I do believe in ghosts. As one
commenter, who is a believer, said, “The proof is in the pudding.”
My tale begins almost three years
ago…
I have no idea why I
decided to start reading an Anne Rice book just before my husband had three
business trips over the course of three weeks. When I’m home alone this big old
house does a lot of settling and creaking, and things tend to go bump in the
night. Reading a scary book at night when you’re alone in the house is not a
good idea. One night, after two hours of reading in bed, I was sure that there
was some kind of entity in my house and it was going to do something during the
night. Maybe just your basic minor destruction—I was fairly confident that it
didn’t want to hurt me.
The next morning I
discovered the first of what would become a series of strange occurrences that
would take place over the next several weeks. It turns out that SOME entity knocked
my high school graduation picture off the shelf where it had happily sat for
many years, shattering the glass in the frame all over the floor. The following
week I was alone in the house and felt something tug on the hood of my
sweatshirt. Sometime later my husband came home from one of those business
trips. Shortly after getting home he walked into his office downstairs. A
minute later he called upstairs to me, “What happened to my desk? Why is
everything shoved to one side?” There were a few other odd happenings as well,
but these are good examples of what was going on in my house.
Our ‘ghost’ became a
running joke. And, by the way, a ghost is much preferable to some rodent in my
house, and we never found any evidence that there was one. But we did come to
the conclusion that if we did have a ghost it was acting up because we were
doing some work on the house to prepare it for sale. We thought it didn’t like
the idea of us leaving. We never did put it on the market…the Portland market
became too crazy.
Fast forward several
months.
In
November, we had family members (names will not be used to protect the
innocent) staying with us for ten days while they waited for their dead furnace
to be replaced. One member of the family slept downstairs on the couch in the
family room, along with their family dog. I HAD NEVER TOLD THEM ANYTHING ABOUT
OUR POSSIBLE GHOST.
On
Thanksgiving morning, a week after they had moved back home, we were all doing
the local Turkey Trot Walk. While we were going up a steep hill, the family
member who had slept downstairs said to me, “Is your house haunted?” Or maybe
she said, “Did you know your house is haunted?” I really can’t remember now. I
laughed and told her that we had been having some strange things happen, and
were starting to wonder. But in a HaHa sort of way.
She
went on to say, “Well, one night while I was downstairs, I saw a ghost. And
felt it.”
About
this time, I started to think if the steep hill didn’t kill me, this news just
might.
Subsequent
questioning revealed that one night she saw a foggy cloud that had formed not
far from where she was sitting. There was no form to it, so she couldn’t say
whether it was male or female. She said again that she could feel
something—something not normal, something ghostly. She showed me exactly where
it had been. It was less than two feet from where my picture had flung itself
to the floor. Remember, she knew nothing about that prior to this discussion.
Once
the minor remodeling was finished, the ghost became quiet again. From what I've read this is common behavior for ghosts. ;-)
In
‘Tis
the Witching Time I describe a possible ghost exactly as my family
member described what she saw.
This
blog post includes parts of two previous posts I wrote when these things were
occurring. Just now I saw how I ended the last post I wrote two years ago, and
it made me smile.
Now, I just need to channel this into a good ghost story book…
I had forgotten I’d written
that. But, YAY, I did write my ghost story book!!
‘Tis the Witching Time will be available as an ebook from Amazon, on Tuesday, October 18th.
Here’s a little bit about this fun new STRATFORD UPON AVONDALE mystery:
It’s the Samhain Harvest Festival in Stratford Upon Avondale! A time
for all things magical and mysterious. And maybe a little…murderous.
When a self-proclaimed psychic comes to town for Samhain, her tarot
card readings become the talk of the village. But when the readings start
coming true is it just luck, or something a bit more supernatural? And how
could she have correctly predicted the murder that shocks the town during the
festivities? Unless she had something to do with it…
Tea room owner and amateur sleuth, Maggie O’Flynn, finds herself
questioning her lack of belief in the supernatural when the uncle of a friend
is murdered, and the visiting psychic and her niece become mixed-up in the
investigation. Clairvoyance, ghosts, things that go bump in the night—how much
of it is real?
