Nothing Else Makes Sense

I have a ghost that eats lug nuts

Well, for it to eat lug nuts, it would have to have corporeal form, so it couldn't, by definition, be a ghost.  More of a zombie, or vampire, or some other form of undead.  

Uhmmm...yeah.  So, "ghost" is easier to type, so we're going with that.  

I have a ghost that eats lug nuts.   

So, not long ago, I got new tires for my car.  They're awesome...you know...as tires go.  Strictly speaking, they're round, they have tread, and they fit my car...which is about as much as I really need.  When I was at the place which, for strictly Blag purposes, we'll call "Flamerock" getting them installed, the manager came to inform me that I was missing two lug nuts on my right front wheel.  This is strange.  A mere three weeks earlier, I had swapped out my snow tires for the regular ones, a process which involves removing and replacing all of the lug nuts on every wheel, so I was 100% certain that there were none missing at the time.  Three weeks later, and two of them are gone...from the same wheel.  Strange, but whatever.  I paid "Flamerock" an inordinate amount of money for two new lug nuts and went on my way.  

Now, I told you that story so that I can tell you this story.  

Last summer, the brakes on my car started making awful-sounding noises.  Since the brakes are one of the systems on my car that I really need to not fail while driving, I took the car into the garage to have these noises looked into.  An inordinate amount of money later, I drive away with lots of new brake components, freshly machined front rotors, an oxford comma, and blissful braking silence.  Fast forward to last week.  

Last week, the brakes on my car started making awful-sounding noises.  Since the brakes are still a system on my car that I really need to not fail while driving, and a system that I had invested an inordinate amount of money in less than 9 months prior, I took the car right back to the same garage.  I was all set to have an angry showdown over shoddy workmanship, poor decision making, or substandard components.  The noises, at least, were centered entirely on a single wheel, so that would at least narrow down the search for any issues.  The manager told me that they would look into it, and sent me on my way. 

Later in the day, I get a call from the manager, telling me that they had traced the problem down to two missing lug nuts from the right front wheel.  They replaced the lug nuts for an inordinate fee and the car rode in blissful braking silence once again.  They also charged me an inordinate fee for brake diagnostics, since they did have to do a road test and examine the entire system...can't really argue over that.  

So, in the span of a month and a half, I have lost four count-em four lug nuts from the right front wheel of my car.  This doesn't happen.  Lug nuts don't just fall off of a wheel for no good reason.  Either the wheel stud is faulty (It's not...the garage inspected those as well) causing the lug nuts to slip off, somebody is stealing them for all the reasons you steal two lug nuts off of somebody's car for, or the most logical explanation, I have a ghost.  Since my car spends over 90% of its lifetime in the parking lot at work or locked up in my garage, I can only conclude that it's the ghost.