20: Topsy-turvy
2006
It took awhile for things to settle down after returning home from the seminar. In all honesty, it took quite awhile. The “box” Wes once proudly kept in order had exploded into tiny little pieces. He added to his own turmoil by insisting Keshia and I tell him every ghost encounter we could recall. Typically, these stories ended with us saying, “No, I’m not kidding,” and “I don’t know why you didn’t believe me.”
The seminar had changed Wes so much that after being home for only a few days, Troy came to me and asked what we had done to his dad. He told me he thought Wes was going off the deep end. Keshia joined in with, “Going?” Her assessment was that he’d already snapped.
Watching Wes jump at every sound as he rocked back and forth in the chair, I began to wonder if maybe the kids were right. His acceptance of ghosts had turned his world upside down. It seemed as though he’d gone from one extreme to the other. In times past, he’d come up with the most absurd explanations to try to explain away any paranormal activity. Now, if the icemaker made a noise or if a dish fell from the drainer, he’d think it was a ghost. I tried to be patient. After all, if he really was going bonkers, I guess I was to blame.
My patience started to diminish when Wes began talking about ghosts to everyone we knew. This left me, at times, wishing he’d turn back just a little bit. I was convinced that people with little white jackets were going to show up on our doorstep and take us all away. This new Wes was going to take some getting used to—a lot of getting used to.
It seemed our entire household was out of balance. As if dealing with Wes wasn’t bad enough, Troy felt it his duty to show every person who walked through our door the picture of Christopher. He still didn’t admit to believing in ghosts, but he couldn’t get enough of showing that picture. Going through the living room one day, I heard a friend of Troy’s exclaim, “No way, dude! You’re messing with me.”
Without seeing what they were doing, I thought Troy had probably gotten Christopher’s picture out again. I was so accustomed to keeping my belief in ghosts quiet that all of this newfound openness left me feeling very uncomfortable. I was trying to make my way through the house unnoticed when I heard Troy call to me to come there for a minute. As I walked in, I saw my suspicions were correct. Both boys were huddled around the photo. Troy asked me to tell his friend Bill the picture was “for real.”
“Well, okay,” I stammered, “it’s for real.”
Leaning in for a closer look, Bill said, “It’s the wind.”
The wind, huh? Obviously this wasn’t the first time he and Troy had discussed this topic. Putting my discomfort aside, I asked Bill if he believed in ghosts. He told me he wasn’t sure, but he didn’t think so. He continued by telling me his sister claimed their house was haunted, but he’d never seen any evidence of that. Laying the picture down, he said if anyone’s house was haunted it would have to be ours.
Misunderstanding him, I told him I hadn’t taken the picture at our house. He said he knew that, but our house was “weird.” He went on to tell me he hadn’t meant that in a bad way. It was just that crazy things happened here, especially in Troy’s room. When I asked him what he was talking about, he shrugged, “Stuff, you know, like things move around and you can hear people walking out in the hall. And that thing with the light was just freaky.”
My desire to know what Bill meant dominated my reluctance to talk about ghosts, so I asked him about the light. He said that a year or so before, when he was spending the night, he couldn’t go to sleep because of the light shining through the louvers of Troy’s closet door. Not finding a switch, he finally woke Troy up and asked him to turn it off so he could get to sleep.
“There is no light in Troy’s closet.”
Bill said that’s why it was “freaky,” because there had been a light shining out of it that night.
I’d never heard anything about this, so of course I was intrigued. I asked Troy if he’d actually seen the light as well. When he nodded his confirmation, I asked him why he’d never told me about it before. He laughed. “It was just a light. It wasn’t that big of a deal.”
Troy’s view on these happenings always left me baffled. He didn’t deny them or try to come up with explanations, but they didn’t seem to warrant much consideration either. It appeared Bill’s views were much like Troy’s. I asked him what he’d done when he found out Troy didn’t have a light in his closet. He said since there wasn’t anything he could do about it, he just rolled over and went to sleep.
Life was easier when talk of ghosts was just between Keshia and me. Troy’s unbelief/belief just kept me confused, and Wes was … still adjusting. Because of his, shall we say, fragile state of mind, I didn’t give it much consideration when he told me he thought the job site he was working on was haunted.
He was working on a major remodel for a large apartment complex. Because the complex was so spread out, he often found himself working alone in the individual apartments. Despite this fact, he complained he kept feeling as though someone was watching him. He also talked about how he’d find his tools in places he knew he hadn’t left them.
Thinking my poor husband had gone over the edge, I now found myself trying to come up with logical explanations for the things he was experiencing. When that didn’t work, I simply tried to change the subject. I’d always wanted Wes to come to terms with the fact that ghosts existed but this … was just too much.
Trimming apartments, Wes and I had a system. After he got several buildings trimmed out, I’d join him on the job site to install the doorknobs, closet rods, etc. My first day on the job, he kept asking me if I “felt” anything and if I thought the complex was haunted. I hadn’t and I didn’t. These apartments were no different from the hundreds we’d worked on before. I thought this was just more of his nuttiness.
It took me a couple of weeks to install the hardware and in that time, I hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary. When I finished the hardware, Wes set up a saw in one of the apartments so I could cut the door casing to length. This is mind-numbing repetitive work; the casing is cut and the extra piece is thrown away. I dragged the trash can to the saw, put on my headphones, and began—cut, throw away, cut, and throw away. I was the only one working in this apartment, but like Wes had complained of, I kept feeling as though someone was watching me.
When he and I left for lunch, I asked him if there was a reason he chose to have me work out of that particular apartment. Before I could say anything else he said, “You felt it! Didn’t you?”
I had felt as though someone was watching me, but I also thought that maybe all of Wes’s talk about the place being haunted was just getting to me. Our roles had definitely switched, and not wanting to encourage him in his craziness, I changed the subject.
After lunch, I returned to the saw. Cut, throw away, cut, and throw away. After working awhile, I noticed that a pile of the scrap pieces had missed the trash can. I turned off the saw, picked up the pieces, moved the trash can closer, and started again. Later, glancing at the floor, I saw another pile lying beside the trash can.
How hard can it be to hit the trash can? It’s right next to me. After cleaning up the mess, I started again. This time I watched the pieces as I tossed them into the can. One after the other they landed in the can. But then, one of them floated out. It clearly went into the can, came back out, and landed on the floor. Then it happened again. I threw them softer thinking maybe they were bouncing out. But it didn’t seem to matter how I threw them, every fourth or fifth piece came floating back out. Watching this over and over made me reconsider what Wes had said about this place being haunted.
Finishing the task and knowing Wes wasn’t quite ready to leave for the day, I decided to do a little investigating. I sat down on a stack of wood and tried to clear my mind as Ken and Carroll had taught us to do. After making sure no one else was around, I whispered, “Is there someone in here with me?”
I had gotten impressions before, but never like this. Typically, I would get a sense of whether the ghost was a man or woman, but usually not much more than that. This time the information rushed in so quickly I had trouble processing it. I felt this ghost was an older man and his name was Albert. I felt that, at one time, he worked as the maintenance man for this apartment complex and the new tools of his old trade intrigued him. Even though I hadn’t seen him, I had a clear picture in my mind of what Albert looked like.
It seemed as though I had some apologizing to do, so on our way home, I told Wes about my experience. He was thrilled. As it turned out, he was a little concerned about his sanity, too. But having someone else feel what he had felt made both of us learn to trust his judgment a little more.
Even though it was hard for me to get used to Wes talking about ghosts to our friends, family, and co-workers, I enjoyed the fact that he and I could talk about them together. This was a new experience. We frequently talked about the ghosts in our home, and Albert was usually the topic of our conversation on the way home from work.
With only a few weeks left before we finished the apartment job, Wes accepted a large order for some end tables. We decided he would continue at the apartments and I would work on the tables at the shop. Packing my tools at the end of the day, I commented to Wes that I was going to miss Albert. He laughed and told me to tell Albert not to be following him around once I left because it still kind of “creeped” him out.
I told Wes that Albert could come home with me, because I got lonely working by myself. Of course, I was kidding when I made that comment, but apparently Albert didn’t know that.