“It isn’t as terrifying to see something as it is to not know where something is.”
—DONNA RANDALL FILLIE
Today, the alarm on our old clock went off. What makes that unusual, is that the clock has been broken for years. It simply doesn’t work! Such weird little things. “They” just can’t give us peace. Just for once, I would like to spend a whole month without “their” stupid goings on.
Last night someone came down the bathroom stairs. The hall light was on so that whoever or whatever it was could be seen. I thought it was Michelle so I called out to her, but there was no answer. I sat up in bed and saw an elongated figure standing by the wall. It was not in proportion to the surrounding feature in the room. It was so bizarre that I just sat there and looked at it. First, I made sure that I was awake, and I certainly was. Anyway, it was very tall and also very thin. Its head almost touched the ceiling! What was even stranger was that it was standing exactly where the vanity is, which was hard to absorb, but there it stood, occupying the very same space. My first rational reaction was it can’t be there because the vanity is there. I tried to make out a face, but it was just a dark solid-looking shadow. It had a very long head, narrow shoulders, and a very long body. I wasn’t afraid because it just kind of stood there not moving. It appeared to have very long hair, at least down below the shoulders. Its arms were very long. It had a round area at the top, which appeared to be a head, but there were no facial features. They were all very tall and thin. When in groups of more than one, they move in a straight line. Then it just faded away. It was the first close encounter inside.
[These figures were the same as the ones we observed passing outside between the trees many years later. I don’t know why I didn’t get scared. At this point, I think that it’s better to see what is here. It isn’t as terrifying to see something as it is to not know where something is. I’m actually surprised at my reaction. Another thing, I’ve realized that whenever we change into a different bedroom, I make sure that Bob is between the door and me. I don’t want to sleep near a door. I’m not afraid of what might come into the house, but what is already here.]
Figure 5-1. A view into the room with the vanity where the first close encounter happened.
Michelle and I have recently had many discussions regarding the unexplainable situations that have occurred here in this house through the years. It has seemed for a long time that the women of the house are the ones who bear the brunt of the attention from our visitors. There are periods during which it remains so quiet and calm around here that it seems normal, but then it always starts again. Neither one of us has any answers. In the end she always groans and says, “Why me?” I think the frustration of not understanding why “they” are here is the problem. It happens in spurts and spats, and most of the experiences are unrelated; there is no obvious pattern. I know the rings disappearing and the smells and the like are similar. What none of us understands is what it all means, and if it is even supposed to mean something. Maybe it is random. Maybe this is just the “meeting place” between their realm and ours.
[I have not written for a long while. Dad passed away after a lengthy stay in the hospital. We have had a rough time about it and I have not cared what “they” do.
Mom tried to sell the house, but had no luck due to its size and condition. Dad was sicker than we knew, and wasn’t able to do a lot of things he wanted to. We bought another house in town and moved so that she could clear out the house. We lived for two years in a “clear” house. The kids are growing up fast, and Mom wants us to buy the house from her. She can live with us if we do buy it. Bob agrees that he’d like to have her there. It makes sense to all concerned.
We bought the house, but still haven’t sold our other one. Mom, the lawyers, and the rest of us worked out a deal that is acceptable to everyone involved. We were able to afford it, although our first night back here, we lay in bed looking at each other. At the same time we both said, “We must be out of our minds!”]
Tim has been around a lot lately and has also experienced some of the very strange things that occur here. This “condition,” for lack of a better term, doesn’t seem to care who it shares its presence with, as long as the person is accepted here, and is in the house.
Today we had a birthday party for Mom. We were cleaning up the house ahead of time. Michelle was in the kitchen, Bob was in the dining room, and I was in the den. I was passing by the cellar door on my way into the dining room and the door at the top of the cellar stairs started shaking violently, producing a good deal of noise. Everyone came running to where I was and we just stood there watching, without speaking. It was as if something had taken hold of the doorknob on the other side. The doorknob was twisting wildly. What a racket it made. What do you do in a situation like that? Do you open the door and see what it is that is responsible? I think not! It went on for about 30 seconds while we all stood there. We looked at each other expecting someone to make a move and open the door. It was immediately obvious that we all had the same idea—don’t do it! Eventually, Tim got a rush of adrenalin. He yanked the door open and we all looked down the stairs. Nothing was there. There was no way anyone could have gotten into the cellar without us knowing about it.
[This entry can be given a title. I will call it “The Terrified Entity.” I was glad that this one happened, because it brought forth an entirely new possibility—theory—to me. I know there have been theories before, but this one makes some sense even though it goes against everything I have believed. I will explain after I relate this entry.]
Michelle and her boyfriend were lying on the living room floor watching television last night. Looking up into the staircase, they saw someone sitting on one of the steps, but ignored it, thinking it was Bob Jr. spying on them. They actually had a quiet discussion about his watching them. They couldn’t see the whole being, but only a thin arm and elbow poking out toward the edge of the step. Tim called up the stairs that they saw him and he could quit spying on them; the figure didn’t move. Tim got up and raced up the stairs toward what he thought was Bob. When he got to the spot where they had seen the arm, nothing was there. Directly in front of Tim, he heard unseen footsteps scrambling up the stairs in a frantic, thrashing manner. Tim continued after “it.”
At the top of the staircase, “it” apparently slammed into Bob’s bedroom door, made a sharp left, and continued through the closed door into the spare room. Bob, who was in his room, yanked his door open to see what all the noise was about, just as Tim ran passed. Together, they opened the door to the spare room, where they found the curtains were twisted halfway up the closed window, and still swaying.
[Well, now I have something else to consider. This experience certainly makes it seem like whatever it was on the stairs was more afraid of Tim than he was of it. With all of the theories I’ve come up with, none of them fit the situation here. Suppose that the two or three-dimensional theory was working here. Someone once explained it to me. Seems that there could be two or three different dimensions in the same spot. So, there could be different people doing different things in different time-frames, but in the same place. If this was true, and it could actually happen, then possibly someone was just minding their own business—in their own realm or time period—when Tim appeared, and that person saw Tim as the spirit, instead of vice-versa. Seems like a long shot, but why then would something run from him in such a panic?]
Bob asked me this morning who was pounding on the headboard of the bed all night. It kept waking him up and he was really grouchy over it. I slept pretty well for a change and didn’t hear anything. He said it sounded like someone hitting their chest with a clenched fist. I don’t know about it because I hadn’t heard it.
[This is the first time in a long while that he has mentioned that he heard something. He usually refuses to even discuss it with me. That’s one reason that it was a good thing that everyone was there to see the exploding plate episode. (See diary entry #153 later in the chapter.)]
Last night everyone was kept awake by a loud thumping noise coming from inside the walls. It seemed to be everywhere. Mom finally got up and started yelling at “it” and basically gave it hell for keeping everyone awake. I had to laugh. Here is an intelligent woman, standing in the middle of a dark room, telling something that she can’t see to shut up! Well, it seemed to work because before long, it stopped.
There are some really, really strange things happening that aren’t related to the house. Is this some kind of a nightmare? I can’t comprehend how anyone would ever believe me if I told them all of this. How could I explain it? I see no way to make anyone understand. I’ve heard of similar things happening elsewhere, but I believe most people would think we are crazy. It’s incredible to actually witness these things. Absolutely incredible! Our minister understands and has explained his viewpoint on the subject. It was with great reluctance that we shared our experiences with him, but we knew he wouldn’t judge us badly because of the situation. He has stated that because he believes that there is a spiritual afterlife, that if someone was extremely close to us in life, or extremely attached to the house in life, then they may want to remain here after death. And, apparently, that would have to be an option. He didn’t sense any danger, and assured us that it was not a harmful presence. More than likely, in fact, it was someone that we knew—someone who knew us. He blessed the house and left. Of course he had no suggestions about what we could do to make them go away.
As is obvious, it didn’t take long for Tim to experience some of the “fun” we’ve all had around here. Michelle hasn’t told him anything about the house because she is concerned that he might think we’re all crazy. He slept on the couch last night in the downstairs living room. This morning, he related that “something” had lifted him off the couch about six inches and held him there for several seconds, then very gently laid him back down. Oddly, I thought, he didn’t seem at all bothered by it and acted genuinely interested in what caused the experience. Michelle told him that he must have been dreaming, but he said “no,” he was awake. We found out later that the house he lives in has the same sort of occurrences as ours and that they also keep it a private matter. Good! Now we have someone in our lives who understands.
Oh, this is actually funny. Bob woke up this morning with his pillowcase tied around his pillow. It was pulled together in the middle and looked like a huge bow tie. These “things” are really humorous. He reported that during the night he had not been disturbed by it, never felt a thing. The look on his face when he discovered it was priceless.
This morning when I was in the kitchen I heard scraping sounds coming from the living room. I thought it was Mom so I called out and asked her what she was doing. She didn’t answer me. I heard it again, and called out again. She still didn’t answer so I stepped into the room to look around. All of the furniture was pushed into the middle of the room in a haphazard fashion. My first thought was why she would do that. I called her again, and heard the upstairs toilet flushing and the door open into the upstairs hall. I called her again, and that time she answered. I asked her if she had been downstairs, and she said no, that she had been lying on the bed reading.
Bob’s friend Sarah is a regular visitor around here. They met in college and because she lives in New Milford, she has to travel back and forth a lot. We gave her a room to use so that she could take a break once in a while from the drive. She was raised in a religious family and doesn’t believe in ghosts or anything of that nature. Sarah has the upstairs corner bedroom, and we respect it as her own private space. After many, many overnight stays, she has begun to relate information about our visitors to me. She looks unconvinced such things could have happened, even while she relates the experiences to me, and never gives a personal opinion as to the cause. I believe that as time passes, she will come to her own conclusions about it. She informed me that something had been following her around the house for several weeks. I asked her what she meant by “following.” She related to me that whenever she walked, and wherever she walked, as her feet would hit the floor they were followed by the sound of another set of feet hitting the floor just behind her. She said that it was very distinctive and wasn’t an echo. She said it even happened when she walked on the carpets. In another experience, she said she came home from school one day and approached her bedroom door. As she walked down the hall toward her room, she noticed daylight coming from under her door, which is normal. What wasn’t normal, was that she saw the shadow of feet whisk across the floor. She knew no one was home, but didn’t consider the fact that someone might have broken in and was in that room. She went on in, and only one thing seemed to have been disturbed—the statue of the fisherman was rocking back and forth. She had a fit, made me take it out of her room, and refused to even walk by it when it was within sight.
[The fisherman was a gift from Mom and Dad one year for Christmas. I had wanted one for a really long time. It’s the kind that looks like a wood carving, that you see in fish markets.]
At this point in time, we are experiencing the old familiar stirrings. For so long, we have wondered why this house draws these types of happenings. I have been given a chance to add some evidence about the things that have so long aroused my curiosity.
Bob bought me a digital camera for Christmas. To learn how to use it I began taking pictures, mostly of the inside of our house. The familiar staircase, the living room, and the family members were the first subjects that I photographed. The camera takes the picture, then displays it on a small screen at the back of the camera for a few seconds so that it can be determined if the photo is one worth keeping. One day as I was taking photos, I noticed a white circle in a photo that I had just taken. It was of the staircase and the circle was just hanging there. I took another photo of the same area and no circle showed up. I thought that it might be a dust spot on the lens, or a reflection. The rest of the day, as I took additional photos, no more spots appeared. The next day I photographed the living room and when I checked the photo on the screen, there were dozens of those circles. They were of different sizes and brightness levels, from small bright spots to large pale ones. When Bob came home from work, I showed him the pictures and he thought that there may be a defect in the lens, and suggested that I take the camera and have it looked at. I am the kind of person who would just keep on using the camera without taking it in for repairs, hoping that it would clear up on its own. I cleaned the lens really well. The white circles kept appearing and I mentioned it to my neighbor. He was intrigued and decided to try his camera, taking pictures of the same places. When we examined his pictures, the same circles appeared. This certainly puzzled us; his camera had never performed in that way before. After he left, I took some more photos, and in one of them a circle was moving rapidly toward the right. It sort of looked like a slinky, blurred because of its motion. This proved to me that the spots were not on the lens, but something right there in the air. I couldn’t see them, but the flash from a camera caught them. All along I had suspected that something was really there and not just a malfunction of my camera. I told Bob that I wondered if the circles had something to do with our “visitors,” and he acted as if I must have gone crazy. I ignored him and took picture after picture. If I repeated a picture sequence in exactly the same spot, the circles would be there and then would not. That happened over and over again. If the circles were stationary and located on the lens, then they would be in the same spot all the time and also the same size and shape. After downloading the photos on to our computer, I set it on “slideshow” where one photo shows immediately after another, giving a continuous sequence of events. The circles varied from shot to shot; sometimes there would be many of them and sometimes there were none.
One night on television there was a program about haunted places and to my surprise they were talking about these floating circles that could either be seen by the eye, or photographed. This certainly drew my close attention and when a photo was shown, I recognized it immediately. They were the same circles that I had photographed in our house so many times. I went on to the internet and found some more information on the subject and was surprised to find many photos of these same objects. The articles stated that these were called “orbs,” or “ghost globules.” So, at long last the presence in our house finally had a name. After sharing this information with the family and showing the pictures as proof I began the task of convincing everyone that we should invite experts into our home to investigate the whole situation. Bob refused to let anyone in because I still think he believed that ignorance is bliss. The rest of the family had been waiting decades to finally settle this long and confusing saga. Against Bob’s better judgment, we overruled him by sheer determination and decided to invite someone in who might be able to shed some more light on the basic information that we had. At just about that same time, Bob had been taking pictures of his own as he also wanted to become familiar with the camera. He handed the camera to me one night and mentioned that he needed to delete a photo because he made some sort of a mistake. The photo, according to him, was light struck and not intelligible. I stopped him before he could get rid of it and looked at the screen on the camera. He had taken a photo through the door to the dining room. It was late in the day, toward evening, and the only light that was on at the time was one in the den, which is past the dining room and around the corner. The photo left me speechless. In the photo was a clearly defined woman, most likely from the Victorian era. She was floating in the air about three feet off the floor with her head to the left and her feet to the right. She was lying down it seemed, and there appeared to be a dog lying in front of her. From out of that vision came light beams that crossed the threshold into the living room and played across the door. Behind the reclining woman, there appeared to be a line of faces repeated one after the other. Okay, I thought, let’s make the call and find out once and for all what’s going on here.
I remembered a number of similar things that had been presented at the lectures of Ed and Lorraine Warren. I wasn’t sure that they worked on this kind of case, but I needed an answer. I decided to call and see what they may think. Lorraine answered the phone with such a sweet and pleasant voice that she immediately put me at ease. I explained what had been going on at our house and she turned me over to her husband, Ed. He listened to my story and asked me some questions about the house and the experiences. After a brief conversation, they became interested and asked if we would let them come to our house and see for themselves what was going on. I can’t begin to tell you how relieved I was. I felt honored that I would be meeting the Warrens. They arrived and greeted us and we discussed the experiences with Ed, while Lorraine walked through the house to see if she could get a feel for what was visiting us so frequently. I must say that everyone in the household instantly became comfortable with the two of them. They are two of the nicest people we have met in a long time. We all liked them. Lorraine came back into the dining room and told us that there was a younger man in our kitchen who was just roaming around and wasn’t quite sure why he was there. He had wanted to contact her, but she didn’t feel that it was a good idea at the time. She really floored us when she returned from our bathroom and said that the room had been changed. Lorraine said that when she went into that room she felt like it had been altered in some way. She told us that there were two women in there. The reason that we were so surprised was that the room had originally been a bedroom where Aunt Nonie slept. Many years later, Bob changed it into a bathroom, and moved the door from the corner of the room to the middle of the wall. There was nothing left to suggest the room had once been a bedroom. When Lorraine was upstairs, she entered the room that Michelle used to have as a child. She said that someone who had been in that room had a serious breathing problem and that it was a man. I had heard that sound in the past, like someone was having trouble breathing. It was a series of gasping sounds. We concluded our interview with Ed, and waited for his opinion on the status of the house. We all waited nervously (knowing in our hearts that it was “haunted”), but waiting to hear what an expert would say. Ed said that he considered the house to be haunted, but Lorraine added quickly that they were all human spirits and nothing to fear. They were both surprised to hear that we weren’t afraid, but we explained that the situation had existed for so long that the fear had worn off years before. We then took Ed and Lorraine upstairs to the computer and showed them a number of the photos we had taken around the house. They were impressed. Ed called the house “Ghost Central” because of the sheer number of entities that pass through it.
After the Warrens left, they arranged to follow up their visit by sending someone from their organization to do some digital recordings. The organization, which they had founded, is called New England Society for Psychic Research. Through that organization they investigate situations like ours and use the information to study related phenomena.
It would be very interesting, and probably enlightening, if we could actually hear intelligible voices. The recorders were taken room to room late into the night and the results were a bit nerve wracking. The sounds of a harpsichord were picked up in the upstairs bathroom. The house was extremely quiet at the time. No one was moving or making a sound.
Because of my acquaintance with the Warrens and the interesting work that they do, I have become even more interested in this type of phenomena. With the odd contents of the photographs that I’ve taken and the strange encounters that still take place here, I have to wonder if this will be just the beginning of our knowledge, or possibly the end of it.
I still often wake up at the same time as the house number and still check the time while driving in my car and it’s usually the same. The clock in the store usually shows this time as does the clock on the church downtown when I happen to be passing and look at it. Is it a coincidence, or am I still supposed to keep searching for more answers? I have a feeling that I’ll eventually have no choice. The answers will be there if they are supposed to be known.
[Author’s note: The photos Donna mentions here have optical explanations that make them questionable and therefore have not been included in the book as evidence.]
[Donna’s sister Diane relayed this story to me about the house number:
She told me that in the last month or so, that cash register sales receipts were totaling exactly identical to the house number and that it had happened at least five times. She said that it seemed completely crazy to her because she had worked there for around 10 years and could not remember a sequence like that. She said she even mentioned to at least three customers that it was my address. What was unusual was that with taxable items, sales, and combinations of products to total that specific amount, it would be virtually crazy to have that amount come up frequently. Then she was telling me how her friends are yelling at her for not eating right and how she needs to start cooking more and taking better care of herself. All of a sudden her computer turned on and startled her. It was really loud! Lol…it was a commercial to eat more fruit.]
Today, one of Bob’s friends went in to use the bathroom while Bob waited in the backyard for her. I wasn’t home at the time, but you can be sure she informed me when I came home of her incident. She was washing her hands and as she turned away from the sink, she caught sight of what she described as a “guy” appearing by the closet door and then walking around the corner of the door from the bathroom, going into the living room. He didn’t come from anywhere in particular; he just appeared out of nowhere. She was agitated because she thought Bob had walked in on her. She quickly put down the towel and followed the “guy” around the corner, but there was no one there. At that point her irritation changed to fright—deep down, gut wrenching, fright. She hurried back outside and found Bob waiting patiently for her some distance from the house.
[I couldn’t—I wasn’t prepared to—explain it to her. The less said the better, I figured, so I joked that ooooohhh….someone was watching her, and booga booga, all that stuff. What else can you say to someone who wouldn’t understand what is going on here? Nothing has ever hurt any of us, but if people were scared of this sort of thing, and they knew it was here, they wouldn’t come back.]
I went downstairs to get the dachshund. He’s been with us a while now and he’s wonderful. His one annoying habit is that he waits downstairs for us to go to bed, and won’t come up. He makes us call and call, and then one of us always has to go down and get him. He plays hide and seek until we get frustrated and threaten to leave him there. If we turn off the light upstairs, he cries at the foot of the stairs until we go down to get him, and then the game starts all over. Well, I had the honor of getting him last night. I went into the dining room, picked him up, and turned off the light. I got this horrifying feeling. A split second later, something tapped me on the right shoulder. Needless to say, I made it up the stairs in record time.
Tim and I were in the kitchen. I was at the sink with my back to the room, and Tim was at the counter to my right facing away from me. I was talking to him and he was bantering back to me as he fixed himself something to snack on.
All of a sudden he very quietly said, “Mom, look over there. Don’t say anything, just look.” I couldn’t imagine what he wanted me to look at, but I did just as he had requested. We both stood and watched as a “spirit” slowly materialized by the closet door. Its head had already appeared, and then its body began to emerge. When fully visible, it appeared to be a young man, but his face was turned away in the direction in which he was moving. He was slowly headed toward the door into the living room. It was a fairly solid image, but the figure had no left leg. The dog was wandering through the kitchen at the time, and walked right through where his visible leg was. The figure remained visible for a number of seconds, while we just stood there and gaped at him. He didn’t appear to realize we were there. What was extremely odd was that he was dressed in contemporary clothing. We could clearly see that he had on gray dress pants, a long-sleeve powder blue oxford shirt, and one black loafer. He appeared to have a short haircut, light sandy brown in color. He was so distinct that we could see a loop on the back of his shirt, just above the pleat. He started to disappear just as he went to his left, around the corner. Tim ran into the room while I cowered by the sink, He said, “Mom, you should feel it in here; it’s like ice.”
[Why would a spirit be dressed in a current style? I always thought that a spirit must be associated with the house or something in order to haunt it. I wracked my brains and couldn’t think of one person living or dead who looked like that. Well, I don’t know what to think at this point. Seems to get more and more confusing as time goes by. I have even stopped trying to second-guess this situation. It appears that there is no way to possibly figure out what is going on here. Things got weirder when around that same time, I was driving down the very familiar Klug Road and I saw a house that was never there before! It had lights on inside and everything. I didn’t see any people. It looked welcoming and normal, sort of a 1970s type of house, maybe something like a raised ranch. Then a few days later, I made it a point to look again since I knew there never was a house there, and it was gone. I know that road and the house that was there next to this “phantom” house well. That really puzzled me.]
We were just having dinner and my food was in the middle of my plate. I had served everyone else and had just pulled my chair up to the table. This is absolutely amazing, because my plate exploded. It didn’t crack or split, but just plain exploded. There wasn’t a piece left any bigger than a toothpick. My ziti didn’t move one inch, but ended up flat on the table in one bunch without so much as disturbed sauce. Thank God, no one got cut by the flying glass. You should have seen the look on every-one’s faces when it happened. It made such a loud noise that everyone ducked and jumped from where they were. No reason whatsoever for that to happen. The macaroni wasn’t all that hot when the plate smashed. No one else’s dish broke. I couldn’t believe it! After we regained our composure, everyone started to laugh.
Figure 5-2. The area where the “phantom house” was seen. It was right where the trees are sparse.
[When I said no bigger than a toothpick, I meant that literally! The pieces were really that small.]
There was a long, creaking sound coming from the den. I checked but nothing was in there. It was almost like a wild goose chase because as soon as I got to the den, the creaking came from upstairs in the bedroom. I went to the bedroom, and the creaking moved up into the hall. I followed, and then it went down into the living room. Alright already! What is it, funny to you “guys”?
Last night a curious thing happened to me. I was reading and a voice said to me, “I am benevolent.” I heard it as plain as day. What was so strange is that it was neither male nor female; it was just a voice. Now, I don’t want to appear to be stupid, but I went to the dictionary and looked up the word. It means well-wishing, friendly, charitable.
[Suddenly, this puts a whole new slant on things. If it can be believed, that is. I don’t know where the voice came from, but it gave me a sense of calm. I wonder if it is the entity who has been around here for so long. So, when we pass away to wherever, we become asexual. There are no men or women? It seems puzzling to me, but I suppose nobody knows for sure.]
I think I should take the opportunity again to try to put the pieces together. I know that this has been going on for many, many years. I wonder if this had gone on before we all moved here. I don’t think that anything tragic happened here although I can’t say for sure, because I don’t know the whole history of this house. I do know that for whatever the reason, whoever leaves is always drawn back here. My parents married and moved away, then came back. My aunt moved away, and came back. My sister moved away, and came back. Bob and I moved away, and came back. That’s strange in itself. But, different things that have happened are hard to put into any sort of order or meaningful context. We have the sightings of various “its.” The elongated thing in the bathroom upstairs, the woman in the polka-dotted dress, the long haired “angel,” the small thing that looked around our doorway one night, the man in the top hat and tails, the neon “dash man,” Casper the ghost on the painting. What the heck? I can’t figure the connection. Then, on top of all that is the cigar smell, and the missing and misplaced jewelry. Michelle knew who George was when there was no way she should have known that. I don’t know if this will ever end. Will it just go on and on from one weird thing to another? Someday in the future will another family move in here and experience the same things? Will we be unable, or unwilling to move from here from generation to generation?
There are more questions than answers. I’m frustrated and my parents are frustrated. Bob doesn’t care as long as nothing gets in his face. He tends to ignore it.
In 1998, when our first dog, Skippy, died, I saw him trot across the kitchen floor from the other room. I was in the den and had a clear line of vision to the kitchen and saw him walk right to left toward the back door.
More and more, I’m starting to think that this is an earthbound spirit of some sort. I am nearly convinced that it is a relative. I don’t like the feeling of surprise that comes with this problem we have. Everything will be quiet, and the last thing on our minds is a ghost. Then bang, it starts all over again. I’ve gotten this far in my writing, and I never explained my family. I suppose that it would be interesting for whoever reads this to know about us.
My grandfather George was an extremely kind and gentle man. He was adopted from an orphanage in Winsted, Connecticut, when he was about 14 years old. The family that took him was looking for help on their farm. At that time, it was common practice to do this. He went into the service at a very young age and was stationed in the Philippine Islands. There he served in the cavalry, and was involved in the takeover of the islands from the Morrow Indians. In later years, he owned his own dairy farm and was a milkman, giving much of it away to needy families during the Depression. He was an honored and respected member of the community. I always thought that he looked like Bing Crosby.
My grandmother Rhoda was also adopted. The story was a little more tragic than with my grandfather, but it had a happy ending. She was the illegitimate daughter of a young English girl. The girl had come from England to serve as a maid to a wealthy family in Connecticut. She fell in love with their son, but could not marry him because of her class. When she became pregnant, she was forced from their home to avoid a scandal. On her own, and very young with no source of income, she approached the home of an elderly couple. Begging them to take her baby, she told them that she would return as soon as she found employment. She never did return, and the old couple could not care for the child, so she was given to a family who would raise her. That family was the same one that took my grandfather in, and the rest is history.
My father was brought up on Long Island in fairly wealthy circumstances. He was a child of short dress pants and ponies. His father died when he was a child, but his mother raised him well. He had an excellent sense of humor, and rarely became angry. When we heard someone laughing, it was usually because of him. He enjoyed going hunting, although I don’t think he ever killed anything. He was also was a dedicated fisherman. He belonged to the local volunteer fire department, and served as chief, deputy chief, and in other capacities through the years. He loved camping, but not when everything went smoothly. He always said that great vacations were soon forgotten; only the ones where things went wrong were memorable. We never knew when we might find a rubber snake in our sleeping bags. He was an honorable man. Dad had his moment in the sun when he rescued a boy who had fallen through the ice in the river behind where he worked. He made a lifeline and crawled out onto the ice, looping it around the boy and saving his life. It made the papers. He was one of a kind, and I see humor in almost everything because of him.
My mother is still with us. She is my best friend. We talk on the phone every day, and I always ask her to go cruising with Michelle and me. She is my partner in crime, and although she may not always agree with me, she sees my point of view.
My mother was raised on a farm, and had a good life there. She played in the fields, picked berries, and had a dog named Fluffy. While most kids shy away from their parents when they get older, my sister and I fight over who will get to keep her. For now my sister has won, but Bob and I had her for a few years with us. She tells everyone that she has a summer home and a winter home. She is a classic.
Bob, my husband, came from a large family, which consisted of six boys. His mother raised them by herself and did a very good job. Bob is a driven man. He certainly is more conservative than I am, but even so, still believes that we have some unearthly visitors.
He is methodical, and intense. He keeps me grounded, and I drive him crazy. It’s a good balance. There are times when I laugh so hard that I could fall over. He just looks at me in a strange way accepting those moments, but never really understanding them. Once when we went camping he was standing by the fire while our son toasted a marshmallow. The thing caught on fire, so he whipped the stick back and forth trying to fan out the flames. The smoking marshmallow flew off the stick, charged directly at my husband’s bare chest, and landed there in a gooey mess. Being so hot, it caused him to scream and grab it in his fingers. He threw it on to the ground, checked his chest, and then turned to walk away. As he did, his bare foot stepped squarely on the hot mess, and he promptly hopped on one foot while trying to scrape it off with his hand. In doing this, he lost his balance, hopped backward a couple of times, and fell directly into a lawn chair. The relieved look lasted only a split second, as the chair quickly collapsed and he ended up on the ground. I thought I would die laughing. It was like a choreographed dance number.
I am always amazed that the years have gone by so fast. We have certainly come a long way over the years. Diane and I always have a good time together. When we get together there is usually a lot of comedy involved. She and I get along really well and always have. We run different ways and have different interests, but are very much alike. We both have Dad’s sense of humor, but I tend to get more carried away at times. Our family history draws us close, and we love to get together and re-tell some of the old stories.
The last two members of the family would be Michelle and Bob, our children. Michelle is a joy. Now an adult, she has been married for nine years to a wonderful guy who treats her like a queen. She has gotten a full dose of the humor that abounds in our family. Through high school, she was especially liked by her teachers and could get away with most anything. The machine shop was off limits to students who weren’t in the classes there, but Michelle would take lunch every day to the students in shop. The teachers called her meals on heels, because they could hear her shoes clicking on the tile as she went down the hall. They never stopped her. She also took guitar lessons for three years, but finally gave up because she still couldn’t play. We bought her a red flying V guitar with a brass whammy bar that looked very impressive. She carried it to school every day, and although no one ever heard her play it, they assumed that she could. The harpists and other members of the orchestra were outraged when she was awarded “Best Musician” of her class. She felt guilty, but accepted it with grace. She went through the crazy dress styles that were popular then, and her dad and I always get a kick out of how she’s changed. She used to swear that heavy metal was the best, and our house would be rocking off the foundation as she blared her favorite music. Now very subdued, we can find her in her pansy garden, playing with her rescued dogs, or refinishing furniture in her spare time. We have always had a very close relationship, and to this day she can wrap us around her little finger. Michelle has had some unusual situations happen in her own house, which is an 1880s Victorian about twenty miles from us. I still think that she is the missing piece in the broad picture of what our “visitors” were interested in. I babysit her dogs when she and Tim travel, and have had some situations arise while I was there in that house. Once, while I was asleep in their room, I heard a crash at the foot of the stairs. The dogs were on the bed with me, and didn’t bark. In the morning when I went downstairs, a ship made of seashells was lying on one of the stairs. It had previously been on the windowsill upstairs, about six feet from the edge of the stairs. It couldn’t have just fallen and slid across the floor; it had to have taken a flying leap and jumped over the railing. Oddly, not even one shell broke. Another thing that happened, which was witnessed by ten people, occurred at a birthday party she held for me. She has an antique piano in her dining room, and the top is adorned with family pictures. There are large frames, small frames, square, and oval. Diane and I were talking about how Grandpa George used to take us for popsicles in the summer and would let us ride in the back of his truck. We were reliving memories about him. We sat down to eat, and because her dining room is fairly small, she placed her father and me at a single table, near the front of the piano. While we were eating, suddenly a picture on top of the piano lifted up, raised over two pictures in front of it, and dropped down onto the middle of our table. We all saw it, and things became very quiet. When we picked up the picture and looked at it, it was one of Grandpa and me sitting on the front porch on the swing. It had been taken when I was about ten years old.
Last, but certainly not least, is Bob. He has grown into a very proper young man. We attended his college graduation this past weekend where he received a degree in fine arts. (Michelle and I have the same degree from the same college. It is interesting how such things happen.) Anyway, Bob is tall and a handsome devil with bright baby blue eyes. No matter what he did in school, not that he did anything bad, his teachers all said that all he had to do was flash his eyes, and they melted. I think his girlfriend, Elaina, feels the same way. He works at a company that makes harps, dulcimers, and other wooden instruments. He has become a master wood worker, but doesn’t want to make it his life work. Bob is more interested in becoming a millionaire and I believe he will. He and I love our heart-to-heart talks. Over the last few years he has become interested in religion and will discuss in length the history, the theories involved, and the scientific reasoning regarding it. We have shared many special moments. I always believed that kids need to have lots of time to just be kids and sometimes just waste a day instead of always having to answer to authority. So, one day when he was in junior high, I called the school to tell them that he would not be in. I woke him up and took him to an amusement park for the day. We went on the rides, played in the arcade, and ate junk food all day. It was our secret, and to this day no one is the wiser. The most precious memories are made in that way. I took him fishing, swimming, and to the movies with his friends. We made tents on the clotheslines. I bought a huge blow-up dinosaur and put it in his room. We always had fun and, looking back on our time together, he appreciates that. He and Michelle have a wonderful relationship. They are very close and love to get together and tell stories about what a befuddled mother I was when they pulled pranks on me. Their favorite is when they mixed all of my spices together. They put everything in the pepper shaker, including green Christmas sugar. Bob and I were entertaining that night and I made mashed potatoes. When I went to sprinkle pepper into them, the green sugar came out and made the potatoes green. You never saw two kids hide so fast. They still love to tell that one.
So, maybe we have a bit more enthusiasm for fun than a lot of folks, but we have nothing in our background that would invite “visitors.” None of us are interested in the occult, or have committed any kind of atrocity against society. We are normal, family-loving individuals. Recently, I spoke to a friend about this book and how it came about. She was horrified, and told me that we were glorifying this sort of action by believing that it happened. Also, that such occurrences could not be from God, but had to be from Satan. I can’t stress enough that each and every one of these entries happened exactly as stated. No one can possibly understand what has been happening here unless they have witnessed these occurrences for themselves. We have watched all of this transpiring for many years, and it is truly unbelievable, even to us—not that it has taken place but its nature. Is it from Satan? Then for what purpose? Is it from God? Then for what purpose? After so many years of these experiences, we all agree that it is what it is. Perhaps there can be no explanation. There is a middle ground somewhere, and that is where we sit. There are many more years of entries to go, so I continue…
I woke up at 3:19 a.m. really disoriented and feeling confused. Of course it was the middle of the night and all, but it was different than just feeling tired. It was like a sense of time, wrong time. It’s hard to explain. Anyway, I heard a little girl’s voice in the next room. It was very clear and precise. She sounded about five years old. She said, “Mommy, read me a story.” Everything else was quiet except for her voice. I sat up in bed and waited to see if there would be more, but the rest of the night was quiet as far as I know.
Once again I have realized the amazing number of entries that are related. I really think that if I were anyone else, I would have been gone from here after #2!
Even now as I walked past the door in the kitchen, I smelled the scent of spring flowers. There are none in here just now as it is February. Judy, the new puppy, has an invisible playmate that she jumps at and watches for hours. Oh, and I won’t forget the photo that I took yesterday of the dark hallway that clearly showed streams of light coming from absolutely nowhere. Finally, a set of muffled voices last night that visited on and on with each other. I finally put the pillow over my head and drifted off to sleep.
Because of the period of time involved and having no reason to believe that these experiences won’t continue for many years, I have decided to conclude my entries in this diary for now.
Those of us who remain in this house, and those who visit this house will continue to witness the never-ending parade of ghostly visitors. As in the past, we continue to deal with each situation as it arises. I believe that I will still carry on with my journal until such time that Bob and I no longer own the house. I have accurately recorded the experiences and have unraveled as much of this mystery as I can for now, but am sure that in the future there will be more clues to follow.
Dad’s wish had always been that the location of the house—as a “haunted place”—not be known. In earlier entries I stated that I couldn’t understand his reasoning about that. As I’ve grown up and become more aware of the consequences of releasing this information, I have come to agree with him. It is difficult to relate this type of information to the public without divulging the location. I realize that telling a story such as this would certainly invite curiosity seekers and more than one local reporter. The publicity would not be appreciated by our neighbors, who like us are stubborn old New England Yankees. Still, we have our close friends who visit and are amused by the situation here. One of them has a difficult time breathing when she sits in our living room. She says that it feels like something is on her chest, and it’s heavy. Possibly, sometime in the past, a person suffered with this disorder and in some way the experience is transferred to her. Who knows?
You may not be alone as you read this. You may explain away that cold spot in the hall, or that noise in the upstairs bedroom. You may ridicule those that come forward with this type of information, but do you really know for sure that such things don’t—can’t—exist? Could you be a witness to these activities and refuse to believe that it happened in front of your eyes? A haunting doesn’t discriminate between believers and non-believers. They come to you if you believe or not. Tonight when you are tucked in your bed, safe and secure, remember that the paranormal doesn’t recognize security systems or locked doors. They may come up through the floor or down from the attic. It doesn’t even matter if there is someone occupying the same bed or room as you, they will come if they want to come.
Our ghostly visitors are here for the duration—they will, in all likelihood, remain long after the rest of us are long gone. In the meantime, we are also here for the duration. Possibly one day scientific proof will be available for those who doubt us. Until that day, we who have witnessed ghostly phenomena know the truth.
The disembodied voices in the middle of the night, the thumps and bumps, and ghostly presences will continue as they work to find their ways on into eternity, somewhere between here and heaven.