(Please see Part 1 and Part 2 if you haven't already)
So here we were living in a house with an extra cold room, objects disappearing and reappearing, toys going off in the middle of the night, and a frightful imaginary friend named Ooky Spooky. My husband and I joked about all the incidents and had rational explanations for everything. Even the figure I had been seeing pregnant was blamed on hormones. I didn’t want to believe any of it was true. I didn’t believe in ghosts. My husbands and I remained skeptics. However, two events changed my mind.
The first event happened after Ooky Spooky had quieted down. It happened to be a night when my parents were over visiting. They were asleep in our extra bedroom. My children shared the cold room (because it was bigger). My daughter woke up hungry and I went in, as usual, to feed her.
I always nursed my daughter while sitting on my son’s bed. There was a nightlight in the hallway that cast some light into the kid’s room. It was just enough for me to see. But this night when I sat down on my son’s bed I looked up and there was a shadow I had never seen before. It was the perfect outline of a person standing. A scream froze in my throat. I knew if I screamed everyone would come running, but the sane part of my mine wouldn’t allow that. I stared that shadow down daring it to move. I tried to rationalize the shadow and determine what was creating it.
Without blinking or moving my eyes from the shadow I lay my daughter back down and made my way to the light switch. With the light on I investigated every possible source. When I turned the light back off, the shadow was gone.
The second event that opened my mind to the possibility of ghosts happened on my last day in the house. A few months after the shadow figure my husband’s company asked us to move and we knew it was the right thing to do for our family. Our house sold after two days on the market and we were moving.
The day the movers came was our last day in the house. My children spent that day with my in-laws as I cleaned the house. As each room was emptied I was there to dust and vacuum. The movers left and I remained behind alone to finish cleaning. Only my cats were with me, shut up in the back bathroom.
I finished mopping the last bedroom. My heart lay a little heavy at the thought of leaving the home. Remember, even though we joked about the ghost, I never felt threatened by it. It was unnerving but docile. We had done some remodeling on the house which turned out wonderful. Most of all I loved that creek and the entertaining ducks. It was our home.
So, I had finished cleaning. All I needed to do was grab the cat carriers from outside and put the cats in them and then clean the bathroom. I grabbed my mop and bucket and headed out the front door. No sooner had I stepped outside when the front door SLAMMED closed behind me. I jumped with my heart pounding. A strong thought entered my mind, “Good Riddance”. But it wasn’t my thought.
When I retrieved the cats from the bathroom, the word “Scrambled” would describe my actions. I literally ran into the house with the cat carriers, stuffed my cats into them, and was back outside in less than a minute. On my way out the door I figured the bathroom wasn’t really that dirty. As I drove down the driveway and out to the street I remember thinking I was relieved to be leaving. The chills running down my back took a while to go away.
And just so you know – as soon as we moved into our new home (where we live now) all things STOPPED. The toys don’t turn on in the middle of the night. The cats don’t spook. Dogs only bark when the doorbell rings. I don’t wake up to seeing figures by the bed. All is quiet. I like quiet.
Last year we had some friends, Cyril and Mary, visit. My husband and I had never told anyone except family about the resident ghost. We didn’t want anyone to think we’d gone crazy. However, we went ahead and told them the tale and as we did my husband and I laughed and joked about it. After we were done our friends remained serious. They didn’t laugh.
“You know, “Mary said, “I didn’t tell you at the time but I didn’t like that house. It always seemed very cold and impersonal to me. This new house doesn’t have that feeling at all.”
Cyril agreed and added, “Your old house was very unfriendly.”
Even now looking back at our time living there, it’s not the house I miss but the 1.3 acres. I miss the creek and the ducks that lived there. The house, cold room, and Ooky Spooky are happily now just a memory.
And that is my ghost story – Happy Halloween.