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
We bought an older home (built in 1978) back in the mid 1990's which had a few cosmetic issues. We thought those cosmetic issues were just your typical P/W/C (paint/wallpaper/carpet). We were in for a bit of a rude awakening.
The first morning we lived in the house, both my husband (Mike) and I had to get up and go to work before dawn. I was the first one dressed (who says men are the faster dressers?!) and headed into the kitchen. I flipped on the light and to my great horror, the floor was a solid mass of the most dreaded of all kitchen bugs: the cockroach.
Being a red-blooded American female, I did what all females do when they encounter such a sight: I let out a blood-curdling scream and ran for my life! My husband came at a full run thinking I'd been attacked by the boogie-man. I jumped in his big protecting arms and was able to squeak out the horror I'd just witnessed: "BUGS!!!!! They're everywhere!!!". That big oaf actually started laughing.
As my nerves calmed down I said "Oh, you think that's funny? They covered the entire surface of the kitchen floor like a cockroach carpet!". With a sarcastic "Yeah, ok Mrs. Drama. How many were there? 1 or 2?", and walked into the kitchen. By the time he reached the doorway, the floor was completely bug free. They'd all crawled back into the icky gicky void they must've come out from. I walked to the doorway and could feel them staring at me. I knew they were there, lurking in their dark, dank hideaway planning their next invasion.
Later that same day we were having a new dishwasher installed. The installer noted that the cabinet bottom under the kitchen sink was very damp and rotted from where the old dishwasher had leaked for a very long time. He advised us to replace the sink bottom ASAP. A little later that day we also had an urgent, same day pest control treatment (I do NOT do bugs). Since we were pulling out that cabinet bottom, the technician left us some chemicals to treat that area directly.
The next morning I took an extraordinarily long time getting ready so that my husband was first to turn on the kitchen light. He's a 6'1" broad-shouldered, barrel-chested ex-football player. He's not afraid of any stinkin' bugs. As he walked into the family room, I peeked around the corner to see his reaction. He flicked on the kitchen light and jumped back several feet. The bugs were out in full force. "You're not laughing....." I said as I peeked from behind the safety of my corner. He watched as the bugs scattered and ran for cover. He decided right then and there that his first order of business as soon as he got home from work was to rip out that rotten cabinet bottom.
True to his word, he walked in the door from work and immediately jumped into action. He laid all of his tools within arm's reach of the sink area and even had the pest control chemicals primed and ready - just in case there were any bugs that tried to protest this repair. He gave me the heads up that he was ready and that I might should find a safe spot to perch myself.
Having a sense of what was going to come out of that cabinet when he started banging around, I grabbed our dog and headed out to the backyard. I figured with his manly attitude of "I'm not afraid of any bugs", this had the potential to become quite entertaining. I positioned myself outside our kitchen's big bay window, which allowed me the perfect sight line to where he was going to be working, and waited for the show to begin.
My husband started hammering, and the cabinet bottom started disintegrating on the second downward stroke. He reached into the cabinet and pulled out the first large piece of rotten cabinet bottom. He held it up for me to see while mouthing "Ewwww! NASTY!".
He sat back down in front of the cabinet and with great force, he hit the cabinet bottom again. And then it happened. Time literally stood still. In what seemed like a scene from a horror movie, my husband started to pull that piece of cabinet bottom out only to discover it was the bugs' home..... and they did not like invaders!
The bugs immediately went on the offensive and launched an all out invasion. Before he could even take a breath, bugs were everywhere. Freeze-frame here: you know in the first "Home Alone" movie where the little boy grabs the tarantula and plops it on the burglar's face and the burglar emits the loudest, most high-pitched scream imaginable? Hold onto that thought and let's resume. All of the sudden, those cockroaches were going after him.
He started frantically slapping and swiping at his legs and feet. He wasn't making much headway against this coordinated offensive, so he grabbed the hammer and started smashing everything that moved with it. As he was flailing around his legs and feet, he didn't notice the bugs had started crawling up his arms towards his face! All of the sudden, he noticed a movement on his arm and discovered the nasty spawns of satan were nearly to his shoulder. Before I had time to even blink, he emitted the "Home Alone" blood-curdling, completely horrified scream.
He started hopping around in a complete frenzy trying to free himself from the bugs. Standing in the backyard, I couldn't contain myself any longer and started laughing hysterically. The more he jumped around, swatted and screamed, the harder I laughed. I was laughing so hard I couldn't catch a breath, my legs literally gave way and I fell to the ground. I couldn't take my eyes off the scene before me and through tears of laughter, I watched as he finally noticed the pest control chemicals. He grabbed the chemical sprayer and started spraying wildly while screaming "DIE!!!! DIE!!!!!!!". Those giant bugs didn't have a chance against that chemical and died on contact.
After several minutes passed, he regained control of the situation and looked out the bay window for the first time since having to fight against this invasion of thousands of miscreants. He started to smile at me and give me the thumbs up when he noticed me laying in the grass laughing hysterically. His smile froze and slowly faded into a pointed frown. For some reason, he did not see the humor in the situation one tiny bit. I guess I was lucky that his "thumbs up" didn't flip around and become a "you're #1"........
by: Christie Bielss
