Haunted (3 page)

From August 30, 1919, until May 22, 1927, the Fords lived in the house. Until then that was the longest period that anyone had resided there. The Ford family had been similar to ours, with two little daughters and a son.

When Mr. Ford sold the home on May 22, 1927, to G. J. Niles, he received $4,500 for the property. That was a very good price for the time. Mr. Niles and his wife, Jenny, lived in the house the longest time of any owner. They too had a family that consisted of two daughters and a son. The wealthy Niles family, who wanted to have a house in town so it would be easier for their children to get to school, also owned a country property that served as their weekend residence. The house would not change hands again until 1968.

Our next door neighbour, Donelle Porter, had lived in her home for most of her life. She liked to remind people that she was older than the grass in the neighbourhood, because most of the land had not yet been sodded when her family moved into their new home. Her parents had purchased the property when it had been first built, and she remembered all of her previous neighbours very well.

When she was young, Donelle and her siblings had been very good friends with the children who had lived in our house. She remembered Mrs. Niles very fondly and often spoke of “Aunt Jenny,” as everyone in the neighbourhood had affectionately called her. They had been kind and thoughtful people who were always ready to help out their neighbours, especially during the difficult years of the Great Depression. Donelle's mother would very thoughtfully be presented with a crate of oranges and grapefruits from the Niles each Christmas, and the significance of that generosity was still evident in our elderly neighbour's reminiscence.

In July of 1968, Luis and Martha Borgin bought the house from the Niles and lived there until August 1970. Luis had an accident and was forced to move to a nursing home shortly before they sold the house to its next owners, Martin and Pamela Riley, in August 1970. However, the library's records indicated that, although they bought the house, the Rileys never actually lived there. The house was listed as “vacant” until it was sold again three years later to the next owner.

Mr. and Mrs. Ryan purchased the house in 1973. They lived there with their children for quite a while until Mrs. Ryan passed away in the hospital after a lengthy illness. Then, with his children grown and on their own, Mr. Ryan found the upkeep of the house too difficult with his frail health. So, after more than twenty years of ownership, Mr. Ryan sold the house to our family.

Although my research did make me curious about the former residents of our house, I did not find anything in the written records, such as a death or a fire, to explain the occurrences we were later to witness. It did, however, seem peculiar to me that the property had changed ownership so frequently. Since it was first purchased, seventeen different residents had moved in and out of the property over the years, with only a few staying a substantial length of time.

Our elderly neighbour Donelle seemed to know all about the current and former occupants of every house along our street, and she helped me to fill in the blanks in my research that the library's records could not. She entertained us with stories of the “olden days,” and the children loved to hear her talk of her own childhood. A lot of the area had been farmland, so our neighbourhood contained some of the oldest buildings in that part of the town.

Donelle told us about the people who had lived in our home before we did, but nothing out of the ordinary was ever mentioned. It seemed as if it had always housed happy, normal, growing families, very much like our own. Donelle went into great detail about the children who once lived there and what had become of them as they married, began careers and moved away. Although some of them had unfortunately died early in their lives, as young adults, no parent had ever lost a child while living under that roof. As far as we knew, and we certainly had not been told otherwise, there should have been nothing unusual about the house itself.

When events began to unfold, we did not know why. I went back to the local history section of the library many times looking for answers but could find nothing there that offered an explanation.

I felt it would be inappropriate to question Mr. Ryan or Donelle about specific occurrences. It was obvious that Mr. Ryan had left his home reluctantly. When we bought the house, he had told us, very sincerely, that his family had shared many happy years there and he hoped that our young family would do the same. I did not want Donelle to think I was crazy, so I asked only general questions about the past. And, I did not want to reveal that I was trying to determine if someone from a former time was haunting our home. After all, perhaps the incidences were not related to the actual house but were linked somehow specifically to the piece of land, or even just to our own family.

I realized as time went on that a haunting was a private matter. It was not something easily discussed with other people, even a close neighbour. If we felt we could not tell others about the happenings within our home, then perhaps former residents had felt the same restriction. If they too experienced strange occurrences, they may have felt the only option they had was to move away. And that certainly had been done, time after time.

WATCHING FROM THE WINDOW

D
uring
the days, while Matt and Kammie were at school and Ted was at work, Rosa and I kept ourselves busy in our new home. Our cocker spaniel, Piper, loved to follow us around but refused to go up the stairs to the second floor. She had not hesitated to do so in our previous house, but now, if we went upstairs, she would sit on the foyer floor and cry until we came back down. If one of us carried her up, she would dash into the master bedroom, jump on the bed, and shake like a leaf until she was brought downstairs again. She would occasionally remain in either Kammie or Rosa's bedroom for a short period of time, but would whine and run for the door whenever Matt tried to bring her into his room.

We fully expected Piper to resume her old habit of sleeping every night at the foot of one of the children's beds and thought she only needed time to get used to the new surroundings. She continued, however, to avoid our second floor. As with the footsteps on the stairs and the mysterious odours, we gradually came to accept her strange behaviour.

Life went on fairly smoothly, despite those oddities. The children seemed to love our new home, and Rosa often played in the backyard with Piper while her brother and sister were in school.

One afternoon, Rosa came running into the house from the yard, yelling, “A pretty girl is up in my bedroom!”

“Is she?” I smiled at her when she reached me, but I was a little surprised. It wasn't like Rosa to make up stories. She was so emphatic and excited, however, that I could not help but chuckle.

“I saw her! She was standing at the window up in my bedroom and she waved to me!” Rosa persisted.

“What did she look like?” I asked, playing along with what I thought was a new game.

“She had on a pretty dress and a bow in her hair,” she said.

I was beginning to feel uncomfortable with Rosa's seriousness.

“Sweetie, no one is here but you and me. And I wasn't upstairs,” I explained to her.

Rosa insisted that we go up to her room to see if the girl was still there. I thought it would help to convince her that she had just imagined seeing someone waving to her from her window, so upstairs we went, hand in hand. The room was empty, of course, but Rosa remained unconvinced.

She walked over to the window and looked down to where she had been playing in the yard, blowing bubbles with liquid soap and a bubble wand.

“That's where I was when I saw her,” Rosa said and pointed. “And she was right here at the window, waving to me.” She was growing frustrated with my disbelief.

“But you and I are the only ones in the house,” I said again.

Rosa nodded her head in agreement, but I could see she was confused. She knew what she had seen, but she also understood that we were the only people at home and that no one else was in the bedroom.

“But I saw her. Where did she go?” Rosa asked.

I shrugged my shoulders in response and hoped that was the end of it. But Rosa walked over to her closet door and peeked inside, then looked under her bed, still searching for the girl who had been at the window. Thankfully, after a few moments she gave up and went back outside with Piper.

Rosa mentioned having seen the same girl on a number of occasions over the next few months, but she was much more casual about it.

“I saw her watching me today,” she would say.

“Who?” I would ask, thinking she was referring to one of our neighbours.

“The girl in my bedroom,” would be her calm reply.

Her older sister and brother laughed at her insistence that she had seen the girl. They questioned Rosa about her story, trying to get her to trip over her facts, thereby proving she was only making it up.

“Did you see that girl again, Rosa?” they would sometimes ask when they arrived home from school.

She would usually admit that she had not seen her that day but occasionally she would relay her sightings to them, never wavering in the details she gave. Kammie and Matt thought it was a fun game to play, and Rosa enjoyed thinking they really believed what she claimed. After several weeks Rosa stopped talking about the girl, and the matter was all but forgotten.

Shortly after Rosa ceased to mention the girl in the window, our family prepared to go away for a few days. Before we departed, I made sure all the lights were off and the doors securely locked and inadvertently left my purse on the oak cabinet in the foyer. Upon that cabinet was a large, Victorian-style oil lamp framed by two small family portraits. It was positioned directly opposite the front door. I went back in and picked up my purse, giving the hallway a glance as I headed out the front door, and made sure the foyer light was turned off before I locked up.

When we returned, I unlocked the front door while Ted unloaded the suitcases from the car in the driveway. I immediately noticed the oil lamp as I walked into the house. The glass chimney that sat on the lamp's base was now upside down and wobbling on its tip. I stared at it for a moment, unable to believe what I was seeing. I knew it had been properly positioned before we left. Kammie came up behind me and immediately noticed it too.

“Why did you do that to the oil lamp?” she asked me.

“I didn't touch it,” I said, trying to sound calmer than I felt.

“I don't think you should leave it like that. It looks like it's going to fall,” she replied before heading up to her bedroom.

I picked up the delicate glass chimney and attached it properly to the base. When Ted came in with the suitcases, I told him how I had found it.

“One of the kids must have done it,” he said, dismissing it with a logical but impossible explanation.

“When?” I asked. “It wasn't like that when we left, and no one else has been in the house.”

He just shrugged his shoulders, and we said nothing more about it.

THE FLOATING WOMAN

B
y
the end of the first year the only major home improvement project that remained was the addition of an extra room onto the back of the house.

We hired an architect to design some plans for the new room and spent a lot of time deciding how and when it would be built. Construction would begin in early spring and we decided, as well, to replace the old shed with a new one. We were very eager to get those projects underway, and Ted and I stayed up late one night discussing the plans, the cost, and other details. I found it difficult to get to sleep after our conversation and tossed and turned for what seemed like hours. Ted, as usual, fell into a deep sleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. I lay in bed, facing the bedroom door that led out into the hallway, listening to the sound of his snoring.

The hallway was lit by the collective glow of the night-lights from each of the children's bedrooms. That light spilled into our room, making it easy to see, even in the middle of the night. After laying on my right side with my eyes closed, trying to get to sleep, I sat up slightly in order to turn over and face the other way. I opened my eyes, and froze. A dark figure was standing at the door, blocking the glow from the hallway. As my eyes began to focus, the figure before me grew clearer, and I realized it was a woman.

I was terrified by the sudden appearance of that figure but I could not look away from it. I wanted to turn to Ted and shake him from his sleep, yet could not make myself move. The woman appeared to be extremely tall, and I wondered if she were floating several inches above the floor. That thought scared me even more, and though I desperately wanted to awaken Ted, I could not move a muscle.

Her figure was very dark against the light, but I clearly could distinguish her clothing and hair. She was wearing a cape of some kind and was draped from head to toe. The idea came to me that she was dressed like a nurse from many years ago. I could not understand why, as her clothing was quite different from a present-day nurse's uniform, yet the thought had been very clear. The headpiece hung like a veil behind her, and the long cloak covered her dress. Her hair was curled in tight, small ringlets and was clearly visible in front of the head piece. I could see it in astonishing detail; it was as though I could discern each strand of hair. Yet, though I could so easily make out her hair and clothing, I could not see her face. Instead I stared into a blank dark space, void of any features. Even in my shocked and frightened state, that seemed particularly bizarre.

After several very long seconds, I was finally able to move and leaned over to where my husband was laying. I buried my face in his back and shook him until he awoke. As he had been sleeping deeply, it took him a few moments to become aware of how upset I was. When I looked towards the doorway where the figure had been floating, I saw it was gone. The light from the hallway now streamed in unobstructed. I jumped out of bed and hurried in to the children's bedrooms to see if they were all right, and found them all sound asleep.