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[myspookyoldhouse]

Strange Things are Happening Here (Part 3)

I can't remember the exact timeline of the things that happened. There were so many instances that they were a daily occurance and became simply a part of life.

Things like flickering lights. Clocks not staying running. The tv was constantly glitching. Doors would be open when we swore we closed them. The banging in the basement. The sound of a woman coughing from the back end of the house. The constant feeling of not being alone. Of being watched.

We had started a family. Our first daughter set up in our first completed renovation job. The nursery. It was beautiful. We were so proud of it, and it was my favourite room in the house. Once our daughter was old enough to move to her new room, I spent my nights in there, feeding her, cleaning her, changing, dressing, and singing her to sleep. Until I left. Then she would wake up, sounding on the monitor as though she had been pinched. I had always sworn I heard other noises, but brushed it off as first time mom syndrome.

I constantly felt watched throughout my day with the baby. But not by someone my height. I swore I saw a child size figure in my peripheral vision constantly. Like they were ducking my sight each time. Especially when I was in the kitchen, the stairway hidden by a wall, a game of peek-a-boo around the corner was a constant.

Then I had a heart stopping experience on those very stairs. I had slipped, bringing down laundry. I will never break my word that I felt something stop me. My clothes flew down the stairs, and I seemed to be back on my solid footing. Scared, shaking, grateful. I said "Thank-you" out loud.

Maybe that's where I went wrong, but to he honest it was bound to happen. I saw it. I walked past the stairway, seeing something in my peripheral, but this time I was ready to catch it. I backed up, and there he was. A young boy. About 8 or so. Blond hair, blue pants, white shirt, sitting on the stairs. He wasn't a person. I could see the stairs behind him. Just sitting. Staring ahead.

I quickly went back to where I was going. Blood cold. Heart beating so hard I could't hear a thing. I did not just see that. I swallowed hard. And went back. He was gone.

I sat down in the kitchen. That did not just happen. I'm going crazy. I kept it to myself. I did not need to make my husband think I was going bananas from being housebound. I was just tired.

Except I kept seeing him. Standing next to the stairs watching me in the kitchen.

Eventually during a conversation about the happenings in the house I had mentioned I was convinced Carl was gone, but that there's someone still there. I joked and said maybe it was the little boy from my dreams. My husband said "You mean the one that sits on the stairs?"

Again. It's this cold rush that hits you and washes over you like a wave. He didn't just say that. I almost yelled. "I've seen him too!! I can't believe this...you mean he's real."

He nodded. "White shirt. Looks to be blond. But he's kinda see through. Sits about the third step up. Seen him a few times. I just didn't want to freak you out." Too late. I was about as freaked out as they come. I had actually witnessed a...ghost. They were actually a thing. A figure. I had always dismissed Carl as merely an energy bouncing around like an echo. I didn't see him as a figure. I had no idea what he looked like. But I saw this boy.

As the time went on I had our second daughter. I would accidently fill a third juice cup. Get out a third snack plate. I would laugh at myself. It was just a part of life seeing him randomly around. However I did eventually ask him out loud to stop bothering my babies while they slept. I saw less of him. Maybe I hurt his feelings. I'm loosing it. I was wrong. I am nuts.

That was life for a bit. Raising babies into toddlers, toddlers into talkers. My oldest talking nice full sentences. Talking to herself constantly.

Eventually she told me about her friend.

I said "What friend?"

"George!" She smiled.

"Who's George? What does he look like?" I held my breath.

"He's blond, like me! He's older though. He has blue pants and a white shirt. And blue eyes." She widened her eyes as she said the word with emphasis.

"Is he your age?" I asked trying to keep my cool as my heart did acrobatics in my rib cage.

"No, he's bigger than me." She said pointing upward.

"Is he nice?" I asked.

"Yes. But he bugs me at night. I don't like that."

For the last 3 years, I had spent getting up at 3pm or around then, to a crying child. Every. Night.

I was furious. I was scared out of my head. I was not able to show any emotion because I didn't need to scare her. My main concern.

I told my husband that night.

He asked her about it. She was consistent.

Crap.

So life went on. She and her baby sister seemed content. I would occasionally ask about how George was doing. Hear about his Mom, and his older brother.

I would keep telling myself, she's overheard something. This is just a coincidence. Anything so I could get as much little sleep as possible.

I stopped seeing him. She didn't. She said he just wanted to play, and was not scary or mean.

She'll outgrow this.

She did. She stopped mentioning George. For a while.

She was older than 10. "Remember my imaginary friend George? "

"Yes." Not this again. I was convinced he was like Puff The Magic Dragon, and lost his playmates to video games.

"I still swear he was real"

I just stared.

"I'm sure he felt real. Our imaginations are awesome at that age." I needed to pretend I could do this. Again.

That was it until the day my youngest and I were going down the stairs. Her maybe 4 stairs below me, not fast, not carrying anything. When I watched her foot slip on the edge of the stair, she started to fall. I almost fell reaching for her, and almost like in slow motion, I watched her lift upwards and back onto the step.

It was like nothing I'd seen. We stopped. She turned to me, "Did you just grab me?"

I was still to many stairs behind her. She looked confused. There was no way I touched her.

"No, you were too far. It looked like you hopped back onto the step."

"No, I was grabbed."

We stood there for a bit. That cold wash.

Silently. Carefully. Went down the rest of the stairs.

They now no longer have the luscious indoor/outdoor carpeting that made them so nice and slippy.

They eventually outright asked. "Do we have ghosts? Was George a ghost?"

Of course we don't know. I did my best. I explained my theory on the energy echo. Maybe that's what he is, and she just picked a common name and kept them from being scared, but not keeping myself from being worried.

We tried to brush it off. It turned into a family joke. The boy one the stairs. Owning the town 'Haunted House'. Nobody else wanting it because it had ghosts, and nobody in town would tell us about it, but would give is that funny look when you told them what house we live in.

It was life. Life with spirits. Energy. Something. Someone. Some more than one.

We didn't talk about it beyond the family. People think you're crazy. But at least living as a family we have each other to understand what it's like to live with history hovering around you. History you have no clue who they are or what happened to them. Until you start to research your houses history. Who owned it. Who built on it.

We needed to do this to unlock the mysteries. Well that is just what we did. And almost wished we hadn't.

[myspookyoldhouse]

Carl and His Radio

We met Carl the very day we got the keys to our new/old home. We showed up with a truck and unloaded an old IKEA dining table and chairs my parents gave us in our nice sized eat-in kitchen, two lawn chairs, our cat Pistol his belongings and of course some beverages. The place was empty, smelled of bleach, had been scrubbed from stem to stern. The windows all still had drapes, clean, slightly tacky, but lovingly hung. We were so happy. The day flew, and folks we knew stopped by, we went for dinner and came back. We sat the two of us, in the corner of our wood paneled living room. Quietly thinking and wondering if this was the best thing ever, or a horrible mistake. Could we really make this nice, can we afford it, what if we loose our jobs? Panic. Ecstatic. Quiet. Except for one thing. A radio. At least it sounded like one, but at a distance. Like from the basement. I looked at my husband. He met my inquiring look. "Do you hear a radio?" I asked. "You hear that too?" He replied. "Did we bring a radio?" I enquired, hair raising on the back of my neck. "No." We stared at each other, he got up to check the basement. I sat, alone in the empty room. Waiting for him to turn it off. He came back. "There's no radio, and I don't hear it down there. Must be a neighbor." Yes. That had to be it. We were being silly. We got moved in the next day, friends and family gathered to help, we fed them pizza and beer for their time. Family trickled out, a few friends stayed into the evening, sitting in our living room. My close friend at the time turned to me and said "I think you've left a radio playing in your basement." I felt sick. "You hear that?" I exclaimed. her boyfriend at the time replied, "I hear it too. I can't tell what kind of music it is, it's muffled." "Right?!" We all confirmed, we were hearing it. We joked it off as too many beers, and left it at that. Where do I go next? Hmm. This story has so many turns. The stories intermingle. The histories overlap and introduced themselves at different times. If we talk only about Carl, we'll make this segment shorter, which we will, but know there were other odd things that happend, but none of them were about Carl. They are someone elses story. It turned out we had purchased the house from someone that knew my husband's family. The lady who owned it wanted to sell it, give the money to her kids, so they just took what they could get, not wanting anything to do with it. She was happy it was going to stay sort-of in the family. At a grand get together with all our family to show off our new project, my husband's sister told us about the previous owners. They owned the house for 57 years. They raised 5 kids in this there. He was a firefighter. He spent a lot of time in the basement, tinkering in his shop. The question lept from my husband, "Did he play a radio down there?" She lit up"All the time!" We were convinced. Carl was still around. His wife kept in semi-touch, one time she even phoned me from the nursing home. She asked me how the house was treating us. I told how l wonderful it was and grateful for how clean it was when we got it. I was clear we were thrilled with the house. She was lovely. I used to walk the dog we later got through the cemetery. I one day found his stone. A chill ran down my spine. Her name was next to his. An inscription about until they meet again. It was beautiful. But she was still alive in a nursing home, her numbers not filled in. His numbers etched in stone, now spending his days in our basement. We avoided the basement. We continued to hear the radio. We said nothing. I kept my own radio going, or a tv, always something on. Just so I did't have to hear it. And then it happend. We came to realize the radio had stopped. We finally got the nerve to ask each other if we had noticed the radio had stopped. It seemed neither of us heard it anymore. We asked a family member who worked at the home how his wife was doing. She had passed away a short while ago. She had thought of telling us, but wasn't sure if we wanted to know. We were both sad and happy. They are now together. Her numbers etched next to his. Neither one playing a radio in our basement.

[myspookyoldhouse]

My Dream Home (Part 1)

This story actually started when I was about 10. When my family moved to Ontario from B.C. I noticed the difference in houses. I hadn't seen a brick farm house until we drove the countryside. In particular I loved these simple 1 3/4 story houses, with this adorable peak and window (sometimes a door) on the second story, above the front door. Some had porches with balconies, some had square top windows, some arched. They were mostly yellow brick, but there would be red ones, sometimes with white painted corners, and even ones of stone. All the different variations yet the similarities caught my attention. From that age, I decided one day I would own one. I was growing up in a large Victorian house at that age, my parent's first house. I loved the old feel, and chacter, but disliked the wasted space. All those little rooms. All those doors. My ideals were simple. I wanted a large eat-in kitchen, and rooms big enough for beds. I liked the simplicity of old farm houses. This particular style would be considered Gothic. My mother had told me she had been told they were so common because when the land around here was settled the plans to this style of house were provided somehow. (She thought maybe the newspaper.) I didn't care if they were a dime a dozen, I wanted to live in one. That top window. It just called to me. Fast forward many years later. I'm with my future husband, and we take advantage of the real estate market and look at houses. We look at a few, all old, all cheap. (Nothing over $100 000. I know right?!) And then we pull up to this house. It's kind of bland, brown trim, yellow brick, nothing fancy, but it has that peak...it's got that window, and it'd different than any one I've seen. I go inside. A time warp. Not nice farmhouse, old, timeless kind, the shag carpet, wood paneling, wallpaper with baskets of fruit kind. I wasn't convinced. It was a lot of work. And it didn't quite feel empty...even though nobody was living in it. I go upstairs, and I see that window. I stand in the window. The trim around it was beautiful. The detail in the trim under the sill. It was built by someone who cared. And growing up in a house where upstairs was plain compared to the showy downstairs rooms. The realtor noticed me looking at it. "This house must have been built by someone who was cheap but paid attention to detail. Simple, but proud." That sold me. That window was my decision maker. I loved it. One offer, crazy low, accepted, holy crap, we own a house. So the days leading up to home ownership were scary and exciting. I also started having these dreams. Dreams about a little boy. A boy with blond hair, overalls, and never moved or said anything. Standing by the doorway of the basement door of our soon-to-be home. I told my husband. He shrugged it off. For a bit.