Haunted

 I work odd hours, sometimes getting me home late at night when everyone else is sound asleep. 

One such evening, as I was getting cleaned up before bed, I heard someone in the kitchen. Drawers opening and closing, cutlery shuffling. 

I thought for a minute that Rob was up making a late night snack, even though he was SOUND asleep when I got home. I was tempted to tiptoe down the hall and peek in through the pass through window from hall to kitchen and say ‘hey!’. 

But something kept me from doing so. 

A slight crawling sensation at the back of my neck. 

Instead, I finished up in the bathroom, scurried to bed and crawled in next to my SOUNDLY sleeping husband. 

The next morning there was no evidence of a late night snack attack. I asked Rob about the sounds, and while he had slept through that visit, he did report that when coming back in the house after doing yard work, he felt as though someone was in the house. TWICE. And such a real feeling that he actually searched the premises! 

Welcome to our haunted house.

A haunted house…

A haunting image…

Haunted by the memory…

Phrases that evoke romantic, suspenseful,  mysterious feelings..

A phrase which evokes looks of concern over one's mental stability…

You get used to it.

I have lived in this haunted house for 37 years. We began to suspect its extracorporeal resident shortly after moving in when, one night,I smelled the distinct scent of cigar smoke and heard the pages of a book turning. It was around midnight. My husband was at work and I was alone with the cat. 

I cleared the house in my best FBI manner- flipping every light on and shouting ‘we’re coming in!’ 

(We, being me and the cat.)

I covered every inch, following the sound to the basement where the noise and smell were strongest until I flipped the light in the back room when it all stopped.

I moved back through the house, shaking my head and wondering about my state of mind, turning lights off as I passed, the cat trotting along at my feet, silently judging my ridiculousness.

Until we passed the dark powder room. This is when my normally mild mannered feline hunched her back and hissed in a manner I had never heard. 

I don’t remember how I got back to my bedroom. I do remember the slamming door as I buried myself deep under the country blue comforter. 

Rob looked at me with concern when I told him this tale the next morning. His skepticism and background in psychiatric care kept me mute to the shadows I would see move in the hallway through the pass through in the kitchen. Or the footsteps I would hear from time to time. 

It was several months later that we learned, from the overly informative neighbor, that Mrs. D. had died in the kitchen. 

‘Dead before she hit the floor’ in Virginia’s bluntly comforting words.

Things became clearer after that.

Taking this knowledge and sculpting it with my extensive research of scary movies and Stephen King books, I decided that Mrs. D. was clearly displeased with our multitude of changes to HER house.

I took to informing her that while I LOVED roses, I thought they would be better suited in the side yard rather than on the patio where our eventual toddler could fall into the thorns.

That bird mural on the hall was LOVELY! But as it was fading and I could never do it justice, it was getting painted over. Oh, and the ADORABLE pink shutters used to frame it were gone as well…

Mrs. D. did more than visit. She seems to have taken on the job of afterlife hostess, ushering in ‘the see-through man’ who would watch the kids as they played in the living room, the gentle reassuring guest whose warm palm touched my cheek one sleepless night, the annoyed visitor who exploded a glass on the kitchen counter and kept knocking a shoe off of a baby doll. She has even allowed visits from both of our cats, now gone to their better place. 

Years have passed and Mrs. D. has made her presence known here and there. So much so that we decided to do some research. Turns out she was a graphic artist. 

The powder room was supposed to be part of a master bedroom suite, but plans changed.

The garage door-painted like brick to match the house-was a dare. And so much fun to raise to the shocked expressions of bystanders.

I learned a few things from her son, whom I worked with briefly, although not closely enough to tell him his mother was still hanging around.

Some I learned from our friend google and some concrete facts were discovered by a good friend and her ancestry account. 

Thankfully, as time has passed, Rob has admitted to hearing footsteps and noting the undeniable presence of our first cat walking along the back of the couch while our present cat slept in plain view. 

Such a fun sharing moment. 

Overnight guests have also noticed things-a lamp turning itself on, a toy unwinding and of course, those footsteps. 

Some folks find it creepy that I am so nonchalant with these strange happenings.

Honestly, I sort of like the idea that maybe we get to visit from time to time. 

I have read that ‘hauntings’ can be reasoned away as excess energy, left from previous occupants who experienced extreme emotion in the haunted space.

If Einstein is to be believed, “Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.”

I hope Mrs. D. is happy energy.

I think she is.

And to that end, we threw her a birthday party this year. It was her 102 birthday. (I only recently found the date or we would have had a blowout 100th!)

And I’ll hold a memorial on the day of her passing. In the kitchen. Right on the floor.

Fondue! It's what you do for your circa 1970's house ghost's birthday!

Haunting

The house was quiet, save for the muffled thud of clothes in the dryer. Outside autumn blustered its way in with gusting breezes which sent falling leaves into a frenzied swirl. The kitchen was warm and smelled slightly of pumpkin as soup simmered on the stove.

All in all a pleasant morning.

But the woman was restless. She drank her coffee and glanced cautiously at the phone. It lay on the table in a mocking silence. The minutes passed. The phone remained still. The woman grew nervous, afraid to consider the consequences.

Still the phone refused to ring....

Welcome to my morning.

I am off but on-call.

Every hospital workers' nightmare.

On-call is a mixed bag.

Get called in – it's time and a half. And sometimes a bonus on top.

But

Get called in – and it's no longer a day off.

Do you know how many things I can think to do on my on-call day?

Five. Just off the top of my head.

Get called in and you know how many things get done?

ZERO.

But so far, it is 1050 and that phone remains silent.

I started a load of wash.

I put a pot of soup on.

I messaged our son to stop by for dinner.

Contingent on the silence of the Phone....

Now I am flying in the face of all that is evil and work related and have started a new blog post...

It's nearly Halloween. According to every scary movie I have ever watched, no good can come of this. 

This is NOT my house. Because there is clearly a little girl ghost in that attic window...and I draw the line a little girl ghosts...

Why oh why is it so fun to be scared?

Not real life scared: Will the kids get home safe? Just what will that biopsy show? Which line will our political leaders cross today?

Oh no. I am not talking that sort of scared.

I'm talking that reading a Stephen King book right before bedtime after watching the Walking Dead sort of scared.

Scary movies are on a continuous loop around here in October if I am in charge of the remote.

My husband hates them. Too much shrieking and silliness.

Thankfully my son loves them. Together we watched that poor woman get sucked down the well in The Ring. We discovered that daylight is the best time to watch a bootleg version of Paranormal Activity. And covering your EARS is way better than covering your eyes when watching The Grudge.

(Although it is still possible to scare the beejeezus out of each other by making that ehehehehe sound as you creep down the dark hallway.)

I am fairly certain my first truly scary movie was The Legend of Hell House circa 1973. I would have been 12. I remember sitting in my Grandma's living room, mesmerized by a handsome Roddy McDowell. I have no idea why I was watching this movie in my grandparent's living room. We rarely watched TV at their house and we certainly wouldn't have been allowed to watch something with HELL in the title. I don't know where my siblings were. Or my parents. I do recall it was night time.

The movie was scary and awesome and I have been hooked ever since.

Keep in mind, I am talking scary. Not slashery.

I have no use for torture and murder.

Give me good ghost story any day.

Which makes a lot of sense.

St. Louis has a rich history of hauntings: The Lemp Mansion, The Bissel Mansion, the library at UMSL, Alexian Brothers Hospital... This is just the beginning.

I have had dinner at the Lemp Mansion – the former home of the Lemp family of brewers in the 1800s. Several family members killed themselves in the house, it was rumored that a 'monkey boy' was housed in the attic, a sister was certified insane and there may have been a murder...

The place was creepy from the start. Lights flickered and the hair literally stood up on the back of my neck when I walked into the ladies room. You can stay at the Lemp, IF YOU ARE INSANE!

I worked at Alexian Brothers Hospital for nearly 15 years. The current building sits on the grounds where the original hospital was built and where part of the exorcism in the movie The Exorcist occurred. Several of the brothers who were involved in that event still lived and worked on the grounds. We were told in orientation to NEVER ask about the exorcism. So I didn't. But I can tell you that many evenings, while working in the OR suites with one other nurse, there were mysterious doors slamming and footsteps where there were no people.

We live in a haunted house. Mrs. Durbin passed in our kitchen and she stops by every now and then to open a cupboard door or have a smoke in the basement. No one would support my opinion on this guest until the evening my husband and I both felt the cat walk across the back of the sofa. The cat who was asleep in his box on the opposite side of the room....

This was in the rafters of our basement. Wisely, Rob made it into a tray, coated it with many layers of mod-podge to seal in the evil and then we gave it to our daughter's boyfriend's parents. I think that makes us ecto-plamically related now...

But its okay.

Maybe it's because I have spent most of my life in hospitals where the line between life and death is all to clear.

I have heard that these 'hauntings' are just the energy left over from previous lives. In a weird way I find this comforting. I like the idea that some energy is strong enough to remain behind and touch the future.

Some would argue that not all that strong energy is 'good'. True, there is a lot of bad energy in the world. I want to believe that bad energy burns itself out over time, provided it is not allowed to gain momentum.

Which is all the more reason to put only GOOD energy out there. Embrace that energy from previous lives and roll it into one big monumentous wave.

And think how wonderful it would be to be described as haunting...

For Pete's Sake! Close the Door!

There is something watching me as I sit here in the kitchen writing. It is quiet now but there have been footsteps, open cupboard doors, shadows where there is no light...

It may be her story...

But this is my story too.

We were in the house about four months. Nothing special, except to us. Oh, the previous owner had passed away; 'dead before she hit the floor' according to our neighbor. Which was no surprise given the amount of nicotine on the kitchen tiles and living room curtains. At least she liked to read. Along with all the nicotine stains the previous owner left a makeshift library in the basement.

We replaced the curtains, chipped away the tiles and added a faux brick wall. The books were donated to Goodwill, except for a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover and a vintage Escapade magazine featuring some B-List actor's wife as the centerfold. The previous owners not only had a penchant for smoking. Apparently they also enjoyed light pornography.

But it was our house now.

Nothing special.

Until....

My husband was at work, night shift. I was alone. Well, not exactly. Baraboo, our cat was there. Not exactly with me. She was never that sort of cat. But she was in the house. I went to bed with the plan of a good night's sleep before a big day of gardening.

I woke to the smell of smoke. Not the smell of a fire. Just the smell of smoke. Sitting up in bed, I took a deeper breath and the smell was gone. But as I lay back down, it drifted back into my nostrils, wrapping its tendrils around my head and seeping deep into my brain.

I sat up again. The smell was faint. But there was something else. A sound. Soft and fluttery, like the sound a page makes when it is turned slowly in a movie. My initial thought was how ridiculous it was. I had spent the past twelve weeks removing the previous owners remnants.

And then I heard the book hit the floor.

I quietly got out of bed and slowly walked to the doorway. I flipped the light switch and illuminated a nearly empty hallway. Baraboo sat at the far end, staring down the steps to the basement. She turned her head, the way a cat does, her expression a 'well, let's get this over with'.

Okay.

I walked to her side and flipped the stairwell light. The house was a split level. Four steps down to the landing and then another switch to flip.

Pause.

An invisible smoke curl and pages turning.

Four steps to the basement.

Flip a switch.

We were using the basement as a catch-all of items waiting for permanent spots once this level was finished. An old couch looked toward an as yet uninstalled wood burning stove. Several boxes towered in one corner. The leather front bar, a 'bonus' piece with our new upstairs furniture waited to be stocked, the bar stools sitting empty.

No smoke in sight.

No book open to a telling passage.

One last switch and the back of the basement lit up. Empty metal shelves lined one wall. All empty. Not a sound.

Not a smell.

I shook my head and looked down at the cat who gave me a look which said, "what is wrong with you. There's nothing here."

"Come on Boo. You're right." Together we turned and reversed our course. Lights flipping off. Rooms bathed in darkness as we made our way up the stairs. At the mouth of the hallway, the cat took the lead. Walking gracefully down the middle of the carpet, stopping before each open door, surveying the shadows cast by the hall light, then moving on. I followed along. One eye on the cat, the other on my bedroom at the end of the hall. Four doorways in between.

Bedroom on the left. Clear.

Bathroom on the right. Clear.

A second bedroom. Clear.

At the powder room door Baraboo stopped, I did the same. But rather than calmly sniffing the air and moving on she took a step forward. And with a low growl, she hunched her back, hair bristling from neck to the end of her tail which now stood at attention. Her tiny paws lifted her off the floor in a sideways dance as her growl became more intense.

My circulation stopped. Cold grabbed hold as every nerve in my body began to quake. Grabbing the cat I bolted for my bedroom, slamming the door and diving under the covers in less than three steps.

I never did look into that bathroom.

In my mind I heard our neighbor....'dead before she hit the floor'...

Only I would have a ghost who makes it's first appearance smoking and reading while on the toilet.

 

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Hope you have enjoyed this month of scary. If you have stumbled over here to the Coast then check out these links on the right.

And come back next week when the Coast of Illinois returns to it's 'normal' ridiculous self. Scary, but only because these ridiculous things really do happen to me.

Daily.