Plop!
The Lecture
by Dave Barnowski
An old joke gets new life as Cain questions the audience at a lecture on the supernatural.
***
Cain ben Adam was well known as a master storyteller and an expert on the supernatural and the occult. Today he was a guest lecturer at the Central City University speaking on the topic of ghosts one Halloween night. The auditorium was filled with well over three hundred students, faculty, and guests who were mesmerized with the man’s talk, as Cain was a master orator.
He was at the end of his discussion when he asked the audience a series of questions. The first one was, “How many of you have ever heard a ghost? Please raise your hands and keep them up until I count you all.” Cain counted the hands and then thanked the audience for their patience.
“I counted one hundred and seventeen of you, which is about thirty-three percent.” Cain smiled as he continued, “That percentage is consistent with the general population and the numbers I come up with whenever I give these little talks — between twenty-eight and thirty-five percent.”
Next, Cain asked if anyone in the audience had ever seen a ghost, as the process was repeated. Cain counted seventy-eight hands, which he said was about twenty-five percent of the audience and was consistent with what he normally found.
He then asked if anyone had ever conversed with a ghost, and thirty-two hands rose up. Again, Cain said this percentage of about fifteen percent was within the normal parameters of what he had found over the years.
The brown-haired man then smiled as he said, “I now ask this question, as I do at every seminar on ghosts that I speak at. I have to tell you that no one has ever positively responded to this question, but I have to ask it. Has anyone here ever had intercourse with a ghost?”
There was a murmur of laughter from the audience at the question, and Cain saw that the answer to his question was again no. Then he saw a hand rise up timidly from the back of the audience. Cain’s heart rose as he asked the elderly man to come forward.
The man needed to use a walker, and he was obviously very frail. He wore two hearing aids and had to be helped out of his chair. Cain could see that the man would never be able to climb the stairs to the stage, and so he went down to meet him as the audience gave the old man a standing ovation.
Cain was buoyant as he looked forward to this conversation. He waited impatiently as the elderly man came down the aisle to the front of the stage. When he finally arrived, Cain couldn’t contain himself by starting with simple questions like what the man’s name was or where he came from. Instead, Cain asked the man directly, “Please tell us, sir, what it was like having intercourse with a ghost?”
The man said, “Eh? What did you say, son? Speak up — I’m hard of hearing.”
Cain smiled at the elderly man and raised his voice as he again asked, “What was it like having intercourse with a ghost?”
The old man looked at Cain incredulously as he said, “Ghost? I thought you said goat.”
The End
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