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???

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

Ghostly Encounters

Sometimes things go bump in the night at our house.  Papers fall off the table of their own accord.  Odd noises come from the opposite side of the house on a regular basis.  Cell phones and books seem to have moved from where they were set down.  All little things easily explained as normal occurrences in a busy household............. until the little occurrences start adding up.  Then, an occurrence (or two.... or three) happens which is not so easily explained.  It's those few inexplicable occurrences which have convinced my children that our house is haunted. 



Ghostly encounters Public Domain


No matter how much I try to convince them there's nothing in this home's history (no suicides, murders, unexplained deaths, etc.) which would invite the spirit world through the doors......... or walls...... they don't believe me.  They are convinced some kind of ghost has made its way in.  

They say they've seen a ghost-like apparition in the middle of the night.  Our house sits on a corner at a bend in the road, so when cars come down the street, their headlights do cast ghostly beams through the tightly drawn blinds.

They say they hear crashing noises but when they investigate, nothing is found.  Yeah well, we have lots of squirrels who like to jump from the trees onto the roof, and from the roof onto the trees.  Hence, lots of crashing sounds.

They say things move of their own accord.  No, mom and dad get sick of tripping over their shoes in the middle of the floor and move them out of the way.

They say they have heard "people" sounds but no one is in the area where the sound came from.  Ok, this one got to me because I have noticed this but disregarded it............ until a couple of nights ago.

It was about 2am and I was sound asleep on the sofa (yes, I had tried to stay up to watch the end of a show and probably made it 10 minutes and missed the ending - darn it!).  I awoke with a start to what sounded like someone stepping on one of the dog's squeaky toys.  And boy, oh boy was it loud.

I sat up instantly and waited for one of my kids to walk in the room.  I waited and waited but no one came in.  I got up and walked into my kids room to see if they'd been sleep walking.  They were sound asleep and, from the way they were wrapped burrito style in their blankets, they hadn't gotten up since going to bed hours before.  I peeked in my bedroom.  My husband was sound asleep......... and snoring like a freight train.

I decided it was either my imagination or a dream and went back to the sofa, because there was no way I was going to be able to sleep with the snorus-chorus my husband was serenading the house with.  I arranged the throw pillows so they'd be comfy, grabbed a blanket, and headed off to dreamland.  Just as I was dozing off, the sound of a dog toy squeaked quite loudly again.

I flew off the sofa and with my heart racing and with the fireplace's andiron poker held like a baseball bat, I quickly walked through the house.  I found nothing out of sorts.  And, all of the dog toys were in their place........ in a different room from where the sound emanated.  That could only mean one thing......... gasp!  A possible rodent invasion.

I looked for evidence of a mouse or some other squeaky creature.  The problem with that thought was:  A)  I might find a mouse........... and then what was I going do?!; and B) The sound I heard was more akin to a wonky sounding dog toy which had the squeaker punctured than it was a rodent. 

Again, I found nothing...... thankfully.  I wasn't sure which thought was worse:  having a ghost or a mouse in the house.  I tried to fall back to sleep, but there was no way my racing heart or wayward thoughts could settle down enough to allow me to rest.  I finally turned on the tv and watched mindless tv programming until it was time to get everyone up and off to school and work.

Later that day, while my kids were in school and my husband was at work, I heard a very loud crash.  The sound came from my closet and it sounded like my closet rod had given way, sending everything to the floor.  Not that this event would be a surprise since that rod has been bowed since I hung one hanger from it.

With a lot of grumbling and a big sigh at the work I knew would be before me, I walked to my closet.  I dreaded opening the closet doors, but when I walked in there was nothing wrong.  The closet rod was still there bowed just as much as before.  All of the shelves were in place and nothing was on the floor that shouldn't have been.

Quite surprised, I quickly looked around my bedroom and bathroom.  Nothing.  I looked in the garage.  Nothing.  I sprinted to check both of my kids' rooms and closets.  Nothing again!  What the heck?!  I flew to the window to see if maybe the sound came from a delivery truck or a neighbor.  Yet more of nothing!  EEK!  I decided to tell myself the same thing I tell my kids "It was just a squirrel.  It was just a squirrel.  It was just a squirrel.  It was......."

Ok, so from the tremendous sound of that crash it must've been a 300 pound squirrel, but it could happen.  Right?!  If there's a Loch Ness monster and 8 foot tall Sasquatch in the forests, there could be a squirrel big enough to make that kind of noise.  I am, after all, in Texas and everything is bigger in Texas.........

After consuming a good amount of chocolate, I have decided not to get too worked up over the whole thing though.  If it was a ghost that knocked something down in my closet, or made a dog toy squeak, then I haven't been able to find evidence of its presence.  Not that that's all bad because hey, at least they picked up after themselves........

Written by Christie Bielss