The Sallie House Haunting: A True Story (22 page)

I remember laughing to myself. She reported that neither she nor her husband had noticed anything out of the ordinary.

The next day, while Taylor was sleeping in the nursery, Tony and I decided to give the car a much-needed cleaning inside and out. On one of Tony’s trips into the house to get an item or two, he witnessed something strange in the front foyer. The railing that went along the right-hand side of the stairs was shaking somewhat violently. It had been loose and wobbly for a while, so the exaggerated movement was quite noticeable.

Several minutes later I entered the house, wondering what had been taking Tony so long. He told me what he had seen and together we tried to figure out what had happened. Nothing we came up with could explain how the railing could have rattled like that without someone shaking it.

On April 17, I received another phone call from Barbara in California. She had gotten my last letter and the Christmas photos I’d sent which showed what looked like two separate entities. During this conversation, she confirmed that there was another spirit in the house. The spirit was an older person, a woman, someone close to Sallie, perhaps her mother, and she was trying to get Sallie to go with her. She felt that this woman usually wore a hat but sometimes she took it off. “She’s about five-foot six or five-foot seven with light-colored hair, and she is very spirited,” Barbara said.

Having gotten Barbara’s definition of the different colors that spirits might give off in accordance with their emotional state, I asked her why the two spirits in the Christmas photos had presented the way that they did. She had previously told me that murky colors were a sign of anger or protectiveness. I explained that we had been very festive through the holiday and had invited Sallie to join us in many holiday activities. I also expressed concern over this other spirit and questioned whether it was in any way a threat.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I think the woman wants Sallie to go with her and Sallie doesn’t want to go.” She went on to affirm that the colors in the photos seemed to signify conflict, perhaps anger or frustration. She assured us that these emotions were not directed at us and were nothing to worry about. She did urge us to keep her informed. She also told us that if anything crazy started to happen or things started getting out of hand, we should call her right away and she would do what she could to help.

Before ending our phone call, I told her about our recent road trip to Buffalo and asked her if she knew whether Sallie had gone with us or stayed behind. “Both,” she said. Before I could ask what she meant, she continued, “She went with you but she was bored and went back home to look after the house like you asked her to.”

I found it interesting that she mentioned that I asked Sallie to look after the house—it was not information that I had volunteered to her in any conversation.

What she said made perfect sense and was likely why we had noticed relatively little strange activity. The two experiences we had while in New York surely could have been caused by Sallie, but they were playful things. She did not do anything bad and she didn’t do anything to scare anyone.

While Barbara continued talking, my mind drifted. How was Sallie able to travel with us and then miraculously find her way back home again without guidance or a vehicle? How did she travel? How long did it take? Barbara graciously explained that spirits work in different ways from the living and before that statement could sink in and provoke more questions, we were saying goodbye. I sighed with some frustration but figured it was something that could wait until the next time we talked. Most importantly, we knew that Sallie could and did travel with us.

Quiet time: May 1994

For more than a month after our return from New York, nothing happened except the incident Tony had witnessed the day after our homecoming. I don’t want to discredit him or what saw that day, but if I don’t see a thing for myself, I tend not to believe it. At the very least, I wonder what else could have reasonably caused an event. With the house so quiet and inactive, I certainly did begin to question whether there had been any activity since we returned home.

Five weeks and two days after our return, I still had not seen a sign of Sallie’s presence. This was the longest duration without activity we had had to date. Again, I was worried that she had left us; I actually began to feel a great loss not knowing whether she was around. I realized how attached I had grown to her; it was more than I’d ever imagined possible. How crazy was that?

What really surprised me was the extent of the loss I felt. I was sad, angry, and depressed. In trying to accept the possibility that Sallie might not come back, I felt hurt and empty, as though I had lost a good friend. I displayed all the signs of emotional upheaval: I was withdrawn, cranky, rash, and irritable. In addition, I had no patience with the baby or Tony and I desperately wanted someone to blame for this loss.

Perhaps, though, Sallie was closer than I thought. Within a few days of my realizing what havoc my emotions were in, she gave us a small sign that she was still with us.

It was about ten o’clock in the evening when Tony and I saw the wooden balls on the ceiling fan swing in that familiar way. The behavior continued for about thirty minutes and it amazed me how content that sign made me feel. At the same time, I struggled with more questions. Why had she been so quiet since our return? Was she spending a lot of time somewhere else? Had her trip with us all but depleted her energy? Was she regenerating? Maybe she was just as exhausted from the trip as we were.

sixteen

June 1994

By the first of June, Sallie was back and as active as ever. At 5:30 that evening, Tony was in the kitchen. Taylor stood at the baby gate in the doorway and seemed to be intently watching something in the dining room. Suddenly, Tony heard the Mickey Mouse musical toy in the dining room start playing. No animal or person was anywhere near it. At 8:00 that night, with Taylor asleep in the nursery and Tony and me on the couch, the toy played itself off and on for about fifteen minutes. It happened again at 9:15 p.m., then again around 10:30 p.m.

This happened so often that I wondered if Sallie was trying to tell us something important—perhaps something was wrong with Taylor as he slept in the nursery. I scurried up the stairs to check on him, but he was perfectly fine.

June 2nd was another musically active day. At 7:30 a.m., I went to the kitchen to fix a bottle for Taylor and the Mickey Mouse toy sounded once more. It happened again about 2:00 p.m. Two minutes later, the toy phone in the living room played its own musical tune. The last tune of the day was played by the Mickey Mouse toy at 2:25 p.m.

On June 7th, the three of us and my in-laws were leaving the house. Tony and I had talked about moving to another house and his parents were anxious to help. Many times Tony’s mom had voiced her fear that there was something evil in our house. She wanted us to move. Earlier that day she had called to tell me about a house she wanted us to look at. As I opened the car door, I remembered something I wanted to take with me and went back to the house. When I opened the front door, I heard voices. For a moment it alarmed me, but then I realized it was the TV—the same one I had turned off minutes earlier. “Okay, Sallie, if you want to watch TV, I’ll leave it on for you.” I quickly grabbed what I needed and headed back out to the car.

Taylor was almost a year old at this point and a week later his delight with the musical clown suddenly turned to fear. For him to look at it was one thing, but as soon as I would wind it up, he was terrified of it. I wondered, since we wound it up and set it nearby each night when we laid him down, if he was beginning to associate the clown with going to bed. A logical assessment, but I soon realized I was very wrong.

I had removed the clown from Taylor’s bedtime ritual and kept it with his toys in the living room. A few days later, he found it and showed great joy in doing so. Thinking we had broken the association of the clown with bedtime, I wound it up for him to enjoy the music. To my surprise his look of delighted turned to total terror. He scurried over to me and crawled up into my lap, trembling as he held on tightly.

I tried a few more times to present the clown again in fun ways, but each time it was met with the same hysteria. I couldn’t help thinking that no child should ever be this scared of a toy. I figured he just needed more time to forget the association he had made, and again found a place to hide it for a few days before I tried to reacquaint him with it. This time his reaction was even worse. Just the sight of it sent him into a frenzy. In fact, he wouldn’t even look at it, often reaching out blindly to push it away. Finally, on June 17, I became more proactive. Taylor had already caught sight of the clown sitting on one of the built-in shelves in the living room and was in a major panic. I took him into the kitchen and we got a large paper bag. Although I felt Taylor, even as young as he was, should somehow be able to face his fears, I opened the bag and explained that we were going to send the clown away. I was sure that if he took part in sending it away, he would feel a lot better.

Taylor seemed to understand exactly what I had told him, and with that knowledge it didn’t seem bother him to pick up the clown and put it in the bag. I rolled up the top of the bag, we walked to the front door, and I put it outside. “Now you go away, clown,” I said in a stern voice. “Go away.” We shut the door, and that was the last time Taylor saw the musical clown until we moved.

For a long time I wondered why my wonderfully contented son had all of a sudden become so frightened of one of his favorite toys. Crazy ideas went through my head. Taylor had two musical clowns; he was still willing to sleep with the other one in his crib. None of the musical toys had ever frightened him before (or since). Could it be that Sallie or another spirit had used this particular clown to interact with Taylor? Had this spirit set out to play with him or had it intentionally wanted to scare him? If in play, had the playfulness become too rough?

If this toy was animated by a spirit, was it simply the animation of it that scared him or was it something it did specifically that frightened him so? Had it actually done scary things to my son? Thoughts of the latter really infuriated me. To think that my son might have been frightened to such an extent, in his own bed, by one of his own toys, filled me with rage. As difficult as it was, I tried my best to put it out of my mind. After all, the clown was gone and so, it seemed, was Taylor’s fear.

Soon we faced an onset of new and strange disturbances. It all started on June 24th, in a very familiar way. Around 9:30 p.m., we put the baby down for the night and Tony and I sat on the couch to relax after a long day. Tony happened to look up to once again and caught sight of the wooden ball on the ceiling. We spent about two hours watching it swing. I mentally took notes to see if there was any particular pattern it followed as it swung, but found none. It was after the first hour or so that I realized that the ball’s movement was somewhat mesmerizing. It was like looking into the coals and embers of a burning fire and watching the flames dance. Time seemed to get away from us as we watched it.

About 1:00 a.m., Taylor woke up screaming the kind of scream that curdles your blood. I went to his room and tried to comfort him, surveying the area for any problems and rocking and bouncing him gently in my arms. When I thought he had fallen back to sleep, I tried to set him back in the crib. Each time, even before I took a step away, he would wake up screaming. This went on for almost an hour until finally I gave in. I carried him into our room. As soon as I put him down on the bed, he fell fast asleep and stayed that way until morning.

The next day, shortly after noon, I was upstairs in the master bedroom talking to Tony and sitting on the edge of the bed closest to the bedroom door. From there, I could see the upper portion of the stairway and a good section of the hallway. I had casually glanced up and saw what I could only describe as a tennis ball-sized lightning bug.

Unlike a lightning bug, however, its glow was steady. Even with the mid-afternoon sun shining through the window just behind it, I could plainly see its brightness. For a split second it lingered, motionless in the air approximately six feet above the ninth or tenth stair from the top of the landing. It then made a quick, spiraling motion, darted down the stairs and vanished. The diameter of its corkscrew-like motion was about twelve inches at first, and as it descended the stairs, its diameter diminished until it became a straight tail of light. This wonderful display took place within an area of about three to four feet and ended within a matter of seconds. This wouldn’t be the last time we saw this strange ball of light.

That afternoon, I put Taylor in his crib for a nap and closed the door as usual. He seemed to have slept fine. That night, however, he would not go to sleep in his room. Something had him so upset that each time I left the living room and started up the stairs he would turn around and cling to me with what seemed like the strength of ten men. At the time, I didn’t think fear was the reason for his reaction, I simply thought it was his wanting to stay up, fighting the fact that it was time for bed.

After a few more attempts, I eventually rocked him to sleep and carried him upstairs to lay him in his bed. Several hours later, however, we were awakened by his panicked screams. It took me almost an hour to get him to sleep again. I really had not thought anything odd about his waking in the middle of the night; sometimes that just happens.

On the way back to bed, however I started to wonder if Sallie or the woman spirit was causing Taylor’s distress. Coming to the realization that he might have been terrified by something in his room was an awful feeling. I didn’t know what it was that was bothering him, but I had just laid him down in there; alone. I swore to myself that if he woke again I would let him sleep with us in our bed.

Fact is, I had wanted to go scoop him up and bring him to our room. On the other hand, maybe I was just overreacting and being ridiculous. To combat my rising anxiety about the situation, I went to his room to check on him and then left the door open. On the way back to bed, I wondered again if it was Sallie messing with him in his room. I wanted to yell at her and tell her to stop it, but if it wasn’t her, I didn’t want to lay false blame.

Sallie knew the rules; I just couldn’t see her intentionally disobeying them just to get attention. She knew there were other ways to do so. Maybe Sallie wasn’t causing the problem. I concluded that it was the woman spirit causing the problem in Taylor’s nursery.

Although I’m not really sure why I didn’t just tell the woman to stop what she was doing, I did think that Sallie might be helpful. After thinking about the words I was going to use, I finally called out to her.

“Sallie, do you think you could help me? I need you to watch over and protect Taylor. He’s really tired and needs to get some sleep. Can you make sure no one wakes him or scares him tonight? It would be a really big help to us and Taylor, too.” I waited a minute, as if expecting a response, and then thanked her. Taylor did not wake again that night and even slept in the next morning. It was June 26th, Taylor’s first birthday.

Tony and I had gotten up early and were anxiously waiting for him to wake up. We had spent several days planning his first birthday celebration. The house was decorated with streamers and balloons, and his gifts filled a small plastic pool in the dining room.

While Tony and I sat on the couch, we noticed one of my cats ran into the living room by way of the stairs. As if being chased by something, she had come down at race car speed. Then suddenly she turned and hissed, as if to give final warning to whatever was chasing her. But there was nothing there. For about forty-five minutes, we watched her bolt back and forth through the few rooms downstairs, hissing sharply at something unseen behind her.

Taylor finally woke up around 10:00 a.m. Tony got him dressed and brought him downstairs. Taylor opened gifts and we took pictures, then played for hours. About 4:00 p.m., we started greeting family and friends as they joined us to celebrate.

By 8:30, almost forty family members and friends had come and gone and we were sitting with two other couples who also had one-year-olds. The babies had been playing on the floor when one of them let out a howl. It was as if someone had reached out and pinched her. She had always been a quiet and contented baby and I had never heard a peep out of her before then. I was overcome with a sinking feeling that Sallie had done something to Michelle in an act of protection and possessiveness toward Taylor’s new toys.

Throughout the day, we video-recorded some of the visitors and events with a borrowed camera. In 1994, EVP or Electronic Voice Phenomena was not widely known as a tool for seeking proof of spirit activity. In more recent years, it has become a significant focal point and we have had the original recording analyzed by EVP analyst Renae Leiker. The tape was more than ten years old, and although it was difficult, she was able to pull out some interesting audio.

Two of the most remarkable clips were captured while most of the children were together, opening the gifts bags we had prepared for them. The voices that were caught in the audio recording sounded like children saying “Rabbit’s foot” and “That’s all she gets.” It suggests that spirit children were not only aware of our activity and surroundings, but watching and commenting on the activity they were seeing in the room. I found this amazing.