My Haunted House
I remember I did not want to dress up for Halloween during those tense years in second and third grades, back in 1985 and 1986. I just felt that there was something — a faceless, nameless, entity — -lying in wait for me. Out to get me if I wasn’t careful. I thought being careful meant staying home and hiding. So, when other kids my age were running from house to house in the darkness, I did not. I dared not.
Soon, the night terrors began.
Beginning in fifth grade, I would have dreams of bleeding children, some of whom were yelling and saying they didn’t want to be cut, running away from adults. All of the children were wearing old fashioned, long white shirts, and most had blood down the front of the shirt. After these dreams, I would just wake up, try to shake it off, and go to school. I thought it was perfectly normal. Didn’t everybody dream of bleeding children? Were children being hurt — or worse — by diabolic forces? Was I sensing it? No one found the bones of any children where the cat and dog bodies were routinely found. And yet…
My father was a teacher, farmer, and veteran of the Korean War, and I loved him dearly. He would come home very day after work smelling of a delightful blend of Old Spice after shave, freshly sharpened pencils, and stale coffee. He could fix or build anything. “I used math to build the chicken house,” he verbalized one evening, much to my awe. We watched every Peanuts holiday special that aired on television. When I was very small, we would read the Sunday comics together. One of my earliest memories is staring at the lines and squiggles on the page and wondering what they meant. Noticing my interest, my father said, “When you learn how to read, you can read Snoopy.” That’s why I taught myself to read. We would often read stories together, and he encouraged me to develop my writing skills. He understood me better than anyone. He was my whole world.
Then, when I was in eighth grade, my beloved father unexpectedly passed away. After my father died, I would sit on the bed and cry every evening after school. Many times, an unseen force would come to put warm, comforting arms around me. It felt like something beyond the love that human beings are capable of giving each other. It felt like divine, absolutely unconditional love. After the comforting, calmness would ensue. I now think that it was God comforting me in my grief.
After my father died, I needed comfort because something unholy was at my house. I grew increasingly depressed and started thinking about suicide because I wanted so much to be with him. For a few evenings in the summer between my eighth and ninth grade year, I walked through our house, looking for things I could use to off myself. I thought about overdosing on pills, but we did not have any pills. We only had acetaminophen. I thought about shooting myself, but we only had the deer rifle in the closet, no handgun. I now think these urgings came from an actual demonic entity known as the Spirit of Death.
To cheer both of us up, Mom started planning bus trips for us to go on. We both loved the mother-daughter time. One evening, after returning from a trip to Baltimore, Maryland, memories of the fish and octopi twirling in our heads, we searched for the scissors to cut off our luggage tags for the next great adventure, but neither of us could find them. Eventually, Mom found the scissors in the bathroom medicine cabinet. This was very odd, since we never kept the scissors there. Out of the blue, Mom announced, “We have a ghost.”
Why would she say that, so matter-of-factly? Was there something she’d noticed, but never shared because she didn’t want to distress me? I think that was certainly the case.
On another such trip, this one to Nashville, Tennessee, we arrived home with the taste of fried chicken still in our mouths and the wonderful memory of music still in our heads. “Nashville has the best food ever!” I exclaimed to Mom. Once again, we looked for the scissors. After an hour-long search, a snack was in order. Upon opening the refrigerator, the scissors stared back at me. An unseen hand had neatly placed them on the top shelf between the ranch dressing and the eggs.
Another evening, we wanted to watch a movie. The search for the remote control began. After about two hours, we found it in the bathroom medicine cabinet. “Who put the clicker there?” asked Mom.
“I didn’t do it,” I replied. Indeed, neither of us had seen the TV remote for two days.
It became more common and normal for objects, most often the remote control and the scissors, to spontaneously move about in our house. Eventually, both Mom and I shrugged it off, chalking it up to goofy teenage me. Didn’t every adolescent put the remote control in the freezer on occasion? Eventually it didn’t surprise us anymore, and we came to expect it. It was never analyzed or discussed, because we both knew I hadn’t done it. But the truth was too terrifying and too overwhelming for either of us to deal with after dad’s death.
There was something unnatural living with us in our home. Something menacing and waiting…but for what?
