Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Ghostly Encounters - The Squeal-quel

Friday the 13th...... a full moon.......... a coyote howls in the distance........ you hear the sound of footsteps in the dark.  The hair on the back of your neck stands up and causes your heart to skip a beat.  Your ears strain for even the faintest of noise.  Your eyes stare into the pitch black darkness trying to catch a glimpse of any shadow that moves........ and you wonder if you're brave enough to get out of bed to turn on a light.  Is it an apparition or your imagination???

ghost, apparition, spirit

About a month ago I wrote about the odd night-time occurrences we have been experiencing in our home here.  It hasn't been our first encounter with the strange and unusual though.  My parents lived in a house several years back which had some rather..... puzzling... things happen as well.

When my parents moved into their home, my mother being the rather meticulous unpacker, would only allow one box to be unpacked at a time so she could carefully choose the spot where each item was to be placed.  (Yes, it took a while to unpack.)  The house had a built-in glass display cabinet, which was the perfect place of distinction for her china figurines.  She carefully chose the perfect spot in the cabinet for each one of her treasures.

After they finished unpacking and settled in, some odd things began happening.  It started out innocent enough one morning.  She and my dad woke up to find her favorite china figurine, a rather large piece, moved from the display cabinet.

Now I'm not talking about having been moved an inch or two, or even swapping places in the cabinet with another piece.  This piece was actually removed from the cabinet in the formal living room and placed on a sofa table in the family room quite some distance away.  My parents blamed each other as my mother put the figurine back in the display cabinet.

This happened multiple times over the course of the next 6 months or so.  My mom was sure my dad was doing it as some form of prank since it always happened at night after she'd gone to bed.  After many months of this happening, my mom finally had had enough.  She really read the riot act to my father over his prank and told him to knock it off.

He looked at her quite astounded and said he thought she'd been doing it.  He gave her his word he wasn't touching the piece.  She still didn't quite believe him....... until my dad, a commercial airline pilot, left to go on an overseas trip.

The second morning after he'd been gone, my mother awoke to the figurine moved from the living room cabinet to the sofa table in the family room.  It didn't take long before I was on the receiving end of an early morning telephone call from my rather disconcerted mother.   "I think we have a ghost in this house......... and I don't think it likes my decorating.".

When dad got home from his trip, mom told him about it happening again while he was away.  He laughed and told her that maybe she should just leave the figurine where the ghost moved it.

As time went by they got used to things being moved every now and again.   They decided there was really nothing to get too worked up over ....... until several months later.  My dad was again on another trip when I got a somewhat frantic phone call from my mom that the ice maker to the refrigerator quit working.

This was a problem.  They were about to host a pretty good sized party and a broken ice maker would pose a huge problem.  My husband and I quickly drove over and worked on the ice maker and could find nothing wrong. 

We tried to pull the refrigerator away from the wall, but this was an older style refrigerator and it was a beast.  Even with the 3 of us, we couldn't budge it.  There was no help for it, mom was going to have to call in a repairman.

The repairmen arrived the very next morning and checked everything we had already gone over.  It took 3 very strong men, and a lot of huffing and puffing, to move that refrigerator out from the wall.  What they discovered was very unnerving.

Someone (or something) had completely turned off the water supply line to the ice maker.  The repairmen all said there was no way my dad could have done that by himself.  They also dispelled the notion that maybe it was never turned on properly and had, by a fluke, worked all these months.  Nope, it wasn't possible they said.  Apparently the spook of this house didn't like parties.

When my dad got home from his trip, we told him what happened.  He agreed that something other-worldly was happening here and admitted to not telling about other odd occurrences which had been happening in the house.  

Apparently, he had been hearing a cat meowing in the garage on and off for a number of weeks.  He had been out to investigate multiple times in an effort to shoo away the four-legged foe before it could get into anything.  He had looked everywhere and tried to follow the sound of its cries, but he never could find it or evidence it was ever in the garage.

And then came the night of the party.  That's when we found out that one of the previous owners of the home had been crazy about her cat.  As in creepy-crazy.  While she was away on a trip, she instructed her pet sitter that if anything should happen to her cat, they were to place the animal's remains in the garage freezer so she could take care of it when she returned.

We also learned the house was the woman's favorite home and she had not wanted to move away.  And the story got even weirder when they said she committed suicide after being forced to move out of state and that her one wish was to be able to go back to her favorite home......... and we're all guessing she did.

It wasn't long after that when my parents decided that moving out to the country would be a fine idea..........

Written by Christie Bielss

4 comments :

  1. Sure you're not making this up, Christie?

    I was pretty eagerly awaiting the sequel to Ghostly encounters, but now I'm not too sure. This is a perfect set up to a horror novel; first the displays, then the water line, and then the revelation about the cat lady.

    I admit, I'm spooked

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    1. It's all true Mathew. Which is why my parents sold the house and moved. Too creepy! Matter of fact, that was about 15 or so years ago and they are still creeped out when they talk about that house.

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    2. Not at all hard to imagine why.

      (Shudder).

      Have you ever been to the place yourself?

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    3. Yes, I was over there many times. The house had a different vibe to it. Not haunted but just a feeling associated with it, if that makes sense.

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