I still remember the uneasy, almost sinister feeling I sensed, when moving into my house 16 years ago this month, on Halloween weekend. I sensed it as soon as I was in the driveway and really felt it when on the front porch. I could smell the fear, but I have to admit, most of it was attributed to the 17 potpourri air fresheners scattered all about the house that I found and threw away. My husband had already found and disposed of a dozen himself. They were everywhere! I’m not kidding. The smell hit me like a wall before entering the house. Apparently the people who owned the house before us, were the owners of five dogs, and instead of cleaning up after them, or shampooing the carpets occasionally, they just stuck another air freshener on the wall, ceiling, closet door, etc. Anyway, this isn’t a story about stinky dogs and obsessive uses of potpourri. It’s about ghosts!
Once I was settled in the house, the creepy feelings disappeared. It wasn’t until several years later, when I slept in my newborn son’s bedroom, that I began to have strange experiences. There were a couple times I awoke to see a black hand come down towards my face. Other times I saw strange colored lights suspended about six feet above the floor, next to the bed, morphing into different shapes and colors. Needless to say, the black hand freaked me out the most. I’d jump up and sleep on the couch. I attributed the experiences to sleep deprivation and I never thought much about it once I no longer stayed in the room… till my son, who doesn’t make up stories, told me he was having the same experiences! That unnerved me a little because I never told him nor anyone else about what I had seen.
All before this happened my daughter had seen a strange shadowy “thing” walk out of the same room and slink creepily across the hallway years before her little brother was born. I remember we had come home after visiting my parents, and she began freaking out as we were still taking our coats off at the front door. She told me she saw some black hunched over creature exit the bedroom and go across the hallway. I had a hard time calming her down. A few months ago, she came to my room, looking like, well, she had just seen a ghost. She had seen a shadow walk across the same hallway and then through the bathroom door. This is when I told her about mine and her brother’s experiences.
This Summer we remodeled the house. My son’s bedroom is no longer a bedroom. It is the entrance to the new addition. It will be converted into an office and pantry soon. I wondered if all the construction would rile up our ghost and I think it did. At night, when the new addition wasn’t opened to the rest of the house yet, but closed in so nobody could have entered it from outside without a key, I’d hear boards dropping on the floor, footsteps and other bangs, while I watched tv in the old master bedroom. It even awoke my dog who began growling at the sounds. This happened several times on different nights. When I’d inspect the addition in the morning, nothing would look out of place and there hadn’t been any boards that could have just fallen over. Boards were stacked in a neat pile and unmoved from the day before.
Now I get a creeped out feeling in the new master bathroom, where the sounds came from when it was still under construction. A couple months ago, I was speaking with my daughter in the family room and heard banging sounds coming from the new bathroom. We thought it was the cat but he was with us in the same room. We joked it was our “ghost” and laughed. Right after that we both heard footsteps and the doorknob to the patio door move, as if someone was trying to open it. We stopped laughing.
Other than these experiences, the house has always seemed welcoming and cozy, so I’m not concerned. I’m not a “believer” in ghost. I could be convinced that the experiences are all the result of active imaginations but who knows?
Happy Halloween!
