26: The Two of Us?
2009
Becoming empty nesters left Wes and me with the task of deciding what to do with the children’s rooms. It seemed as though we’d spent the majority of our married lives trying to make the house big enough to accommodate our family of four. Now we had more room than the two of us needed and the recently vacated bedrooms were unused. We talked about converting Troy’s room into another home office, and replacing Keshia’s twin-sized bed with a double bed and turning her room into a guest room.
Being a “clean freak,” as my children so often put it, I did go into their rooms occasionally to dust and vacuum. Going into Troy’s room, I’d find exactly what you’d expect from an unoccupied room—nothing. Going into Keshia’s room was a little different. Someone was in there and whoever it was made me uncomfortable. It seemed as though the ghost would stand where I’d stand. It would walk where I’d walk. Even though the room was empty, it felt crowded. I kept thinking whoever was in there thought I was invading Keshia’s privacy. These feelings never manifested into anything more. That is, until I spent the night there.
Wes was working so many hours that his snoring was out of control. Lying awake in bed one night with the trainlike snoring roaring in my ears, I grabbed my pillow and went to Keshia’s room. By this time, it was about two o’clock in the morning and I was exhausted. I turned down the sheets and fell into her bed.
We didn’t have air-conditioning in the back part of the house, and even though it was hot summertime, her room was cold. With only a sheet and light bedspread, I eventually started to shake. The temperatures had reached triple digits that day and I was freezing. Keshia used to say she had “ghost conditioning.” I got up, retrieved a blanket from her closet, and went back to bed.
Snuggling under the blanket, I went to sleep. After being asleep for only a little while, I awoke with a jolt. I couldn’t figure out why I had woken in such a panic. Just as I tried to get back to sleep, I felt a light push on my shoulder. I couldn’t see anything in the dark, but I felt a hand grip my shoulder and give a much harder shove.
I bolted out of the bed and turned on the light. The words “You shouldn’t be in here,” repeated over and over in my head. I couldn’t be sure if this was something I was picking up from the ghost. What I did know was that I wasn’t about to sleep in that room. I took my pillow and went to the couch.
When it came time to clean the children’s rooms again, I found myself putting off going into Keshia’s room altogether. Postponing it as long as I could and knowing the dust bunnies must be taking over, I finally resolved to get it done. I started by dusting the furniture and by the time I was ready to vacuum, the daunting feelings had returned. I finished as quickly as possible. Trying to make myself feel better, I looked around the empty room and said, “I have a right to be in here, you know. This is my house.” I walked out and shut the door. Before I made it down the hall, I heard a loud thump against the wall. I picked up the pace and thought, Okay, maybe I don’t.
A few days later Keshia and Stephen came over for dinner and I mentioned to her that I was uncomfortable going into her old room. I told her she should tell her “friends” that she’d moved and it was okay for me to be in there.
Even though I’d been joking when I told her to take care of the problem, I couldn’t help but wonder if it might actually work. After all, my impression of the situation was that whoever was in there felt it was their responsibility to protect Keshia and her privacy.
A few days later, I decided to store some things in Keshia’s closet; I stood outside the bedroom door, dreading to go in. I took a few deep breaths, squared my shoulders, held my head high, and marched in. Determined to accomplish my mission, I went straight to the closet. After putting a few boxes away, I went for another load, then another. I could tell there was a difference in the room. There was no fear, no uncomfortable feelings, and no thoughts of how I shouldn’t be there.
I went back into her room the next day with the sole purpose of checking the “feel” of the room; I was again pleasantly surprised. There was someone in there but whoever it was no longer wanted me out. This I could live with. I didn’t know what had brought about the change, but I was glad to see it.
A week or so passed by the next time Keshia and Stephen came over. As we sat and talked, I told her that I was thinking about re-texturing and painting her old room. She said if I was willing to spend that much time in there then her talk with the ghosts must have worked. I didn’t know she’d actually done as I’d suggested, but now I understood why her room no longer scared me.
With the kids gone, I guess some of the ghosts had gotten bored with hanging out in the uninhabited part of the house because Wes and I started to see more activity in other rooms.
One thing we couldn’t ignore was that one of the ghosts had taken to answering our phone. It had happened in the past, but never this frequently. At first, we thought we were just getting a lot of hang-up calls because the phone would ring and before we could get to it, it would quit. Hearing the ringing phone suddenly stop, we assumed the caller had hung up until the phone started making the annoying beep, beep, beep, sound as if it had been left off the hook.
After experiencing this multiple times, we got in the habit of picking up the phone even after it had stopped ringing. Usually the caller would still be on the line and would ask what had taken us so long to speak after we’d picked up the phone. Depending on the caller, we generally didn’t offer to tell them we weren’t the ones who had actually answered the phone.
The ghost could not only answer the phone, but could also hang it up. After all these years, my sister Wanda still called the same time every morning. Expecting her call, I normally answered the phone before the ghosts had a chance to beat me to it. Most mornings while we were talking, the phone would suddenly go dead. By looking at my phone, I could see it wasn’t a lost connection; the green light was off, signifying the phone had been hung up.
After this happened multiple times, I finally told her I thought the ghost was disconnecting our call. She’d long ago given up on getting me to move. She simply said she just didn’t know how we could stay in that house.
The ghost took this game to another level by showing us it was capable of more than simply answering and hanging up the phone. While working on the computer one day I heard the phone ring. By finishing what I was doing before answering the phone, I allowed the ghost to get to it before I did. When I got to the phone, picked it up, and said, “Hello,” there was no one on the line. I put the phone back in its cradle. As I walked off, it rang again. When I picked it up, my sister Tammy asked why Wes had hung up on her. She said she had just called the house and Wes answered the phone, said hello, and hung up.
Wes was in the house, but he was in the bathroom. I yelled out to him to see if he had answered the phone. He hadn’t. When I told Tammy it wasn’t him, she asked who else was at the house, because it sounded like Wes. She went on to say the phone had rung several times when a man answered, said hello, and promptly hung up.
Not being able to come up with any viable excuses, I told her if a man had answered the phone, it must have been one of our ghosts because there wasn’t anyone else at our house.
Like most of the family, Tammy knew we had ghosts, but to have one actually talk to her was a new experience. After stammering into the phone, she told me she would never call my weird little house again.
Wes loved to give my sisters a hard time and now that he was out of the bathroom and listening to the conversation, Wes said he loved having ghosts. He’d been trying for years to get rid of the sisters-in-law and the ghost got rid of one of them with one little phone call.
Wes was intrigued with this phone-answering ghost. He told Charlie, one of his employees, all about it. Charlie believed in ghosts and had had quite a few experiences himself. Like us, he found the topic of ghosts fascinating, so we knew we didn’t have to worry about the ghosts chasing him off. He’d already had a couple of experiences at the shop. He’d seen shadows and heard noises but had never been put off by it.
One day while working at the shop, he and Wes came to the house for their lunch break. After visiting with them for a while, I went back outside to work in the garden. As I worked, I heard the phone ring. Knowing Wes would answer it, I didn’t rush in. I finished what I was doing and went inside to see who’d called. I found Charlie sitting alone at the dining room table finishing his lunch. I asked him where Wes was.
Charlie pointed down the hall and said he thought Wes was in the bathroom. Charlie said he’d thought about answering the phone, but it quit ringing after only two rings.
I then heard the beep, beep, beep. I turned to Charlie. He raised his eyebrows, then said, “What the … ? Was that … ?” He smiled. “Hey Wes,” he hollered down the hall. “Your ghost is answering the phone again.”
Wes had found a good employee in Charlie. He was a hard worker, and equally important around our home, he wasn’t intimidated by ghosts.