Dear Readers,
There are many things I would like to share with you in this
short season of scary thoughts and imaginings, and I don’t want to leave out
vital details. For those reasons I am dividing this long piece into three
parts. Each one relates one or more true and sometimes creepy experiences of my
family at our one hundred twenty-year-old home at the top of a Barre City hill.
I invite you to read this first installment now and pick up the October 23rd
and 30th editions of The World to continue reading. These true tales may be best enjoyed in a
candle-lit room on a cold and windy midnight.
Subtle Hauntings?
-installment one-
By G. E. Shuman
Many full moons, fallen leaves, and Halloween seasons ago my
family bought our old house on the hill from an elderly Barre couple who, at
the time, had lived in the house for over forty years. Their kids had grown,
and the house was too much work and just too much house for the couple. Those
are the reasons they gave for wanting to leave the place. I remember, while
discussing our deal on the house, the old man of the couple looking directly at
me and relating that they were tired, that the house had been on the market for
a year, (at a very good price I will add,) and that only four people had even
stopped to look at it, before our inquiry. There was some look of puzzled
disbelief if not desperation in those eyes.
Time is a strange thing, and it is funny, or not so funny,
how it passes, how changes all around you can occur with barely a notice or
warning. This is especially, I think, if you are surrounded by a place that
barely changes at all. We are now the’ elderly’ couple living in the house and
have just finished our own fortieth year here. As with the previous owners, our
children have grown, along with even most of our grandchildren. We have no
plans to leave the house, but plans can change; things can happen to convince
you to go. Given enough time they ultimately must do so, and then you will go.
A suitable time of year to talk about our spooky old house
on the hill seems to be when others are in the mood to hear such things. It is
October and night comes a bit earlier each day now, blanketing the fallen
leaves with ever-lengthening blackness. The winds are colder and stronger than
they were, especially during the night; gnarled ‘witch finger’ bare boned
branches of our large maple tree rub and creak and complain to the world.
Jack-o-lanterns and ghosts adorn the neighborhood, even up here on the hill.
So, in honor the old house and everyone who has grown up
here, or at least spent a night here, I will now relate some things that have
happened within these walls, over the many years of our occupancy.
Disclaimer: I personally do not believe in ghosts, ghouls,
or goblins. I do believe my own eyes and
ears and promise you that every single thing I will tell you here is absolutely
true.
-The Attic-
Our grown and oldest child, Chrissy, is, to this day, fairly
convinced that something besides humans and the occasional mouse lives in our
old house on the hill. I have never asked her directly, but I’m sure something
must have scared her horribly here when she was a young child. She recently
confided to me: “I really have heard and seen things there, Dad.”
For years Chrissy had one of the upstairs bedrooms as her
own and would tell you today that she had often heard footfalls, in the night,
as of something walking across the attic floor above her bed. Ours is a full
walk-up attic, with the usual dust, cobwebs, and creaking floors of such
places. The dampness and darkness of the attic is not inviting; tapping sounds
have been heard, and things have tended to fall to the floor unexpectedly up
there. Not from fear or dread, but rather just of no necessity, we rarely open
the old door and go up there, especially in the night.
Chrissy is a rational, reasonable, intelligent adult. Still,
I doubt that she would ever spend a night all alone in our old house. I know
that if she did, walking up those attic stairs would be out of the question for
her. This, perhaps, because of experiences that only she understands. Sometimes
there are just more reasons to stay away than to venture up into something of
the unknown.
There is, truly, nothing creepier than experiencing
something thought to be impossible or only of your imagination, and then having
that impossible thing firmly verified by another person. Imagining as a child
that someone was lurking under your bed could only be more terrifying upon
learning that someone actually was. Such is the case of our experience of ‘The
Little Girl on the Landing,’ which is part of the next installment of Subtle
Hauntings, to be shared in the October 23rd edition. See you there.
Subtle Hauntings?
By G. E. Shuman
Here is the second installment of my three-part, ‘spooky’
stuff series for October. These tales are true ones from our old Barre house on
the hill. You may not believe in ghosts, goblins, or other such things, (I
don’t either,) but I do believe my eyes and ears, and so should you. Note:
Reach back to the October 16th edition of the paper for part number one and
step patiently into the near future for the final installment on October 30th.
-Installment Two-
The Little Girl on
the Landing
Many years ago, and for many years, the furniture in our
living room, in the old house on the hill, had an arrangement that didn’t
change. A new couch or chair might have been added to the room if an old one
was removed, but the general placement of things remained the same for a long,
long time. By habit, I assume, I would usually sit in a recliner while watching
TV in the evening; Lorna would usually sit on the couch against another wall.
This was not always the case, but usually. In those days we watched many more
evening shows than we do now, and the spooky part is, I don’t remember one of
them. What a colossal waste of time.
That past TV era of ours was when our older three girls were
very young. As with many families, we would get the kids tucked into bed,
listen to prayers, and wander back down to turn on ‘the tube.’ I would climb
into that old recliner, and Lorna would go to the couch.
One evening, an hour or so after the kids were in bed and,
we assumed, asleep, I saw something eerily disturbing that I remember clearly
to this day. The recliner sat under the archway to the next room, which was the
front entryway to the house. (Things like entryways are as big as rooms in old
houses such as ours.)
You see, sitting there, while facing the TV, my right
peripheral vision was toward the twelve stairs which led up the stairway to a
small landing and then around a corner and three more stairs, up to the
bedrooms. Rooms in homes like ours take on a large and cubical appearance due
to their extremely lofty ceilings. The landing before the three additional
stairs allows you to catch your breath on the way up. The more years pass by,
the more I appreciate that landing.
On that dark evening, I was sure, and still am sure, I
caught a glimpse of the outline of a long-haired little girl standing in the
dim light, on the edge of that high stairway landing, momentarily looking
directly down at me. The child then
either went around the corner and up the three stairs or disappeared. I could
not tell which. I was not at first surprised at these things, as the little
girl could have been any of our three, perhaps unable to sleep or wanting a
glass of water. I did want the girls to get to sleep.
I immediately went up
the stairs to see which one of our girls had not yet gotten off to sleep that
night. Strangely, I found all three very soundly sleeping in their beds,
breathing deeply or snoring. I could tell if they were ‘faking,’ pretending to
be asleep, and they were not. Pillow drool always seemed to confirm such
things. I went back down to the living room without saying anything about it to
my wife.
This same increasingly disturbing occurrence happened at
least three more times over a few more weeks.
Eventually, after repeatedly going to check on the girls, I
chalked it all up to either my glasses failing me or some after image from the
TV blurring my sight and didn’t give it much more thought. That was until one
evening when Lorna got to the recliner before I did. I sat on the couch across
the room. After some time of our mutual and mindless show-watching Lorna
suddenly turned her head and looked directly up those stairs. We had never
discussed the little girl on the landing, but at that moment I just said: “You
saw her, didn’t you?” ”Yes,” Was Lorna’s whispered reply. We have not seen the
little girl since that night, but Lorna’s visual confirmation was enough to
make me realize that just because reason tells you someone or something isn’t
on the landing, or in the closet, or under the bed… doesn’t mean they are not.
Come back next week for some shared memories of a perhaps
‘haunted’ but more likely ‘God-sent’ toy firetruck, blood-red words of warning
in the cellar, and rattling bedroom doorknobs at midnight. In the meantime,
pleasant dreams.
Subtle Hauntings?
By G. E. Shuman
Here is the third installment of my three-part, ‘spooky’
stuff series for October. These tales are true ones from our old Barre house on
the hill. You may not believe in ghosts, goblins, or other such things,
(Neither do I) but I do believe my eyes and ears, and so should you. Note:
Reach back to the October 16th and 23rd editions of the paper for parts one and
two or read them all on the paper’s website: vt-world.com. Thank you.
-Installment Three-
The Firetruck
This part of the story of our old home on the hill goes back
over twenty-five years, and is an occurrence that I cannot explain, but rather
give God the credit for, not some phantom or spirit as some here would imagine.
This happening probably, literally saved lives in our home one night, including
that of our oldest grandchild, Devon.
Devon was just an infant then and was sound asleep in his crib in the
same upstairs bedroom that Chrissy used to have, and that we sleep in now. I
heard a siren sound, unbelievably, coming from that second floor and went
upstairs to see what was happening. The sound was coming from where Devon
slept, so I slowly approached the crib. Just as I did so, a small battery
powered toy firetruck raced out from under the crib, directly toward my feet,
lights blazing and siren blasting. I stopped the toy and turned it off. Then I
looked under the crib to see and smell a small pile of clothes that was within
moments of bursting into flames, right below where my grandson slept. Pulling
out the clothes I discovered one of our girls’ hair curling irons, on and
extremely hot, beneath that little ‘haystack’ of hot discarded clothes.
I believe that that night possibly our home, and certainly
our grandson had been saved by a warning from the perfect thing to do it… a
small toy firetruck which had somehow turned on and had pointed out the danger
at the precise place, at exactly the right moment.
The Shaking Doorknob
The story of the shaking doorknob shook my wife to the
extreme when I first told her about it. I thought I had solved the situation,
had figured out what was happening by the time I told Lorna about it, so I was
not disturbed at the time. Lately I have wondered if I figured wrong.
You see, and as I have said, our house is old. Much of the
house is original, including the doors to the rooms, with their hinges and
latches. Things were made very well a hundred and twenty years ago, when our
house was constructed, and those well-made things are still fulfilling their
intended purposes here, including the metal doorknobs.
One night, months ago, I had just gone to bed, my wife had
done so earlier and had fallen sound asleep. I lay there thinking of the day
behind and the one ahead, as I usually do, when suddenly our closet doorknob
rattled. It didn’t rattle a tiny bit as something might have from some
vibration or other. It rattled only momentarily, but quite hard. I was, of
course, startled, and eventually got out of bed and very slowly opened the
closet door. No goblin or alien was seen, thankfully. Believe me if you wish to,
or not, but over the course of a week or so, this rattling happened several
more nights as I lay in the bed before falling asleep.
In explanation, there is a small clothing hook on the inside
of the closet door, and I always use it to hang my towel on after my daily
shower. These hooks were all over our home when we first bought it. They are
the ones that appear to be made from coat hanger wire that has been twisted
into a hook shape. Evidently, many years ago, such hooks were thought to be the
perfect way to hang something in a home, at least, someone in our home’s
distant past must have thought so. I eventually woke up to the fact that my
bath towel was often on the floor of the closet when I opened it to check for
ghosts. Silly me, I thought. All that happened was my towel falling off the
hook and hitting the inner doorknob on its way to a soft landing on the floor.
Okay, so there were no ghoulish fingers rattling that knob.
Lately though, I have wondered more about all of this. You
see, it now occurs to me that the towel always fell late at night, sometime
after I had gone to bed, if that is what rattled the knob. This is very
strange, as I always shower in the morning and hang up the towel immediately
after. Also, after a week or so the rattling stopped, and the towel has not
fallen from the hook again. Still, I’m
waiting.
The Falling Pictures
I know that people who believe in the ghosts and ‘spirits’
of the Halloween season are probably just innocent thrill and attention seekers
who want a story to tell to their own families. If you know me at all, you know
that is not ‘me.’ I am the opposite of
one who seeks attention. It is my goal to leave this world as silently as I
entered it. (My mother says I was not a fussy baby. Good for me. I hate
whiners.)
Still, there is another, maybe minor story from our home,
that I would like to tell. About three years ago now Lorna and I decided to
move from the bedroom we had nightly occupied for thirty odd years. So, we got
our stuff together, and moved into Chrissy’s old room, which had become Emily’s
old room. In the process we bought a new bed, did the minimalist thing of
putting shelving in the closet, (you know that closet,) and forgoing dressers.
FYI, this has worked extremely well for us. We (meaning I) painted the ceiling
and walls. We, (meaning Lorna and I)
picked out two big, beautiful, and scenic prints to hang on the walls.
Evidently, or not so, I’m not sure which, someone or
something soon got tired of those prints. Last spring, which was a few years
after we (I) first hung those pictures with the strongest frame hanging
adhesive strips I could find, one of them, one night, very loudly fell to the
floor. Within a day or two I got strips that were even stronger, wider, and
just infinitely superior to the others, (according to the words on the package)
and rehung the painting. A few days later, during the night, it was on the floor
again.
All this was not enough to make me suspicious of apparent
ghosts in our bedroom, but what happened next was. You see, one morning, only a
week or so later, as Lorna was still sleeping, the other painting, which hung
at the head of the bed, left the wall, and came crashing down onto the pillows,
only inches from her head.
I have finally learned my lesson. Those pictures are now
screwed to the wall. I know of no ghosts with the ability to use a screwdriver.
The Mantle Statue and
Other Minor Bone Chillers
To end this account of all the strange things our old home
contains, and to save time and words, I will just briefly mention the small
Roman statue which sits on the fireplace mantle and often had been seen turned
around, facing the wall, until I glued it in place. There is also a small root
cellar down in the basement with the words “No Girls Allowed” sloppily done in
red and formerly-dripping, dried paint from the distant past on its door.
Across from that room, in the patched concrete floor of the cellar are the
simple, scrawled numbers proclaiming the year 1937, for some untold reason. The
house had been built in 1905.
I leave you now with an anonymous quote from my youth; one
which I have never known the origin of or my reason for remembering it. Perhaps
it was given to me to foreshadow this place in which I would live so long.
“From ghoulies, and
ghosties, and long-leggidy beasties, and other things that go BUMP in the
night; Good Lord deliver us.”
