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"What's going on in here?" That’s the question that was on my lips late one evening as I opened the door and entered my oldest son’s bedroom. There was no answer, because he was lying under his covers sound asleep. Let me back up a little and tell you what happened.
The house in which we live now was the first place Cris and I lived after we were married. For a time, she and her family lived here when she was a little girl. This place was actually two separate houses at one time, but the other house, in which my wife’s grandmother lived until she passed away a few years ago, had been moved and joined to this one to form one house. The house originally belonged to her great-uncle, and it's very old judging from the timbers – and some of the electrical wiring.
We moved out of the house for several years after I went into the United Methodist ministry. After several years enduring the strain of trying to balance full-time graduate school, a growing family, and parishioners who felt that all my time should be spent focusing on them – plus ongoing pain and recuperation (including neck surgery) from an automobile accident – I left the ministry, broken and exhausted, and we returned to this house. There was a lot of stuff already in the house, so we had to make do, stashing stuff here and there for a while.
We had to place two dressers in a corner on adjoining walls in my oldest son’s room in such a way that the front corners almost met. This left an unused square space that I decided to utilize. I had several boxes of books and magazines that would fit perfectly, but the only way I could get them in the corner was to hold them above it and drop them in. I stacked boxes to the tops of the dressers and a couple beyond. The boxes were heavy, and I realized the only way to get them out would be to move one of the dressers, but I didn’t anticipate needing any of these books before making more convenient space somewhere else.
Late one evening I was sitting doing a little reading and writing in the former dining room that we had converted into my study. One wall of this room adjoined my son’s room. All of a sudden there came a sound of banging and crashing from his room. It sounded like somebody was tearing the room apart, so I quickly went to his door and pushed it open. I was shocked to see every one of those boxes of books scattered across the floor, with some having burst open scattering their contents. I said, “What's going on in here? How in the world did this happen?” But I realized my son, lying in bed under his covers, was sound asleep.
I picked up some of the strewn books and placed them back into boxes and shifted the boxes out of the way as best I could. The next day I asked my son what was going on in his room and why were my boxes of books scattered. He was obviously as perplexed as I was, and when I asked him about it recently, he shook his head and assured me he had no idea what happened that night.
Looking back, there were several other events that happened here through the years that were creepy and generally unexplainable. When my oldest son was a toddler, he came out of our room where he’d been playing screaming. We held him and tried to get him to show us what was wrong, and we examined him to make sure he wasn’t hurt. He couldn’t tell us what had happened, and we examined the room and found nothing. He wouldn’t go back in the room without us for some time.
After we moved back into the house, because of limited room, we originally set up the youngest two boys’ bunk beds against a wall in our room. One night Gabriel went in the room and came out screaming a couple of minutes later. He was terrified and told us his dinosaur (a stuffed Toy Story character we’d gotten at Burger King), had moved across his bed and flew off. Sure enough, when I went in the dinosaur was lying on the floor, and earlier it had been on his bed propped against his pillow.
Another evening Gabriel woke us up screaming. I jumped up and ran to him and held him. He told me he had seen two dark figures with red glowing eyes standing between his bed and ours. He said the figures were watching him. I tried to convince him he was probably dreaming. Gabriel still insists emphatically that he was wide awake and that he did see the shadow figures. It sounds like a phenomenon I believe parapsychologists call “shadow men”.
The boys have complained many times about hearing doors opening and footsteps. I shrugged it off reminding them that you hear noises in old houses. Then one day I was sitting at the computer typing when I heard the back door of the other part of the house open and footsteps sounded through the house, into the kitchen to the hallway and through the living room. Then I heard the front screen door. I jumped up and ran to see who had walked through the house, and – you guessed it – there wasn’t a soul there…at least not a living soul.
Neither of the youngest boys will go into the other side of the house (the part that used to be Granny’s house) alone, because they insist it’s haunted. Gabriel claims one of his sisters dolls eyes opened and the doll looked at him. I’ve always written it off to an overactive imagination, until the other afternoon my niece, who comes down to play sometimes, found out I was writing about the weird things in the house. She told me that one evening one of the dolls was looking at her. I have to admit, when I go over there at night, the porcelain dolls give me the creeps. Another afternoon, she and the boys had gone into the other side of the house when, according to the three of them, the temperature all of a sudden dropped, and one of my wife’s music boxes (that hadn’t been wound in years) began to play.
The house in which we live now was the first place Cris and I lived after we were married. For a time, she and her family lived here when she was a little girl. This place was actually two separate houses at one time, but the other house, in which my wife’s grandmother lived until she passed away a few years ago, had been moved and joined to this one to form one house. The house originally belonged to her great-uncle, and it's very old judging from the timbers – and some of the electrical wiring.
We moved out of the house for several years after I went into the United Methodist ministry. After several years enduring the strain of trying to balance full-time graduate school, a growing family, and parishioners who felt that all my time should be spent focusing on them – plus ongoing pain and recuperation (including neck surgery) from an automobile accident – I left the ministry, broken and exhausted, and we returned to this house. There was a lot of stuff already in the house, so we had to make do, stashing stuff here and there for a while.
We had to place two dressers in a corner on adjoining walls in my oldest son’s room in such a way that the front corners almost met. This left an unused square space that I decided to utilize. I had several boxes of books and magazines that would fit perfectly, but the only way I could get them in the corner was to hold them above it and drop them in. I stacked boxes to the tops of the dressers and a couple beyond. The boxes were heavy, and I realized the only way to get them out would be to move one of the dressers, but I didn’t anticipate needing any of these books before making more convenient space somewhere else.
Late one evening I was sitting doing a little reading and writing in the former dining room that we had converted into my study. One wall of this room adjoined my son’s room. All of a sudden there came a sound of banging and crashing from his room. It sounded like somebody was tearing the room apart, so I quickly went to his door and pushed it open. I was shocked to see every one of those boxes of books scattered across the floor, with some having burst open scattering their contents. I said, “What's going on in here? How in the world did this happen?” But I realized my son, lying in bed under his covers, was sound asleep.
I picked up some of the strewn books and placed them back into boxes and shifted the boxes out of the way as best I could. The next day I asked my son what was going on in his room and why were my boxes of books scattered. He was obviously as perplexed as I was, and when I asked him about it recently, he shook his head and assured me he had no idea what happened that night.
Looking back, there were several other events that happened here through the years that were creepy and generally unexplainable. When my oldest son was a toddler, he came out of our room where he’d been playing screaming. We held him and tried to get him to show us what was wrong, and we examined him to make sure he wasn’t hurt. He couldn’t tell us what had happened, and we examined the room and found nothing. He wouldn’t go back in the room without us for some time.
After we moved back into the house, because of limited room, we originally set up the youngest two boys’ bunk beds against a wall in our room. One night Gabriel went in the room and came out screaming a couple of minutes later. He was terrified and told us his dinosaur (a stuffed Toy Story character we’d gotten at Burger King), had moved across his bed and flew off. Sure enough, when I went in the dinosaur was lying on the floor, and earlier it had been on his bed propped against his pillow.
Another evening Gabriel woke us up screaming. I jumped up and ran to him and held him. He told me he had seen two dark figures with red glowing eyes standing between his bed and ours. He said the figures were watching him. I tried to convince him he was probably dreaming. Gabriel still insists emphatically that he was wide awake and that he did see the shadow figures. It sounds like a phenomenon I believe parapsychologists call “shadow men”.
The boys have complained many times about hearing doors opening and footsteps. I shrugged it off reminding them that you hear noises in old houses. Then one day I was sitting at the computer typing when I heard the back door of the other part of the house open and footsteps sounded through the house, into the kitchen to the hallway and through the living room. Then I heard the front screen door. I jumped up and ran to see who had walked through the house, and – you guessed it – there wasn’t a soul there…at least not a living soul.
Neither of the youngest boys will go into the other side of the house (the part that used to be Granny’s house) alone, because they insist it’s haunted. Gabriel claims one of his sisters dolls eyes opened and the doll looked at him. I’ve always written it off to an overactive imagination, until the other afternoon my niece, who comes down to play sometimes, found out I was writing about the weird things in the house. She told me that one evening one of the dolls was looking at her. I have to admit, when I go over there at night, the porcelain dolls give me the creeps. Another afternoon, she and the boys had gone into the other side of the house when, according to the three of them, the temperature all of a sudden dropped, and one of my wife’s music boxes (that hadn’t been wound in years) began to play.
Here lately there have been several times when I’ve seen someone out the corner of my eye, or so it seemed, but when I look, no one is there. Our cats have exhibited bizarre behavior on several occasions recently (bizarre even for cats). For instance, one of our black cats started staring at one of my bookcases in my study, then he bowed up and his hair stood on end. A few days later another one of our black cats reacted the same way and then started trying to get behind the book case. Of course, I suppose that could be explained. A mouse, perhaps? Do mice make the hair stand up on a cat’s back? Do mice make a cat bow its back? We carefully searched behind and around the book cases, but we found nothing strange.
The room on the other side of the wall from my study (the same room that was my oldest son’s when the boxes were strewn) now belongs to my next to youngest son, Gabriel, and he says he frequently hears my chair sliding and the keys of my computer being typed upon when I’m in bed. Patrick, my youngest, says he’s heard it too, and one evening he heard the familiar sound and thought I was in here and came in to ask me something – but I wasn’t here. Who knows – maybe my ghost has followed me here, and maybe it has something to say. If my ghost happens to start a blog, I'm very interested in reading it.
1 comment:
Thank you for your wonderful and encouraging comment. I am glad that someone from the outside looking in can see what is going on. Thank you, thank you.
About this particular blog of yours: I can relate. I used to see people walking around my house, a man who used to sit on a couch caddy corner from my room. Other odd things out in the world, swearing I saw people who nobody else could see. It's happened less and less as I brushed it off, but still creepy.
My thought is that you can accept it and possibly be in danger or attempt to cleanse your home. Both are tricky. You could also set up cameras to catch things. Let me know what you do!
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