"He's baaa-aaaaack!"

"Here's Johnny!""I see dead people."Or, in this case, I see an elf person and his name is Snoopy, and I say those famous horror movie lines to myself every single day when I see his creepy little face peeking at me from yet another precarious predicament.Yes, everyone's least favorite house guest is back for the month of December: The Elf on the Shelf.It wasn't always this way. When he first showed up, I thought he was adorable, a cute little task master to help keep the kids in line through a hectic time of year.In general, the boys were pretty well-behaved toddlers.So well-behaved, that sometimes the elf didn't even need to make a return trip to the North Pole every night.Our elf had a very quiet first year or two, mainly spending his days in the living room, jumping from the mantel to the bookshelf to the top of the TV.The craziest thing he ever did was hang off the antler on one of the WH's wall mounts.Our elf must have gotten lost the first year, because he didn't show up until Santa arrived in the downtown for the annual tree lighting, which was the weekend after Thanksgiving.At first I thought Snoopy and I could be friends, because he's stuck to this schedule ever since, which means our elf experience doesn't start until a week after everyone else.This is one of about three nice things Snoopy has ever done for me.As the years went on, Snoopy started to get the hang of the job. He got a little more daring and started creating a little mischief.At first, we might find him camped out on the stove top. Oh darn. I guess that meant we had to eat out that night.He also enjoyed capitalizing on messes the kids left before going to bed. He loved to hunker himself right down in the middle of them. I think he was trying to draw attention to the mess, but instead, the kids were afraid to go anywhere near the chaos, for fear of touching him.Then, that nasty little bugger got into social media. I believe that instead of reporting back to the North Pole every night, he started spending more and more time on Facebook and Pinterest and seeing what all his other little elf friends were doing.I'm also guessing that peer pressure is rampant in the elf population. If you were to analyze elf DNA, I'm pretty sure you'd find them descended from lemmings. If one decides to trapeze swing from the dining room light, you can bet they are all going to have to try it.Paint the bathroom mirror with toothpaste? Sounds like a great idea!Eventually, it spirals out of control and one elf starts wearing clothing, and before you know it, they start acquiring pets and cars and suddenly, you've got an entire elf tableau staged in the middle of the kitchen table.In the hopes that shelf elves were like house elves in Harry Potter, I got the little guy a shirt. When house elves are given clothing, they are freed from their life of servitude. Sadly, it did not work on the shelf elf. Or maybe he's just going to show up until I get him some pants, too.During what may have been his teenage years, Snoopy started finding really obscure places to lurk. This little act of rebellion was not appreciated at all because it sometimes took the kids hours to find his lair. In fact, it seemed that the more critical it was to leave the house on time, the more Snoopy hid himself away. Snoopy and I had to have a little chat about how I appreciated his efforts, but since my kids made Scooby-Doo and Shaggy look like competent detectives, it clearly wasn't going to work out.Over the last year or two, Snoopy seems content to create one or two large messes, and one or two major acrobatic feats over the course of his visit. The rest of the time, he has found poetry. Bad poetry. "Roses are red, so is Santa's suit. Make like an owl, and give a hoot. About cleaning up your room."Sphinx-like, he shares riddles with them. The punch line of just about every one is some infraction they've committed in the last 24 hours.I don't think we realized that when we first invited the elf in, we were making a decade-plus-long commitment to our elf. I also never would have guessed that the little guy could share so much Christmas magic.My kids know that I would never willingly dump a bag of powdered sugar all over the floor, much less make snow angels in it and track it all over the kitchen. I just don't have time for that nonsense.They can also imagine what would happen to the Wonderful Husband if he tried such a stunt in my kitchen.So, if it wasn't me, and it wasn't him, it just had to be that magical little visitor from the North Pole!Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.