Hauntings Part 1 (for Vicki!)

I was thinking I would save these for Halloween, but I'm sure to be quite busy that day with the decorations and cooking and costuming and such. So I thought I'd write the story of the various haunted places I've lived over the years. My friend Vicki, who was one of my first loyal readers, mentioned she couldn't wait to see this story. So here it is, without further ado. (Should I start it: "It was a dark and stormy night?" Nah.)

So when I was a little girl in Kentucky, I had an imaginary friend. His name was George, and I used to say he was a monkey after Curious George(who was my absolute favorite). But really, he was not a monkey. I just agreed with my parents that he must have been a monkey-- I know he wasn't really. I remember him being a little blonde-headed boy. Maybe he was just my imagination. But maybe not. How do you know when you were four? I used to have conversations with George. I remember talking to him the day my mom sort of freaked out when her boyfriend left her. I hid under the porch with George until my sister got there, when he left.

But really, we lived in this house that was on the property of what used to be a bigger Victorian house. The house next door to us, where my friend Robbie lived, also had been part of that bigger house long ago. I mention this because both houses were where the hauntings occurred.

The first thing that happened would be the "swinging". The lights, which were dangling bulb type lights, would swing rapidly back and forth with no real apparent cause. The windows would all be closed, so there was no draft or whatever. I used to say that George was swinging on them. But these were rapid swings-- not gentle draft sorts of swings. I remember the way the patterns of shadow and light would rock back and forth on the ceiling as we lay there on the couch. Sometimes the lights would come on when no one had flicked the switch. Maybe it was bad wiring. But it almost always happened when there was only one person in the house. It's funny how the doubts set in--you think, because you were all alone, that perhaps you just imagined it, forgot turning the switch, or something.

The next thing that happened was the Oujia board*. I know, I know (Ouija boards are bad, bad!). Me & Robbie were playing with one over at his house one day. It was winter, but it wasn't deep in the heart of snow time. In that area of Kentucky it does snow, but not really so much that it's a major snow storm. Robbie and I wanted it to snow so that we would not have to go to school. It was a bright day; no weather forecasters were predicting snow. Robbie and I, after fiddling around with the planchette and accusing each other of making it move (I sure didn't do it!) asked the board to make it snow the next day. The board moved eerily to "Yes". We screamed. It was a mixture of happiness and fear.

The next day, a freak snowstorm came to town and dropped several inches of snow. School was canceled as we wished, but my mother and Robbie's mother said we weren't allowed to play with the Ouija board again. We didn't really want to anyway.

Robbie's mom saw a woman walking in her house one night, very late. She had been sitting on the couch, watching TV and smoking cigarettes (ah, the exercise of the 70s) and fell asleep. She heard a noise and woke up to see a red-headed woman walking in her kitchen. Outraged she got up to demand the woman get the hell out. As she closed in on the woman's back, there was a shift of light and suddenly she was gone.

The final story on this particular haunting was our house when we were out of town. I don't remember exactly why we were out of town; I was only four-ish. But while out of town, all the doors and windows had been locked. When we got home, every window in the house was flung open. All the doors were flung open. The pictures on the wall were across the room from where they had been. There were some things that had been missing-- which may have been my sister's boyfriend, but the other issues were just odd. The house wasn't really trashed or anything, and the only things missing were actually my toys. But it was weird.

Many years later, we heard that a woman and a child had died long ago when the house had been one big house. The reason it had been sold and split into two different houses was because of that death. So. Unquiet spirits? Probably. Maybe. I don't know. Maybe it was just a bunch of weirdness in a place that was filled with confusion after my dad left us. Maybe it was just a couple of single moms who had too much to drink while watching TV and were a little on the depressive side.

But who was George? Who was that woman the next-door-neighbor saw? Where the heck did that snowstorm come from?

I have more hauntings to tell, but they, my friends, will come another day.....

*if you go to the link and get a freak snowstorm out of it, it wasn't me.