expanse of kitchen for what seemed like ten minutes, trying to recreate the noise. It's difficult to do -- you have to step on it just right.

I didn't know about the one upstairs until today.

It sounds like someone who's just been told the house she grew up in was lost in a fire. Not a cry of desolation, nothing as dramatic as that, just the involuntary vocalization of a lost memory.

I wonder what Chateau Travolta has lost.