char *(null)=" aunts.house

aunts.house

From: nsbrown@news.IntNet.net (NS Brown)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
Subject: Terror in my Aunt's house (true)
Date: 27 Feb 1995 11:32:39 -0500


When I was fifteen, we travelled from New York to Michigan to spend 
Thanksgiving with my Aunt's family.  They had just moved to a new home, a 
ranch house in a subdivision that had been built on farmland.  There were 
eleven of us tripping over one another in the four-bedroom house, but we 
managed pretty well.
  Until the second night we were there.
  I was assigned sleeping quarters in the baby's room.  In the room there 
was my cot, the baby's crib, and a chest of drawers on which sat a baby 
scale.  
  Just as I was falling asleep, I heard the baby scale move.  Not as if 
it slipped across the top of the dresser, but as if something compressed 
it, making the springs creak.
  I told myself I was imagining it, misinterpreting some sound the baby 
had made.  My little cousin made soft sucking sounds and murmurs in his 
sleep, and it was after all a strange house.  I could have heard anything...
  But I heard it again, clearly, unmistakably.  There is no sound in the 
world like a creaking spring.  Nor was the sound coming from my cot, 
which had no springs.  I began to get nervous.  I stared wide-eyed into 
the dark, torn between a desire to hide beneath the blankets and the fear 
that something would creep up on me if I didn't keep watch.
  Then again I heard it.  Something was in the room.  Something...
  I jumped out of the cot and hurried down the hall, joining the family 
at the other end of the house in the recreation room.  All the adults 
were still up and I sat at the table with them, scared, not wanting to go 
back to that room.
  My aunt wanted to know what was wrong.  At first I was ashamed to say 
anything, just insisted I couldn't sleep.  She didn't believe me, so 
finally I admitted that I was hearing things in the baby's room, that 
something was pressing down on the baby scale over and over.  I thought 
she would laugh at me.  I knew my mother would be disgusted.  She was 
disgusted any time she thought I was being "too imaginative" or "too 
dramatic."
  But my aunt and uncle exchanged looks, and finally my aunt said, "Well, 
we didn't want to say anything but... we seem to have a ghost here."
  It seems there was a cold spot in the hallway just outside the baby's 
room that smelled like mildew and mouldering leaves.  It would come and 
go, and at first they tried to blame it on the heating system creating a 
draught.
  Then there was the night my aunt thought her daughters had gotten out 
of bed and were reading books in the living room.  She could hear pages 
in a book being turned.  She came around the corner to tell the girls to 
get to bed (they were only 4 and 2) and found no one in the living room.  
She heard the sounds several times more.
  One night she and my uncle were wakened from a deep sleep by the sound 
of crockery crashing and shattering.  They both leapt out of bed, 
thinking someone had broken into the house and charged into the kitchen, 
expecting to find every dish they owned shattered on the floor.  Not one 
thing was out of place.
  And then there was her four-year-old daughter asking "where the little 
girl had gone."  The little girl who played in the living room sometimes.
  My aunt looked at me and said, "Go ahead and sleep in the girls' room 
tonight.  It's far enough away from the cold spot that I don't think 
you'll have any trouble."
  Gratefully, I crawled into the lower bunk and listened to my two little 
cousins snore.  I fell asleep.
  Sometime during the night, I awoke with a start, having heard something 
heavy being dragged down the hallway just outside the bedroom door.  My 
mind filled in the horrifying image of a body being dragged.  Terrified, 
I couldn't go back to sleep.  I listened to the cuckoo clock in the 
living room sound every half hour from three in the morning until six.  
My heart hammered so hard I could hardly breathe, and I lay stiffly, 
scared to death I would hear something...or see something...
  I knew my dad planned to get up at six so we could get an early start 
on our trip back.  I strained my ears listening for the sound of his 
stirring.  Minutes crept by, the cuckoo sounded the hour of six... and 
finally, finally, I heard my dad turn on the water in the kitchen.
  I jumped out of bed and hurried out there, wanting never again to be 
alone in that house.  As soon as I reached the kitchen, my dad, who was 
standing in the recreation room onto which the kitchen opened, asked me, 
"What were you doing out here when I got up this morning?"
  "I wasn't out here," I said.  "I just came out here now."  I didn't 
want to admit how terrified I'd been all night.  It seemed so stupid.
  "I saw you standing there by the sink," he insisted.
  "Daddy, honestly, I just this minute came out here."
  He hesitated a moment, then said, "Go stand at the sink and look out 
the window."
  So I did as he asked, wondering.
  Then he said, "I guess it wasn't you after all.  I was sure it was.  I 
could see your nightgown and long hair...well, whoever was standing there 
was shorter."
  He never again said anything about it, except to insist that he had 
seen a girl standing in the dark in the kitchen in her long, white 
nightgown...


  Did he see a ghost?  It's possible, considering that my little cousins 
had seen a girl, too.  Or did my father simply pick up on my ardent 
desire to be out in that kitchen, and see a projection of me standing 
there.  For years I was inclined to believe the latter, but I'm not so 
sure anymore...


  Comments?


      Sue
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