Haunted (9 page)

I carried the poodle back to our house, and after shutting Piper in another room, put it down in the foyer. After we had removed our boots and hung up our coats, Rosa decided the dog needed a name and thought “Snowflake” would be perfect. She was white, and we had found her in the snow. I explained to Rosa that we could only keep this little dog until we found its real owners, but I could tell she was already becoming attached to it.

The telephone rang and I went to answer it, leaving Rosa alone with our new little friend. It was Ted calling, and I told him about the little white poodle. I also informed him that, after we had finished our conversation, I was going to call the local radio station and ask them to mention Snowflake on their afternoon Lost and Found program. The little dog had obviously been well cared for and its owners were probably worried. After I had made that call, I put some food and water into dishes and placed them on the kitchen floor. As I walked back into the foyer to get the dog, I heard Rosa roaring with laughter.

“What's so funny?” I called out. “Where have you two gone?”

“We're up here!” Rosa shouted from the second floor. “Snowflake knows how to go up the stairs!”

I immediately understood my daughter's amazement. Piper refused to go up the stairs, and my little girl had not seen a dog do that in this house.

When I reached the second floor, I found Rosa and the dog in the master bedroom. Rosa was laughing and excitedly pointing at Snowflake, but I felt uneasy when I saw what the little dog was doing. It had jumped up on our bed and climbed over onto Ted's bedside table. It stood upon it on its two back legs, determinedly batting its front paws at some unseen object above its head. The poodle was totally oblivious to us and kept its eyes fixed on one particular spot in the air.

“What is Snowflake doing?” Rosa again laughed.

“I don't know. Isn't she silly?” I tried to laugh too before I picked up the little animal and carried it back down the stairs.

The moment I placed the poodle on the floor, it bolted from my arms and raced up the stairs again. I could not believe how fast a dog that small could run. In the blink of an eye it was at the top of the stairs, and by the time Rosa and I had reached the second floor hallway, Snowflake was already back on the bedside table, swatting into the air, and fixedly staring at the same spot as before.

I again carried her out of the bedroom and, this time, closed the door. When I released Snowflake in the foyer, the poodle raced up the stairs and started to whine and bark and scratch at the master bedroom door. The little dog was frantic to get back inside the bedroom, and she refused to leave the door for the remainder of her short stay.

Back downstairs I spotted a car slowly circling the neighbourhood. After it drove by a second time, I went out and asked the man, woman, and small child in the car if they were looking for a lost dog. They described their poodle to me, and I realized they were Snowflake's owners. The radio station had promised to mention the poodle on their Lost and Found segment but that would not be for another hour. It was wonderful luck to have found its owners so quickly. Rosa, however, was sorry to see the poodle go and sadly waved goodbye as the car drove away.

Later that day I re-opened our bedroom door. I felt uncomfortable when I remembered how strangely the little dog had acted towards something it apparently could see hovering between the closet door and our bed. Unlike Piper, who refused to even climb the stairs, the little poodle had frantically tried to reach whatever it sensed there. The claw marks it had left on the outside of the door were a permanent reminder of that.

By the end of March everything seemed calm in our house again. The nights had been so peaceful that, for a few weeks, we were able to sleep for a full eight hours without any interruption. But that calm did not last.

One night, after everyone was sleeping soundly, I awakened with a jolt. I did not know what it was that had disturbed me because I had not been dreaming and did not hear any noises within the house. I was on my left side, facing the window, with my back towards Ted. I lay for a few moments, wide awake in the glow from the children's nightlights shining in from the hallway, trying to get back to sleep, and decided to shift my position to get more comfortable. As I rolled over, I saw someone at Ted's side of the bed looking at him, and realized immediately it was not one of our children. I was shocked to see a spirit, but was not as terrified as I had been when I had seen the tall woman in the cape and veil.

Although it was alarming to have her so close, I could see that she was only a young girl, of about thirteen, from the turn of the century or perhaps an even earlier time. Her image was so clear that each blonde strand of hair on her young head was visible, and I thought it looked oddly dry and frizzy. I was fascinated by the appearance of that child in full, vivid colour. I had pored over countless old photographs that captured the images of people from long ago, but they were always in black and white or brownish tones. Seeing that girl as she had appeared in life was astonishing, even if only from that perspective. Her hair was so light in colour it was almost platinum. It hung down loose to her shoulders, but the front sections were pulled back by a piece of white material, which was tied behind her head in a large bow.

Her clothing was worn in several layers. Over a loose-fitting dress in dusty rose or lavender, she wore a white apron, or pinafore, with small ruffles around the shoulders that appeared to be of the same material as the bow in her hair. I could see each fiber in the fabric's weave as I stared at the slightly transparent image of the girl. She appeared to be as real and solid as any person, yet I could still see the closet door and wall behind her. Light seemed to emanate from and glow around her form.

I felt a mixture of fright and amazement. Although it seemed impossible, the very real and definite image of a Victorian-era teenaged girl stood only a few feet from me. It was not my eyes playing tricks or the result of an overactive imagination or a dream. Nor was the image fleeting; it remained in place long enough for me to study her appearance closely.

The girl continued to stare down at Ted as he slept soundly, intent on studying his facial features just as I had been examining her. Feeling protective towards him, I slowly inched across the bed and draped myself over his back and side without attracting her attention. If he awoke and saw her right above him, only a few inches from his face, he would be terrified, and I did not want my husband to suffer a heart attack. The very idea of him finally seeing a spirit and the fear it would cause him after all his skepticism suddenly struck me as comical, and I almost let out a nervous and somewhat hysterical giggle.

By moving closer to Ted, I also hoped to be able to see her face. In my former position, I had only been able to see her profile, and the tall woman whose form had loomed in our bedroom doorway had seemed to have no face at all. The longer the girl's image stayed before me, the less frightened I became, and the more awe I felt at what I was seeing.

The girl continued to inch closer towards Ted, and it seemed as if she might reach out her hand to touch his face at any moment. I now wanted to awaken Ted so that he could share that incredible experience with me, but any abrupt motion might have caused the girl to disappear. I pushed his back gently with my hand to rouse him. That movement, though subtle, alerted the girl to my watching her, and she slowly turned and looked right at me for several seconds with a blend of frustration and irritation. I was so astonished that I froze. She was obviously unhappy that I had disturbed her while she was contentedly watching my husband sleep. She turned her eyes back to Ted and gave him one long last look. Then she once again glared at me before she turned to go.

The girl's obvious irritation terrified me. The look she had given me made me feel as if I was an intruder in my own home. Although she had exhibited a strong curiosity towards Ted, her response to me when I had interrupted her observation of him had been clearly one of annoyance.

In a calmer and more rational moment I might have realized that her frustrated reaction was similar to that of any modern-day teenager. But I was far from calm; I was unnerved by the fact that she had become aware of my presence, acknowledged it, and then interacted with me. Had she turned to me and smiled instead of grimaced, I probably would have felt a similar sense of panic.

The girl did not disappear immediately. I watched with fascination as her seemingly solid form dissipated into tiny particles of light that danced in front of me for a few brief moments. Mesmerized, I forgot my fear and leaned over Ted and swiped at the tiny glimmering orbs. That movement caused them to bounce about even more animatedly until, one by one, they vanished altogether.

Ted continued to sleep while I lay wide awake for the rest of the night, thinking about what I had seen. In all honesty, the experience had completely unnerved me. I knew without a doubt that I had seen a spirit. Although I knew that the two other spirits I had seen were also real, neither of them had made me feel that we were the intruders. They had behaved mischievously and their actions had often been startling, but I did not believe they harboured malignant feelings towards us. Now that the girl had expressed her annoyance with my presence, I no longer felt comfortable living in the house. Although she had not expressed hostility or hatred, her irritation made me feel vulnerable.

It was not until the following morning, before Kammie, Matt, and Rosa were awake, that I mentioned the events of the night to Ted. While we shared an early breakfast, I told him that I wanted to seriously discuss moving from the house. Ted assured me that, although he knew I believed I had seen ghosts in the house, he wished he had seen something. Surely, he argued, there had to be some plausible reason for it all.

“Call me the next time you see anything,” he told me. “I just have to see it for myself.”

Later that day, Ted, Kammie, Matt, and Rosa relaxed in the family room while I prepared dinner in the adjoining kitchen. While chopping vegetables on the cutting board, I saw the light in the foyer come on at the front of the house. I turned slowly to look at the light, knowing everyone else in the family was in the other room and could not possibly have touched the hall switch. As I stared at the light, it turned off again.

“Ted...” I called.

“Yeah?” he answered.

“Could you come here, please?” I asked, not wanting to scare the children.

“What is it?” he persisted.

Finally I caught his eye, and when he saw the look on my face, he realized why I had called him. As I waited for Ted to walk into the kitchen so he too would be able to see into the foyer, the light went on and off again four times. By the time he was by my side, however, the foyer was again dark and the light remained off. Frustrated, I told him what had happened. After watching the light for a moment, he shrugged and went back into the family room.

INVESTIGATING THE PARANORMAL

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worst part about dealing with the haunting in our house for me was feeling there was no one to turn to for guidance or moral support. Although a few immediate family members and one close friend knew what was happening, I did not discuss it with anyone else. I was afraid people might think I was hallucinating, crazy, or both.

After the appearance of the young girl's spirit, I decided to do a search on the Internet for information that pertained to what we were dealing with in our home. I hoped I might be able to locate an organization that could advise me on what to do.

I was surprised to find so many sites dealing with the paranormal, and as I researched a few, I learned there were different types of hauntings. In many cases what seemed to be a ghost was actually a phenomenon called a residual haunting, which left a psychic impression in one particular location. That was created by an event that had caused terrible emotional stress, such as a murder or violent death. This event seemed to repeat itself over and over again like a clip from a movie. I found it difficult to understand fully how this was possible, but it was evidently reported fairly often.

Residual hauntings could also result in a certain smell, noise, or other stimulus in a particular area due to its frequency at an earlier time. Rather than being caused by a tragedy, it was merely the continuation of something that had once happened repeatedly in that location.

If it were a residual haunting from a psychic impression, rather than a real entity causing the phenomenon, then there was no direct conscious contact with any living person who witnessed the occurrence. While they might very well have seen or heard the impression of what they assumed was a ghost, the entity was not at all aware of their presence and did not acknowledge them.

What I had read concerning residual haunting made me think of the footsteps we all heard so often on the main stairway in our home. Those seemed to be a perfect example of a noise resulting from a psychic impression left in a particular area due to earlier repetition. Residual haunting could even explain the smell of the wood-burning cook stove and the aroma of baking that so often seemed to come from our kitchen.

The more I researched, however, the more I realized that we were also dealing with spirits that very definitely interacted with us. They made direct eye contact, changed their facial expressions, and even waved greetings. Those conscious gestures had been made directly to us in an attempt to communicate.

As I explored the various material available on the Internet, I located the website of a paranormal society, an association that seemed to have a lot of experience with haunted houses. Listed on a page at that site were the common signs of a haunting. A brief statement following the list urged the reader to contact the site's author if they had experienced any one of those several signs, which ranged from hearing footsteps, to having household lights or appliances turn off or on, to actually seeing shadows or apparitions. Not only had we experienced every one of the itemized signs, but we had also witnessed many more that were not included in the list.