A Halloween Story

I was thinking last night that I am brave enough to tell you a Halloween story. When my grand parents found the land that I now live on, it was in the middle of an eighty acre section. The original homesteaders had broken it up into parcels.
My grandparents bought a 10 acre parcel. There was a Quonset hut and an Old
farm house. My grandparents talked my Mom and Dad into coming to live here
with them. It was in a state of disrepair so they had to do lots of work before
we all moved out here. My grand parents lived in the Quonset hut and we
lived in the farm house.



When I was looking at the original deed I saw that the farm house had been moved
out to this place in 1910 I wished I knew where it was moved from.
My Mom and my grandmother worked and worked, there was 12 to 16 layers of wall paper
on the walls of the house and as they stripped it off it was like going back in time.
Finally they got to the newspapers that someone had pasted up and they stopped and
then they papered over that. As a 4 year old it seemed like days and days.

There were mice everywhere so my Mom was always saving tin cans that she cut up and placed
over the mouse holes. The house was so cold and drafty that they would shut the doors off
of rooms and we didn't go into them until it has warmed up in the spring.



It was a happy house as far as I remember it when we lived there. My Dad bought a house
and he had it moved in and then we moved there and my grandparents moved into the old house.

After my grand mother moved in maybe it was my imagination maybe it was the stories I told
and scared myself. But I was afraid of the closet in the front bedroom. The ceilings
in the closet were very tall and at the top of that closet was the attic. The ceiling had these
huge cracks and the way they were cracked always scared me.

In the back of the closet was a blanket chest. To me it looked like a casket. So I made up
stories about there being a dead baby that the people who lived there first left, before my grandparents and
if you lifted the lid you could see the baby. We meaning me and all of my cousins. Of course we never lifted the lid.

My grandmother told stories of her nightly visits from her " ghost." Of course we just thought
it was my grand mother just telling stories and then we decided to see if it was true.
My cousins and I decided to see if what she said happened. So one night we decided to
sit up and watch.
We locked the front door. The doors were about 10 feet tall with the kind of doors that
used skeleton keys. The door knobs were the old kind made out of metal. So we sat
and watched and waited. At 9:00 P.M. We heard the sound of footsteps walking up the steps and then across the porch, to the front door.
We thought it was my Dad coming to play a trick. We watched as the door knob turned
and the door opened. We watched as the door opened further as if a person was there
then the door shut, the feeling of cold air came into the room then the bedroom door
opened and shut by itself as if someone was going to the bedroom.



We were all speechless and I know our eyes were as "big as saucers." We ran to the front
door and it was still locked. My grand mother laughed and said, see I told you.
It was a nightly occurrence, my grandmother was never afraid. We really didn't
think about it or talk about it much anymore it was sort of accepted. If we happened to
be there and the door would always opened about the same time and my grandmother would
remark, " Well, my ghost is home, I guess it is time to go to bed."

Years later she tore that house down and built a new one in its place. I have always wondered
what could have caused that phenomenon, what caused the steps outside on the porch to creak
as if someone was walking across or how was it the door opened at the same time every night
and the bed room door opened and shut.

I do know, that in my child like brain, I knew that it lived in that closet and lived up in the attic.
I never saw anything only felt the cold and I never heard anything only the sound of the doors.

I think I could use this story to write a really scary one. Who knows I might try.
I wrote this out the other day. I can't explain today what it was or if it was just
an over active imagination or lots of things going on but as a kid it seemed real
and these are how I remember them. I know that the brain does fill in the blanks
so maybe that is what I have done in my memory. I have always loved ghost stories
so maybe that is all I have done is add one to my memory.
So do you have one?

Have a lovely weekend,
~Kim~

2 comments:

TexWisGirl said...

i totally believe in ghosts and spirits. if we believe in souls, how can we not believe that they can remain here in some instances? at least your family's was a friendly one! :)

October 20, 2011 5:04 PM

Patrice said...

I have goose bumps!Cool story.

October 20, 2011 5:08 PM