I SEE DEAD COMMUTERS "There is a ghost standing right ...

DEAD COMMUTERS "There is a ghost standing right behind you."

I was standing in Port Authority, enjoying the cheap street theater of commuters rushing home to their families, soon-to-be vacationers lugging huge suitcases and the 8th Ave. street kids with their pimp strolls trawling for fresh fish.

The middle-aged woman was smiling peacefully.

"He seems to be concerned with you... He's an older man...Irish... He's in a fireman's uniform."

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Moments earlier, I'd been thinking about my father—who is dead, was Irish and was a fireman. I turned around. Nothing.

"It's okay if you can't see him. Most people can't see them. And most spirits can only see a few people. It's better that way… When a ghost sees me looking at them, they get angry."

I asked if the fireman were able to see her.

"No. He just seems to be concerned with you. He's gone now."

I invited her to join me for a cup of coffee. Janice is 50 years old, a native New Yorker of African, Native American and Irish descent. She's had a tough life.

"I was beaten as a child. My family didn't have much money and my parents had to work all the time. Anytime us kids got out of line or loud, well, they didn't believe in sparing the rod and spoiling the child."

Her family dissolved into a haze of drugs and alcohol; she wound up in foster care, where she suffered sexual abuse. I asked when she started seeing ghosts.

"They came to me first in dreams. My ancestors would come and try and help me. But spirits can't do much in this world. Then I just started seeing them everywhere. A lot of people die each year in New York, and I guess some of them stay behind."

According to the New York City Dept. of Health, more than 60,000 people die each year in the city. Maybe not all of them reach the great beyond.

I asked if she could see any ghosts right now.

"Oh, sure. An old black woman just walked by pushing a mop. I saw a businessman weeping in that corner over there. A little boy with a red balloon just walked by. All ghosts. None of them saw me."

Janice is on medication because the doctors think her visions of ghosts are signs that she is psychotic.

"But no matter what kind of medication they put me, on I still see the ghosts."

She went down to the subway. I stayed behind, looking into the corners of the Port Authority for things that only she was able to see.

I hoped they didn't see me.