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Do you believe in ghosts? I use to be like many
of you. I was a true skeptic. A true disbeliever. That
was me until three years ago. Now I do believe. I wish I
didn’t. It would be easier for me to sleep at night. Even now,
three years later, I am still woke up in the night by the memory of the
screaming man, the child in pain, and the dark ghostly image that turned
my world upside down and changed my beliefs forever. I do believe in
ghosts.
It was in May 2001. I needed desperately to find a place for myself and three children to live
in Union,
Missouri. Our lease was up at the apartment where we had lived for two years. I was a single father, and I was about to find myself and my children
homeless. Like many, I had answered just about every ad in the
newspaper for rentals. One evening I received a call from this woman
telling me about this house. She said it was a rather large old
house that was in very good shape. She invited me to an open
house which was to be held that coming Sunday. Sunday rolled around. You can’t imagine the surprise when my daughter and I rolled up in
front of this large old white house. We walked in. The smell
of cookies baking hit us immediately upon entering through the front door. To our surprise we were standing in a living room with cherubs surrounding
the top of the walls all the way around the room. All of the
original wood work was intact and a large wooden pole ran to the ceiling
creating a divider which separated the living room from the family room. The house had two floors with three bedrooms, and a large family kitchen
with a mud room that lead to the back door. The upstairs bedrooms had a
breezeway that could be accessed from all rooms.
The basement had an
old butcher’s shower and a fruit cellar. It was more house than we
ever imagined for the price and immediately made up our minds that we had
to have it. Anyone who has lived in an apartment for two years with
three children would understand our desperation. We had to have this house.
We spoke with the landlady and she gave me an application
to fill out. There were many people there looking at the house so we
knew we would have to compete to be its tenants. I handed my
application to the landlady. “You understand the responsibility that
comes with living in an old house such as this?” she asked. “Oh, yes I understand . It’s beautiful.”, I quickly replied, not really
understanding to what I was agreeing to. “Well then I will get back
to you,” she quickly retorted and was off to peddle her wares to another
of the visiting house hunters. She was a strange old lady and the
way she showed the house wasn’t in a real estate type manner. She
showed the house as if she were showing a museum. We felt like we
were on one of the house tours often given each year for charity.
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A week went by before the phone rang one evening. It
was the strange landlady overly excited to tell me that she had selected
me, my daughter and two sons to live in the old house. I was to meet
her that following day at a restaurant to settle all of the paperwork and
payment. I thought this was a little strange and I was a
little disappointed because I couldn’t wait to see the house that would
now become our home. The papers were signed on the following
day. That weekend was Memorial weekend and we were all set to move
in.
It seemed like
years before Friday came that week, but we were finally there. Moving day. The move was a normal one and before we knew it all of
our belongings were hidden safely inside the old white house. I was removing the last few items from the moving truck when a car slowed
down, almost stopping in front of our new home. From the
window of the slow moving car, the passenger said, “Hope you get along okay here,” and then sped up and drove away. “What do you think of
that dad,” my puzzled daughter asked. “Friendly neighbors I
suppose,” I replied as I shut the sliding door to the truck.
The first night in the house went by without fanfare. Maybe because we were so tired from the move or perhaps, because the house
wanted to draw us in a little closer before beginning its series of
attacks and assaults upon me and my family. The next morning started
like most any other day. Except I did notice one strange thing about
the house. Each of the houses’ interior doors had an old
fashioned hook and eye latch, but not on the inside of each rooms doors to
keep someone out. The latches were on the outside of the rooms
doors, as if to keep something in. “What is it dad?” my youngest son
asked from behind. “Oh nothing,” I replied and went about the
business of unpacking our things.
The first incident
happened in the living room when I was hanging a large picture of
two angels. My daughter thought that this would compliment the
cherubs that surrounded the room. I hung the picture and turned to
walk away. Crash! I turned to see that the picture had
fallen to the
floor. Re-hanging the picture once
again, I turned away. Crash! The picture was once again on the
floor. Hanging it for a third time, when I started walking away I
felt a rush of air and something hit the back of my ankles. “What
the hell…?” I turned to see the picture lying at my feet. More
determined than ever, I hung the picture again and stated loudly, “Stay there dammit.” I had to laugh because I was alone. Who
did I think I was talking to? The kids were playing on the front
porch.
“Dad come and see
this,” my daughter’s voice rang through the front door. I
stepped out onto the porch. “Sit down and watch this,” she said
excitedly. “Watch what?” I replied. No sooner were the words
out of my mouth when my daughter pointed to an old man walking down
the sidewalk toward our house. However, when he reached our property
line he quickly crossed the street and continued his walk on the
opposite sidewalk. “They don’t like walking in front of our house dad. Isn’t that weird?” my daughter, breathless with excitement stated. And right she was. I sat on that porch for a good three hours
watching our neighbors cross the street away from our house any time they
walked along our street. A couple of times I motioned, as if to say
hello, but they just dropped their heads and continued on their way at a
brisker pace. “Maybe they are uncomfortable with new
neighbors?” I rationalized trying to make sense out of the senseless
situation. We went inside for dinner and the rest of the night went
normally without incident.
Sunday. The kids came home
from church excited because we had set aside the whole day to work
on our yard. This was a big deal for us because the only outside
area our apartment provided was a front balcony. We mowed the grass
and cleaned out the leaves from under the porch and in the front
yard. Strangely enough, the trees seemed to be shedding their leaves
as if it were fall. Strange tree behavior, I thought, and made a
mental note to mention it to the landlady when I talked with her next. I
asked my youngest son to go inside and bring out the garden hose from the
basement so we could clean off the walkways and wash down the weathered
white of the house.
A few moments passed when I heard him screaming from inside
the house. Running frantically into the house, I found him standing
in the kitchen shaking, in the middle of a puddle of urine. “What’s wrong? What happened?” Looking at me with the
scared eyes of a child, he said, “Something chased me up the basement steps.” “What chased you?” I asked, already thinking the
over active imagination of a little boy was at play here. “I don’t
know daddy, but it was big.” Me and my other two children checked
the basement, but found nothing except for the garden hose that had been
dropped during his frightened escape. “Let’s get you cleaned up,” I
said. Naturally, there was teasing from my other two children about
the proverbial basement monster. “Better watch out when you go into
the basement because…” The glare of my eye finished my middle boy’s
sentence. The rest of Sunday and Monday went without any other
incidents and we were so happy those first few days in the house. My daughter was making plans about gardens, decorating, and my boys
thought it would be easy to walk to their baseball games because the park
was very close. It was a normal, happy time which, unfortunately,
did not last for long.
Monday came. The
last week of school for my kids and a long week of work for me. Each
day we would leave the house and return each evening to find every light
in the house turned on. I blamed the children for leaving the lights
on in the morning. However, on Friday, my daughter and I sent the
boys to the car while we toured the house making sure that every
light was off. That night we returned home to again find every light
burning. When I walked into the house I was a little shaken – there
being no logical reason for all of the lights being on other than there
was someone in our house. Searching the house in a panic, I found nothing.
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“Daddy, it’s cold in here,” my daughter stated from the
living room. What was she talking about? Sweat was pouring down my back and across my brow. However, when I stepped into the
living room, the temperature dropped a good thirty degrees. That was
the first time I felt its presence. I can’t describe it to any
better than it felt like an electrical current running through my body,
bringing tears to my eyes and bumps to my arms. It passed quickly. I remember thinking, “What the hell was that?” Soon, my daughter
stated, “Daddy it’s getting warm in here,” and sure enough the temperature
was rising as I watched the thermostat climb. That night my children
slept with me - what little sleep I got.
Continued
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