Our House Ghosts
Oct 26 '04
The Bottom Line The Bottom Line: Some ties are stronger than death.
We bought our house here in Ohio back in 2000, not that long ago it would seem. We have had nothing but good times since we moved in here and it makes time seem to stretch.
The history of this house is not that old. The house was built in 1980. We are only the second owners of this place. The couple who bought this house when it was built came from Cleveland, and it was their retirement home. On the river, with a lovely wooded lot it makes the perfect ‘cabin in the woods’, close to town but far enough out in a lovely resort area to be the retirement home of their dreams.
The builder was a crook, as the story is told. He built many homes in this area on speculation in the real estate boom of the 1980s, but abandoned the project leaving many homes incomplete, many of them having been bought while the homes were still in the building phases, and many owners were left holding the mortgages and deeds to incomplete homes while the builder went on permanent vacation in Florida. A couple of companies who were providing supplies for these homes also were left holding large debts the builder abandoned, and it resulted in one or two going bankrupt.
Enter the couple who bought this house. He was an immigrant, who worked as a carpenter all his life in Cleveland, and she was a diabetic with some serious medical issues but she seemed to be quite happy about it all. She was the one we bought the house from. She was a lovely lady.
He finished the floors to the house, and put in the kitchen. It is a custom kitchen, with a lot of cabinets and counters all Formica finish. Same with the bathroom. He also helped his son start to finish the lower level, which was half done when we saw the house for the first time.
The story is they lived here from 1980 to about 1998. The son was supposed to move in back in 1993 or so, but suffered an accident, and ended up staying in Cleveland where he could be taken care of. Tragic story. It becomes worse. In 1995, the husband was taken ill with cancer. He passed away that year. That left the poor woman alone in the woods. She was legally blind, diabetic, and you must realize, this house is way out in the woods. You need a car to get anywhere. The driveway is over 300 feet long, just to get to the road, much less the mailbox.
She lived here all alone for two and a half years. When we bought the house, the bedroom had a chain lock on the inside. She must have been that scared when she lived here, to have a lock like that on the bedroom door. There is what appears to be a burn mark on the kitchen rug. (Yea, the kitchen has this nylon rug thing… we will be switching that out for a wood floor shortly,) It appears she had a hot grease spill that burned the rug. For those two plus years, she had it hard. Neighbors are quick with stories about these two. It seems they were well liked, and some neighbors remained in touch with her.
There were many things that had gone wrong with the house that she obviously could not fix since her husband passed over. Some of the appliances had broken; the house was not cleaned or maintained. The back deck, which was never painted, and appeared to be made of materials that were not treated and was falling down.
Well, as we were told by her son and by her at the closing, she lived there for two and a half years after her husband died. She then had a bad accident, left her unable to walk, and her son finally came to take her back to Cleveland, where she lived at the time with her two sons.
The house remained empty for the next two and a half years. She could not part with it. Too many good memories for her. She refused to sell. Till about three months before we saw the house.
As we drove up, we could not see the house. It was overgrown, and from the driveway, all you could see were trees and bushes that hid the house. The property, about 4 plus acres, was a jungle. You could not get to the river; trees had come down, even one on the house, which they had to fix before it went on the market. At that point, the son finally talked mom into selling the house.
I am a witch. Most of you know that. When I saw the house, the natural state of the property, I thought… wow, this is fabulous. And I also thought… what a mess. I’m a city girl. While I like natural, I also don’t like clean up. But the price of the house was more than reasonable, and we decided to purchase the house.
Now, there is nothing scary so far. Unless you count the cleanup. It took us a couple of years to get the house to where we wanted it. But we are happy with the efforts we have put into it. The reason I went into this is that you need the history to understand what happens next.
The first night we are in the house, I do a cleansing. Witches do that. Salt on the floors to remove the energies of the previous owners, to give the house a neutral feeling. Yes, I could feel the old owners here. Actually, the husband was still here. He never left.
He wandered around the house, making the floor board’s creek. He took to turning lights on and off. We thought it was a short… called the electrician. Well, ok, there was a dead chipmunk in the circuit breaker panel when the electrician opened it up, but that only explained why some circuits didn’t work. It did not explain the lights going on and off.
He wandered around on the decks. We didn’t go out on them much; they ‘bounced’ with wood that was no longer able to stand up to weight. But he wandered around the house, upstairs and downstairs.
I got fed up with it when I got up one night and ‘bumped’ into him in the bathroom. Damn, scared the living daylights out of me. I was half asleep and didn’t expect to find him in the bathroom.
Enough was enough. I decided right then and there to ‘banish’ him. This was our house now. He didn’t like the wallpaper coming down in the kitchen… and messed with the lights in there for weeks afterwards. He didn’t like my taking the lock off the bedroom door and messed with the lights there as well. Mind you, he was not malicious, just a pain in the butt. Annoying. I didn’t mind him around, but I also was tired of bumping into him all the time.
Now back to the bathroom. Enough was enough… and the next day I sat and had a ‘talk’ with him. This was our house now. He had to leave us alone. Discussion was… he was staying. Damn, a very strong willed spirit. OK, can we compromise? If we’re home, he is outside. When we leave, we don’t care where he goes, as long as he does not touch anything. Stop messing with the lights.
Well, he kept it for the most part. He did spook a few of our guests, who spent time in the downstairs guest room. I figure he was roaming the lower level while we slept. Well, one guest in particular ran into him during a nightly visit to the lower bathroom. She was, of course, startled, but she also told him to go wander somewhere else, she wanted her privacy. He seemed to wander off. A couple of our witchy friends ran into him, and we did not make it a point to discuss him till AFTER they would encounter him. No sense upsetting our guests. Most of them shrugged it off anyway, they were used to it.
Well, we came to a kind of understanding, however the lights in the lower level always seemed to remind us there was someone else wandering around. We adjusted.
Three years come and go, we have settled into our home and become used to the little reminders that he is here. We peacefully co-exist. He messes with the lights in the lower level, and I don’t run into him in the bathroom anymore.
That January was snowy. Lots and lots of snow, several days of it and there was fresh powder and it was bitter cold that morning. We had the fireplaces going, heating the house. I woke up early, just before the sun, to put more wood on the fires. That’s how hubby and I do it. He is the night owl; he stacks it up before he goes to bed. I am the early bird; I check them in the morning.
It was an early Sunday morning in mid January and it had stopped snowing finally; it was promising to be a beautiful morning. The sun had just started to lighten the winter sky. I put the wood in the fireplaces, and decided to get the laundry. Down the stairs I go, over to the laundry room. As I am taking the clothes out of the dryer, I hear a woman’s voice calling down the stairs. It was not loud, I couldn’t quite make out what she said, but it startled me. Who would be over this early in the morning? What’s wrong? I walk over to the stairs, and call up the stairs. No answer. Hmmmmm…..
I’m hearing things. OK… back to the laundry. Just as I get to the dryer, again, a woman’s voice calls down the stairs again. OK, someone is here. Back to the stairs, and I’m calling up the stairs, “who’s here”. No answer. As I get to the top landing, I hear only my husband snoring in the bedroom. I checked around the house. No one is here. The front door is locked.
OK, this is weird, but what’s going on? I wandered past the back door to the deck, and now I see two people wandering down the back end of the property to the river. OK, who are these people and what are they doing wandering around my place. I watched them for a minute in the light of the rising sun trying to see who they are. They appeared to be two older people. I wonder if that’s some neighbor. I don’t recognize them and that snow is no place for anyone to be walking down that hill. Damn, these people around here don’t have a lick of sense sometimes.
I got my pants and shoes on, grabbed a coat and went out the back door. I stood for a second to see how far they got, and…. There is no one there.
I didn’t see anyone. I started to look for their tracks in the snow, to see where they went… and there were none. Only my own tracks to the edge of the hill. There were no footprints down the hill.
I stopped for a second. This was weird. The property is not that big that they could have gotten that far in the few minutes it took me to get dressed. And what’s with the no footprints thing. This was totally weird. Almost… spooky.
It took me a few days to get this figured out. The information came from a neighbor. Did you hear… the woman who owned your house finally passed away. When, I asked? Oh, last Sunday she says to me. Last Sunday, early in the morning. She was in the hospital for a week before she passed.
Last Sunday. The morning I was up at sunrise. The calling down the stairs. A woman’s voice. The husband had been wandering around the lower level. She came back for him. It would make sense that she would call down the stairs for him. He had been waiting for her all that time.
And they took a final walk down to the river together. Duh… silly me. Why hadn’t I figured that out.
I still have the image of the two of them walking hand in hand in the snow down to the river in the sunrise.
This has been my contribution to The Great Ghost Write-Off of jps246. See
Ghost Write Off
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Member: Boudica
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Yes, I am a witch. And?
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