The Sallie House Haunting: A True Story (18 page)

My mind whirled and I remembered what Barbara had said about the murky anomaly and the marbleized grouping of lights that had shown up in earlier photos. “She’s upset and protecting her space.” I wondered what these two spirits were upset about. Who were they mad at?

More question flooded my thoughts. Did Sallie bring this other spirit? Was the other one also a child? Did Sallie even know this other spirit? Was there an open door between our worlds for other spirits to come in? Could this that mean there were more spirits in our house, and would they be friendly or antagonistic?

Tony’s reaction to the photographs and the two separate entities was a profound, “I knew it. Sallie just doesn’t look or seem like the type of child who would do some of the things that have been happening around here.” I decided right then to write a letter to Barbara and ask if she was able to pick up anything more about our situation.

fourteen

January 1994

We rang in the New Year without incident and it wasn’t until January 5th that another of the spirits in the house made its presence known. For several hours, Tony and I had been sleeping in the master bedroom. The door, as usual, had been left open. Being a light sleeper, Tony woke to strange thumps that sounded a lot like footfalls on the stairs and in the hallway just outside our door. It was something he had heard for many a night, but had assumed that it was our cats playing outside the room. Because he had not thought it odd, he had not felt the need to mention it to me.

About 1:00 in the morning and frustrated that he had not been able to fall asleep because of the constant noise, he could finally take it no longer. He got out of bed and stood at the top of the stairs waiting for one of the cats to run up. He was planning to catch it and lock it in a room so it would be quiet.

As he stood at the top of the stairs waiting for one of them to come running up, he began to hear the familiar thumping noise; somewhat heavy and evenly spaced. But he saw nothing on the stairs. As the sound got closer to where he stood, he froze with fear and anticipation, his heart pounding in his chest. Every part of his body was paralyzed except for his eyes, which roamed to catch sight of what was to come. The sound passed by him, and he felt a distinct coldness go right through him. He remained frozen, waiting for something to happen, something to move, but it didn’t. Then, for a split second, his fear released its grip on him and he was able to run back to the bedroom to wake me and tell me of the event.

I woke to the abrupt sloshing of the water bed as Tony, alarmed by what had just happened to him, jumped into it hoping for my support and comfort. He was gasping for air and shaking my body in a desperate attempt to wake me. I am a very heavy sleeper, and even when it seems I am awake, I’m usually still incoherent. I hardly remember talking to him and after a few minutes, I drifted back off to sleep. Although I couldn’t remember details, I did remember being startled and opening my eyes to find his frantic, wide-eyed face above mine. Not realizing the desperate nature of the situation, I fell back asleep and left him alone with his fear.

Not long after I drifted off, Tony heard a thudding noise. He reached out to grab me and said, “Deb, Deb, it’s here in the room with us!” Although I was still in a sleepy stupor, I must have recognized a note of alarm in his voice and without even opening an eye, I told him in a monotone sort of voice that, “it was one of the cats jumping up on the vanity. Just go to sleep.” I’m sure Tony thought I was being extremely insensitive, but the plain fact of the matter was I was exhausted and incoherent. In hindsight, I wish I’d been more attentive.

When we woke the next morning, he recapped the nighttime events and an odd dream he’d had afterwards. This was strange, because Tony rarely dreamed and rarely recalled the few dreams he did have. In this one, someone he couldn’t see had taken him by the wrists and had been trying to pull him out of bed.

“But there was no one there!’ he exclaimed.

“How did it end?” I asked.

He said that he had firmly told whoever it was to let go and it did so almost immediately. He went on to explain, “My legs were still on the bed and my top half was over the edge. When the hold on my arms eased up, I crawled back into bed. But what was weird is that I think I was actually awake when I crawled back into bed.”

The dream seemed all too real. Later that day Tony grew curious about a persistent pain on his wrists. When he unbuttoned his shirt sleeves he found red and blistered welts on the inside of each wrist.

When he showed them to me, they looked like second degree burns, but looking closer I could detect that someone’s fingers had grasped his wrists and in doing so, had left marks on him. The blisters were in the shape of a child’s hand and fingertips.

“Remember that dream I had last night? That is the same place where I was grabbed in my dream.” We sat there for a long time, speechless and trying to understand what had happened.

For the rest of the month and until the latter part of January, the house remained rather quiet. On the 29th we got together with Tony’s brother George and a few friends: Mark, Samantha, and their little girl Tara; Rodney, his wife Jenny, and their little girl Michelle. The babies were all within six months of each others’ age and we often got together in order to compare notes as parents. We had strange experiences throughout the entire evening.

The group started out in the living room while the little ones played on the floor in the middle of the room. The TV volume was low, and there were several different conversations going on. Although no one had entered the kitchen since their arrival, we heard the sound of the microwave timer several times.

Before long, all the conversations centered on Sallie and her activity. Tony and I had pulled out several bizarre photos and numerous other things that we had surmised had been affected by Sallie and or her energy. Later that evening, as the babies napped, we moved our conversation to the dining room table. At one point, we all smelled something burning. After searching the immediate vicinity, we were not able to find the source and continued our discussions.

Mark had been looking at a stack of photos that he held in his hand, slightly tilted backward but still somewhat upright. Suddenly several of them simply jumped up and out of his hand. “Did you see that?” he asked. Unfortunately no one had. “It was like someone hit the top picture and then they jumped off over the back of my hand.”

Somewhere around 8:30 p.m., George walked into the kitchen to get a drink. On the way back to the dining room, he had noticed my collection of small spoons from various states. Each had been turned around backward. When he came back into the dining room he asked me why I had them facing the wall.

Samantha jumped up and ran into the kitchen. “No way,” she said. “I was just looking at them a little while ago and they were all facing forward.” As she rounded the corner to see them, she shrieked, “Oh my God, they are!” Thinking back, none of us could remember anyone having gone around the corner of the kitchen unnoticed; especially long enough to have turned all eighteen of them around so nicely and neatly. Samantha insisted that she had been admiring them only minutes before they were discovered turned backward.

A short time later, one of the guys noticed George’s wool jersey jacket, which had been hanging on the back of one of the chairs. It had a rather bad scorch mark above the left pocket. George insisted that it had not been there when he arrived earlier that evening. The burned area was small; about three inches in diameter. As we all inspected it, someone suggested that the unpleasant burning smell we had all smelled earlier might have been his coat.

By 10:00 p.m., everyone had left except Samantha, Mark, and Tara. They frequently stayed later then everyone else, and we had grown accustomed to taking this time to catch up with each other. As their baby slept on the couch, Samantha sat to her left and her father to her right. Samantha had been holding the baby’s pacifier in her lap for quite some time as she watched over her sleeping daughter.

She hadn’t moved from the couch for quite a while, but when she reached for the pacifier that should have been in her lap, it wasn’t there. The rest of us looked for it everywhere. Samantha eventually stood up and looked on the floor near her feet, as well as under the couch and between the cushions where she had been sitting. After ten minutes of looking, we gave up. “That’s okay. I have others at home,” Samantha said, seemingly undisturbed.

About half a minute passed when I heard the slight but familiar sound of a NUK pacifier. Having the used the NUK brand pacifier for Taylor, I was easily able to identify the distinct sound that a pacifier makes when its handle slaps against the mouthpiece. Samantha looked at her lap. To her surprise the pacifier was back in her lap, just where it had been before she stood up to look for it. “Look, it’s right here,” she said.

“I don’t know how it got there. I just felt something hit my lap and heard that sound. You know the sound it makes. And there it was.” We peered at each other from under raised eyebrows. Was Sallie playing a game? As Mark and Samantha packed their things to leave, we laughed about our amusing evening.

Lost Remote: February 1994

The afternoon of February 9th, Tony and I had been watching our TV, a newer 19-inch Sony equipped with a remote. When we reached for the remote it wasn’t where we usually placed it. Neither of us had gotten up or left the room, so we searched the couch cushions, floor, and tables. Still, we were unable to find it.

Almost in unison, we said, “It’s gotta be somewhere,” and with that we expanded our search to the other rooms and in every conceivable place we could think of. Still we found nothing and eventually gave up. By 10:30 that night, Tony had fallen asleep on the couch and I took the opportunity to take a bath upstairs. Before leaving the room, I had noticed Tony’s arms were tucked under him as if he was cold, so I covered him with an afghan.

About thirty minutes later, I returned to the living room where Tony was still asleep. I noticed two things. Tony was still lying in the exact same position I had left him in, and across the lower part of his thighs lay the television remote. My first thought was that he had placed it there himself, but I realized that there was simply no way he could have done it without repositioning himself and rumpling the afghan that I had tucked around him earlier.

As I contemplated the situation further, he rolled over and the remote dropped to the floor. Hearing it drop, he was now awake. “So where did you find it?” I asked.

He thought I had played a trick on him and asked, “Where did
you
find it?”

I explained where it was when I came back into the room. Both of us waited and watched for signs that the other had played a practical joke.

“So really, where did you find it?” I asked again.

“Stop playing games with me,” he said. “I heard you tell me, ‘Here’s your remote.’”

At first I smirked, thinking it was an amusing game, but as he sat up with a serious look on his face, I realized something was just not right. I firmly denied his accusation, “No, I did not!”

“What do you mean?” he asked. “I could have sworn it was you. I heard a woman’s voice say, ‘Tony, here’s your remote.’”

“It wasn’t me,” I assured him. “I’ve been upstairs in the bathroom and just now came downstairs.”

More fully awake now, he said, “Don’t play games with me, Deb. I felt you touch my shoulder and say, ‘Tony, here’s your remote.’”

I dug my heels in. “Okay. I swear to God, Tony, it wasn’t me.” Tony’s face suddenly lost all color and he looked me straight in the eye with a pleading expression.

“Don’t tell me that.”

Realizing he was upset, I didn’t say another word. I simply looked at him with an expression that plainly said, “What else can I say?”

This experience led me to surmise that the other spirit in the house was a woman, and she had finally made her presence known, at least to Tony.

Two days later, Tony and I were getting ready to go out to dinner. Taylor was sleeping in the nursery. Tony was in the upstairs bathroom getting ready in front of the mirror, and I was sitting at my vanity in the master bedroom wearing nothing but my underwear and combing my wet hair. All of a sudden, Tony voice startled me.

“Did you just walk past the bath…” He stopped in mid-sentence as he realized the answer before he’d finished the question and the look on his face was very puzzled.