Living With Ghosts

“You left the light on in the bedroom,” I heard the muffled voice of a female say from somewhere in the house as I headed to exit the back door of my new house.

I had just dropped off the first dozen of many boxes to come, secured the windows, and grabbed my keys to head back to my old apartment to get ready for the big weekend move when I stopped mid-step and wondered, who said that – and did I leave the light on?

Not certain I had even heard what I thought I heard, I went upstairs to the bedroom and sure enough, I had left the lights on in both walk-in closets.

“Hmm,” I said, clicking off the lights. “Weird.”

Now, with all the lights off and the windows all shut and locked, I again dashed toward the back door to leave and was stopped by another voice calling from upstairs, “Mommy!”

Huh? I rushed to the front door and looked out to see if my son was still in the car waiting for me. He was. With his seatbelt buckled. And the windows rolled up.

I felt my brow furrow and a sensation of discomfort began to rise in my solar plexus as my face turned toward the hallway at the top of the stairs leading to the empty bedrooms, void of furniture and with nobody in them.

Spooky, I thought. After the moment passed, I left the house and gave little thought to the voices I heard until the next mysterious manifestation in the new house made me start to question my sanity.

Days later, all moved into the new place, my son and I dozed off on the sofa during the afternoon when I was awakened by the sound of running water coming from the kitchen. It was tough to get up from that little power nap to investigate a sound that likely was an impossible sound, since no one had used the water for at least an hour. I could no longer ignore it, though, so I forced myself up and hurried to the kitchen where I found the faucet running on full blast.

“What the, what?” I called out, standing by the sink, dumbfounded and confused.

“You left the light on in the bedroom,” I could hear echoing in my memory. A child crying out “Mommy!” replayed over and over in my head.

No, please, don’t let my new house be haunted. Hearing voices and faucets randomly turning on – these were real, tangible incidents beyond my own overactive imagination or the feeling that someone is watching me while washing laundry or writing at my desk.

So you think your house is haunted – who ya gonna call? No. Not Ghostbusters. You call your friend who does not believe in ghosts to talk some sense into you.

That same night, I returned home at 9:00 to my babysitter greeting me at the door, standing with a blank expression saying sternly, “This house is haunted.”

She said earlier, while in the upstairs bathroom with the door locked, she heard small child-sized footsteps run up the stairs, down the hallway and someone slam into the door, shaking it and turning the doorknob as if trying to open it. And it wasn’t my son, lying exactly where she left him downstairs playing Candy Crush.

Well, that was the scariest thing I’d ever heard in my life, and I confided in her that I, too, had experienced strange, spooky goings-on since moving into the house.

After she left, I sat frozen on the sofa with the lights on in every room. My house is haunted. Now who ya gonna call? My friend Rene, who is a paranormal investigator, that’s who.

That Monday, Rene arrived at 8:00 pm with two women and their high-tech equipment, ready to poke around and discover what (or who) was behind the recent shenanigans at the new Perry household. The house was built in the 1920s, so it is no new dwelling. It has history.

They set up video and audio recording devices in each room, and in the basement they turned on a green disco light of sorts that sent specks of green laser lights all over the room, which supposedly will tell you if something (or some ghostly one) moves across the room. My skin crawled at the thought.

I have heard voices, and I have seen faucets, lamps, and televisions turn on seemingly by themselves during the days leading up to this, but I did not want to see anything. Oh please, please don’t let me see anything pass through the disco light.

Level by level, the investigators moved through the house, asking any ghostly inhabitants to come say hello in one way or another. I munched on pizza acting cool, feeling ambivalent about my decision to have the paranormal investigation, wondering if I should have just left it alone. I don’t want them to say hi. I no longer wanted to know who was behind it all. Until there was proof, it would still just be my imagination or my absentmindedness.

EMF detectors, recorders, headphones, video cameras pointed up a darkened staircase– the creepiness was palpable. Looking at the video screen on the camera, seeing the image of my staircase that no longer looked like my staircase but the staircase of a haunted house being paranormally investigated was the clinching moment when I realized that I was officially scared and I could no longer wait for the night to be over.

According to one of the women, she sensed that there is a little girl upstairs, closely tied to the hallway and staircase area of the house. Oh lordy, please don’t say any more.

The basement laundry room (oh no, don’t say it) is, according to the investigator, inhabited by an old controlling Portuguese woman who keeps saying, “This doesn’t belong here. This doesn’t belong here!”

No, please, say no more!

After three hours of recording and asking the spirits to say something, make a sound, or show themselves, the three women packed up their gear and left to review the recorded audio and video footage over the next few days, while I was left alone with the ghost of a little girl and a controlling old woman in my laundry room – and my imagination.

As the days and nights passed, I started to accept with lessening fear the random footsteps, doors slamming, and invisible eyes watching me as something I would eventually get used to.

No one came out to say hello the night of the investigation, and I have received no reports of any recorded evidence of my invisible roommates. Perhaps they heard my pleas to remain silent and unseen, taking pity on me after making their presence known in their spooky, but relatively benign fashion.

My son has developed a brand new fear of the dark since moving in, not ascending the stairs at night unless I go with him, hand in hand. I still get a spooky feeling whenever I go up or down them too, and sometimes I catch myself humming whatever song happens to be stuck in my head to keep me from hearing anything else as I descend them.

Although I cannot offer any viable proof that my house is haunted, at least I am not alone in my belief that it is. The babysitter has not quit and I thankfully still haven’t “seen anything.” I’m pretty sure that, for now, I can live with that.

By Jean Perry

Ghosts_101614

One Response to “Living With Ghosts”

Read below or add a comment...

  1. Pattie says:

    Great story! Love it… although it gives me the chills!

Leave A Comment...

*