Salem, MA—Local domestic cat and guardian from supernatural forces Mittens successfully warded off yet another specter from the great beyond while in his living room Wednesday afternoon.

Mittens had been enjoying a relaxing day with his human, local software designer Maria Spitz, when he suddenly became aware of the ghoulish presence across the room.

“He was just chilling beside me, not a care in the world,” Spitz told the Post. “Then he sits up and stares at a blank spot on the ceiling. For a while he just sat there, completely still.”

Little did Spitz know, a great battle of wills was occurring on a plane she could not see. Like all cats, Mittens perceives interlopers from the spectral plane as clearly as he perceives humans (which is to say, only when he decides to care).

“I saw it meld through the ceiling,” Mittens explained after the ethereal encounter. “It was quite a gnarly-looking ghost, with its skin missing and bones exposed. But it saw that I was staring back, and it changed its mind real quick about loitering in this house.”

His oblivious owner doesn’t understand what Mittens is so interested in on the ceiling, but she decided not to think too much about it.

“Cats are just crazy sometimes, you know? Like, how else do you explain them staring at something for a long time despite there not really being anything important there?” Spitz said before proceeding to spend half an hour flipping through her social media feed.

Mittens reports that after 20 minutes of the intense stare-down, the undead spirit gave up and left the house, either to haunt someone else or perhaps to finally seek peace in the afterlife.

“Either way,” Mittens says, “I know he ain’t coming this way again. Not while a cat sits here to protect the joint.”