My Ghost Stories

This sort of goes with the Friday Five questions. Especially question number two which asked about supernatural or unexplained events in my life ...

These are but a few of my experiences ...

"Irene"
I was married to the first husband, the year was 1981. My oldest, Single Son was just a year old when we moved in. The house was a 50+ year old cottage on a lake. An architectural nightmare with it's many additions. The floors weren't level, there were gaps in the dining room wall that you could see light shining from the basement, the built in bookcase in the living room was uneven - putting a pencil on a shelf it would roll away, the stairs to the walk-out basement had a drop in the ceiling that if you didn't duck you would end up with a healthy goose-egg from the impact of the solid wall. These were but a few of the oddities of the house.

In the far end of basement there was a root cellar, too. Part of the original structure, I'm guessing. On the shelves I'd found some personal items from the previous owner. A baby book, a box of baby items labeled "JIMMY". I went through the box, nothing indicating a last name. I moved the box to a safer spot and put up some of our stuff into this perfect storage area. I never did remember to ask the landlord about it. See if we could find this Jimmy. Return his stuff to him.

The last box hadn't been unpacked and odd things started to happen. Single Son was an early walker (9 months old) and by the time we'd moved in to the house he was into everything. We had one pantry in the kitchen, it was rather hard for me to open this door (it sat on the hinges crooked) there was no way my son was going to be able to open it so I felt safe putting the cleaners on the bottom shelf of the pantry. My reasoning was that chemicals could drip down into the foodstuffs on the shelves below. A few days later, needing something out of the pantry, I discover the cleaners are on the TOP shelf!! I hadn't moved them. I doubted hubby had either, he was a macho male - felt that the kitchen was not his place. It was mine. But I asked him that night when he got home from work. Nope, why would he touch them, he asked. So I spend the evening putting it back to the way I had it.

I had also noticed that the dish cupboard wasn't the way I had left it. The dishes and cups weren't on the shelves I'd left them on. They'd been switched, dishes where the cups had been, cups occupying where the dishes were.

My laundry room was in the basement. The walk-out part of the basement was really a one car garage. I'd open the door in the summer to get the breeze from the lake while doing our laundry. After I was done, I'd lock up the garage, making sure the lights were off and the doors closed tightly. Hubby was a stickler on not having lights on if we weren't using them.

I never had curtains on the small bedroom windows. I learned to walk to the bathroom in the back of the house in the dark at night. On one such midnight potty trip I happened to see a light shining through a crack between the flooring and the dining room wall. Oh oh!! Better go turn that off before Hubby sees it. I get to the basement, there's NO lights on!! I shrug. Maybe it was a reflection from something? There was nothing in the basement that would have caused a reflection.

Talking to the neighbor one day I mentioned the box I'd found and did he know if I could find the previous owner or this Jimmy. He told me that Irene, the widow owner had suffered a heart attack tending to the side yard gardens. Judging by the bloody knees, she'd apparently crawled into the bedroom and died almost as soon as she'd crawled into her bed. One of her kids found her a few days later. This neighbor also told me that Jimmy hadn't been seen in years, he and Irene had a falling out, and he pretty much vanished from her life after that.

Then the neighbor got a funny look on his face. "Ummm, do you ever see strange things happen around there?" I told him only all the time. I explained about the cleaners. He about fainted! "One of Irene's children almost died ingesting some chemical. She was extremely cautious after that, even after the kids all grew up".

I gave in to the chemical fight. One winter's day after shopping, putting a few things in the pantry, I stopped and said out loud "Irene, thank you for watching out for my son". I felt a breeze cut through me. "But will you compromise with me on the dishes, please?? I prefer the cups on the bottom shelf." She never disturbed them after that.

Irene would pull other little pranks, though. She never let up on the basement lights. I gave up running to tum them off. I knew by the time I got downstairs she'd have turned them off.

Every time Irene did something I'd say "Dammit Irene" out loud. But I'd laugh as I said it. I don't think I was every really angry with her antics. I know I wasn't afraid. She was definitely a friendly ghost.

One stormy night I couldn't get the window in the baby's room closed. It was a tiny room, six by six feet. No matter how I arranged it, the crib was under that window!! The rain was coming in through the unclosable window. So, I brought the baby in to sleep in my bed. Hubby wasn't happy about it. During the night, we heard a crash. The winds had blown a dead branch off of a tree. It hit son's bedroom window in such a way that it shattered the window. Running in to investigate the noise, I stopped and said "Thank you, Irene". Hubby, standing behind me was like "who?" He never believed me about Irene!

At some point, a scary looking dude came knocking on my door. LOL. I normally wouldn't have answered it since hubby was at work. Why I did that day I don't know but I'm sure Irene was behind it. "Hi, I'm looking for Irene. I'm her son Jimmy. Do you know where my mother moved?" My gawd, I had to tell him. "Jimmy, I'm sorry. You're mother had a heart attack and passed away." I did invite him in (against my better judgment). He was a pleasant man. But a very sad man, very sad life. I gave him the box of baby things his mother had saved.

We lived together, Irene and I, for two and a half years. My youngest son, Married Son, was born while we lived there. She'd keep a watchful eye on him, too. I respected her wishes, after all this had been the home she and her husband had built for her family. I never felt scared or threatened by Irene.

A few weeks before we were to move to our first purchased home we had a power failure. Typical for that area really. As I was getting up to light the storm candles, I saw a figure cloaked in white standing in the arch between the dining room and kitchen. I paused, this was the first time that Irene had allowed me to see her. I thanked her for allowing us to live in her home and that I would miss her once we moved to the newly constructed house. I felt that breezy feeling once again.

That was the last encounter I was to have with Irene. I honestly can say I do miss her, to this day, twenty five years later.

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"My Brother"
My brother, Richard (aka Dick) died in 1993 at the age of 25. He was a suicide. We'd moved into this house a year after my brother's death. My daughter "Alien" was two and a half (she's now 16). Alien was one of those clingy children, rarely leaving my side. I was in cleaning bedrooms one day while she was in her bedroom playing when I heard her talking to someone. Knowing we were alone in the house I went to check on her. I stood at the doorway for a while just watching. She was looking up, as if to look an adult in the eye while talking. It was a full conversation, but I only heard her half of it. Deciding she had an invisible friend I went back to cleaning. Over the next few months I began to notice she was spending more and more time in her room playing, and less clinging time. One afternoon shortly after her third birthday she'd been in her room for a longer than usual time. I went to check on her and decided to join in the "conversation" she was having with her invisible friend. "Honey, who you talking to?" I asked. "Uncle Dickie, Momma". Now, I should probably tell you here that Dick's death was devastating to the family. I was an emotional basket case for years. I rarely mentioned his name around the kids, mostly to spare them from seeing me break down again. So ... I repeated "Uncle Dick?" "Yes, Mommy. He was just telling me about the dog you had when you were little". "Oh?" "Yep, her name was Terry. She loved puddles". OMG! "Mommy, Uncle Dick says that he loves you. He wishes you could see him right now". I absolutely lost it!! "Tell your Uncle Dick I love him and miss him honey". "Gee, Mommy. He's dead, not deaf. He hears you. He says you're such a gaywad". Gaywad was what he'd call someone instead of saying dork or moron. I hadn't even thought of the word since his passing, and now she's saying it!! She continued her visits with Uncle Dick until she started kindergarten. Only years later did she tell me the content of the majority of those conversations. Some of them were about growing up, but most of them were story times, where he'd read Dr. Seuss stories to her. He loved Dr. Seuss.

Richard's presence is still felt to this day. Many times when I'm feeling depressed or if there's some emergency going on. And not just by me, but by my children, too.

In 2000 my son was in a near-fatal car accident. The car he was driving had been my brothers car. I inherited it after his death. "Single Son" had been driving it that day. The light he was at had just turned green. He looked left, then right, and proceeded through the light. A fully loaded two ton cargo van came out of nowhere and "T-Boned" him ... running right into the driver's side of the car. Right before impact he said he'd seen his Uncle Dick in the back seat of the car. A split second later the van crashed into him. He managed to move to the passenger seat - with a pelvis that had been broken in three places and a ruptured spleen. His uncle had encouraged him to move to a more accessible spot for the EMTs to tend to him on scene (saving valuable time since the jaws-of-life didn't need to be used on that side of the car). Uncle Dick stayed with him until he was in the Emergency Room. My son survived the accident, making a full recovery. He definitely had a Guardian Angel that day.

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"Debbie"
While not an actual "ghost story" this is about how our loved ones really don't leave us after they've passed on.

In 1978 three of my friends were tragically killed in a car accident, two months after we graduated from high school. I was especially close to one of them, Debbie. We'd known each other since seventh grade. Sadly through the years since graduation and her death I'd lost track of all my old high school buddies. In August of this year, almost twenty nine years to the date of her death I received an email from one of the guys we were friends with. We emailed each other for a while, finally deciding to meet for a drink or two and discuss old times. The conversation turned to classmates who'd passed on. He looked at me with a strange look. "You and Debbie were close weren't you? I ask because on the way over here I realized that you knew her, too. You're going to think I'm losing my mind, but I think she brought us together for this reunion". We went on to talk about things that had happened to him over the years, things he's positive Debbie had a hand in. Behavior that isn't typical of him, nothing bad, just strange things that he'd do, not really knowing what motivated him to do it. Locating me being one of them. Since then our friendship has really grown. It's almost like we never lost contact, let alone for nearly three decades.