I love the month of October and I love Halloween. I like that the leaves are beginning to turn and the air is beginning to cool. It is time for jack o'lanterns, chili, and spooky stories!!!
My Halloween story begins with stating this; I sometimes wonder if a place is haunted, or just the person. In other words, are ghosts attracted to certain places, or certain people?
Not long after my first husband and I were married, we purchased a used, single-wide, mobile home. We didn't know much about it's origins or history, except that it came from North Carolina. After we moved in, we determined by marks left on the ceiling and floor, that our two bedroom home was formerly a three bedroom. A third bedroom had occupied what was now our kitchen area. By tracing the faint marks left on the ceiling and floor we could tell that the room was tiny, not much bigger than a closet. I was glad the former owners had remodeled, as the kitchen/dining area was now larger and I couldn't imagine it being half the size it now was.
Our marriage only lasted three years, and soon I found myself living in the mobile home alone with my less than one year old baby. We lived there for a total of seven years, just she and I. But I wasn't always sure we were alone. On several occasions, the lamps would turn on by themselves. My ex-father-in-law explained this away with 'bad wiring'. Other than that, the only other thing was that I just sometimes felt like maybe there was a child's spirit in the house. I don't really know why. Maybe because some of the stuff left behind from the former owners included some cartoon stickers on the mirror and a nautical themed twin bed frame.
One night I returned home from either work or some outing, and a young man who lived next door was waiting outside my house with a rife in his arms! He was all worked up, saying someone was in my house. He said the lights came on, then went off. I told him no, that the lights did that sometimes. He insisted he saw someone walk across the windows while the lights were on. At this point, he has me really spooked and I am afraid to go inside! He volunteered to go inside and check my closets and under the beds. He came back outside after a short while and said he found nobody and nothing suspicious. With the hair on the back of my neck standing up, I went inside and locked up.
Several years after that incident, I met my current husband. We lived in the mobile home for several months before moving to the house he already owned about twenty miles away. Me and Arthur both were terribly excited about moving to his house. It was much larger than our place, and the bedrooms were upstairs. It was a simple house, a kitchen, dining room, living room and half bath on the ground floor, and three bedrooms and two full baths on the second floor. The house was part of a small subdivision, but we didn't really feel like part of it as our house was located at the entrance, one house away from from the corner lot going into the development. We had a house on one side of us, a big expanse of trees behind us (we couldn't even see the next house in the subdivision), a field on one side, and an empty lot across the road from us. It was evident our house was once part of a farm or something, there were fruit trees and remnants of old fencing here and there. The apple, pear and plum trees seemed old and gnarled, but still bore fruit that we enjoyed picking and eating.
Not long after we moved in, things begin to happen. Nothing major. Sometimes I thought I heard someone call my name. I felt like a cat brushed up against my legs. (We didn't have a cat at that time). Things were moved.
After Courage was born, the happenings increased. Again, I thought someone called my name. I opened a window to answer what I thought was my husband - perhaps he'd locked himself out of the house, but no one was outside! The vase given to me by my OB-GYN group was moved and finally I found it broken on the floor one day. (Even thought it lay on a carpeted floor). One morning while I was in the shower, cowboys and Indians were hooting, hollering and shooting up Dodge. The whole time I thought Arthur had turned on my t.v., sound full blast, and was thinking oh, if she wakes up the baby before I can get ready for work, she is going to get it! But when I turned off the shower, the house was quite. Still dripping wet, I tiptoed around the house in a towel, checking my t.v. for the tale-tell dot of light in the center of the screen (when our old t.v. was turned off there was a dot of light in the center of the screen that faded gradually, over several minutes, as the t.v. cooled off), feeling the back of the t.v. for heat, but not feeling any, and then standing over Arthur in her bed, watching for signs that she was faking sleep. Nothing. And luckily, the baby was sound asleep also.
Eventually, I learned that when some of these things happened, it was preceded by the smell of burned fruit, peaches to be exact. I begin to pick up on an impeding 'happening' when I smelled the peculiar odor.
One day, while home alone with Courage, who was nearing three years old, the door bell rang. I was upstairs folding clothes and I lay down what was in my hand and went to check the door. But no one was there. I went back upstairs, checking on Courage who lay napping in her crib as I passed her bedroom door. I had no sooner got back upstairs, then the door bell rang again. Aggravated, I went back to the door, peeked out, saw nothing. I turned to go back up the stairs, and before getting up more than a stair or two, the door bell rang again. I unlocked the front door and jerked it open. No one. I looked up the street on both sides. I begin thinking maybe a little girl who lived up the street was playing jokes, as I had told Arthur earlier that week she was not allowed to play with this child because she had gotten her into trouble on the school bus. I closed the door once more and went back upstairs to finish folding the pile of clothes. After a minute or so, the door bell rang. I stomped downstairs, looked out, saw nothing, opened the door and ran all the way around our house, thinking if it was the mischievous child from down the street, I would catch her as there was nothing to hide behind. When once again, I saw no one, I began to get spooked. I went inside, locked up and went upstairs.
Once upstairs, I began to smell the burnt peach smell. And then the doorbell began chiming in earnest. It was as if someone had their finger on the doorbell and was just holding it down. The doorbell chimed and chimed until it started making a weird sound like it was getting tired and losing its voice. That did it.
I called my husband, the great skeptic and master of giving everything a scientific explanation, that it was me or the house. I told him I was leaving. He could either go with me, or stay. That was his choice. I told him about the doorbell and no one visible to ring it. He of course had an answer. The doorbell wiring had a short in it, therefore it was stuck in the 'ring' position. Whatever. We began house hunting that weekend.
About a week after the doorbell incident, I saw the older man who came to cut the hay in the field on one side of our house. I put on my shoes and went and stood at the fence that separated our yard from his field. I waited till he could see me and began to wave. He drove his tractor near the fence and got off and came over to where I stood. I introduced myself and he said his name was Paul. I guessed he was in his eighties. I asked him if he knew much about the land where my house was, before my house was built. And he did.
Paul stated that he had owned the land where my house and the rest of the small subdivision now existed. He said that his parents owned it before him. I asked him what was here before. He replied a small family home and farm. He grew up there. They had the usual...farm animals, a garden, and fruit trees. I asked him where was the house located? He said oh, about the same place my house sat, but maybe a little closer to the road.
The hairs on my neck begin to rise. All I could think of was how I'd learned that back in the 'old days', families often buried their dead on their property. Often to the rear of the property. If Paul's family home sat a bit closer to the road, then the family burial plot could possibly have been about where my house now sat. Now I asked him, if there was a family plot and he said yes. I didn't ask him where it was located. I didn't want to hear it. He did state that the plot had been relocated, from the family home place to a new plot off Hwy 20, near his new home. With that said, he stuck an arm in the air, with his hand crooked to wave goodbye and headed back to his tractor. I went back inside my house.
Not long after, we struck a deal with a home builder who took trade-ins, a big help when you don't have cash stored away for a down payment on a new home. I left that house without looking back. I am happy to say that other than a couple of 'auditory' happenings, the new house has been spook free!
Now that the story has been told, I would like to reflect on the different types of 'happenings', as I like to call them. Me myself, I tend to have more 'auditory' happenings; I hear things. Other people are more 'visual', they see things. Others feel things, have a 'sixth sense' about things, etc. I have felt things (cats rubbing against my legs, a hand on my shoulder), but thank our Good Lord that I don't see things. At the old house, I would smell the burnt fruit, but haven't experienced that since leaving that house. I have a chiffarobe that is over 50 years old, that has a tendency to open itself (the door), but it once belonged to my Grandmother (daddy's mama, whom died before I was born), and then it belonged to my other Grandmother (momma's mama), who died just a few years ago, therefore I am not afraid of the door opening. I feel like it is one of, or both of, the grandmothers saying 'hi', don't forget me. Of course I won't. But, I prefer not to see their ghost. They can just open the chiffarobe door!
