Sister Stories 2
By the way my nameis Lily. I'm 42 years old, I have a 17 (soon to be 18) year olddaughter, and a wonderful husband who I've been married to for 20years (21 in June).
I had a request asking about the markings that I mentioned in mylast story. The markings appeared every year on the outside ofthe house during the summer months. At the very beginning of thesummer small dark reddish brown marks would appear on theconcrete walk below the side door (which became the front doorwhen the extra room which was my grandparent's bedroom was added).We used to call them the blood stains because that's exactly whatthey looked like, old smeared streaky blood stains. Anyway, asthe months progressed the marks would spread up the stairs,slowly, one at a time...until by the end of summer they hadreached the side door where they stopped. During fall and winterthey would gradually fade away, only to return the following year.My grandfather who was very handy searched for the source of thestains but neither he or any of the rest of the family was everyable to determine the source of the marks. When I moved backed inwith my husband and daughter when my grandfather died I watchedfor the stains during the summer. Sure enough , they showed up.
I'm going to give you a couple more stories as you requested. Thefirst story for now took place when I was 21 years old and juststarting to date my present day husband. We had a date to go outfor the evening and he came to the house to pick me up. Laterthat evening during our conversation he asked me if our house hada second floor, to which I answered "no, just one floor"He asked me what the window was at the front on the house and Itold him that was the attic window. He assumed we had a staircaseto the attic (He hadn't been in the house yet). He asked ifsomeone had a bedroom up there which surprised me and I said noand I had a feeling he had seen what many of use have seen orthought we were imagining. I asked him why and he told me he hadseen what he thought was a woman with long dark hair peering frombehind the curtain, moving the window shade a bit so she couldsee him. I told him no one uses the attic, as the floor is tooweak to hold much weight, much less a bedroom (we had a buildercheck it years before hoping to add an extra bedroom for some ofthe kids to ease the crowing). Also, no one ever went up thereexcept one to make some kind of repair to the house. The entranceto the attic is a miserable hole covered by a wooden cap, small,and dangerous....you have to get a ladder to climb in and youhave to be extremely careful. I personally have never attemptedit. But anyway back to the subject. I myself since I was a littlegirl playing in the yard always sensed something up there. Iwould feel someone watching me and I'd look up the I could swearI saw someone duck behind the shade to avoid being seen, leavingthe shade to slightly sway from the movement. My siblings,various cousins and myself have always told ourselves it was justour imagination. But no one outside of the family had ever seensomething up in the attic window before. It threw me for a loop.
My second story is about the little boy I mentioned in my firstposting. This little boy has been heard before by family membersbut one time we actually got to see him. I was about about 15years old at the time and we were all sitting down to dinnerexcept my younger sister who was about 11 years old at the timeand my little brother who was the baby of the family (he wasabout 5 or 4 years old at that time).
My aunt and her husband joined us for dinner every Monday throughFriday. From the kitchen table where we ate our meals you couldsee into the dining room and my grandparent's room from one sideof the table. The lights in the dining room and my grandparent'sbedroom were out. My aunt saw a small sillouhette walk across thedining room and into my grandparent's room, whom she assumed tobe my little brother.
Before I continue I must tell you about my baby brother. Mylittle brother was very inquisitive with limitless energy. As aconsequence he sometime ended up breaking or tearing thing apart(he's still famous for breaking a brand-new well made metal tonkatoy, back when toys were made to last forever). But anyway,because my brother could be a hazard to your possesion when hewas a little boy, my aunt said "Uh-oh, Bobby just went intograndpa's room." My grandmother a kind loving woman, blessher soul, spoke up saying " That's okay mijo (spanish slangfor "son"), turn on the T.V. As soon as she said thiswe saw the light from the T.V. light up the dark room. My motherturned to me with a serious face and said "No, go get himout of there before he breaks something and your grandfather hasa fit!" So as eveyone watched me I walked into the room litby only the light from the T.V. I didn't see him in the room, andseeing as how that bedroom only had one door leading in and outof the room I assumed he was hiding. Now I have always been veryfond of my brothers, and I knew my little brother liked to hide.So, I walked about the room saying "Peek-a Boo Bobby, whereare you hiding...come on out!" I turned on the light andlooked in the closet, under the bed, behind furniture...but, nolittle brother! I stood at the doorway and yelled to my mom inthe kitchen "Mom, he's not in here!" Just then myyounger sister came out from my parent's bedroom door - holdingmy little brother's hand. She said "Here's Bobby". Sheand my little brother had been together in the other side of thehouse, when she heard me calling his name and yelling peek-a-boo....soshe brought him thinking I sas looking for him. He had been withher the whole time...nowhere near the dining room! (by the way mylittle brother grew up just fine. He probably doesn't rememberthis incident because he was so young) My thanks to this samelittle brother who grew up to be a computer whiz, he's helping mepost this...I write and type, he posts and does all the fancy-schmancycomputer stuff.....I just love him!
Before I go I want to embellish on some of the details on thecrawlspace I mentioned before where poor homeless people used tosleep during the depression for a minimal fee to the caretaker.The opening to the crawlspace under the house is a good sizedlittle door approximately 3' x 4-1/2' where you can step downinto the crawlspace from the walk leading to the back door of thehouse. You can still see where some of the people must have dugout the middle area of the ground so they could walk comfortablywithout bumping their heads or crouching. There are woodenpallets around the walls near the back of the house adjacent tothe crawlspace door. When I was a little girl I always wonderedwhat they were but never bothered to ask because they had alwaysbeen there. Later when I found out about that part of the house'shistory, I looked again when I moved back into the house with myhusband and daughter when the house came to be in my possesion.Suddenly I could see what they were.....sleeping pallets! If youhave ever seen pictures of the Jewish people in the concentrationcamps during the holocaust, if you can remember those wooden bedsthey slept on? That's what they look like.
I sometimes wonder if one or two of those poor people didn't dieunder there, or perhaps were even buried under there on on theproperty. When I was a kid I loved to dig for marbles. There weretons of marbles buried in that soil for some reason and once Ifound a bone that looked like a human kneecap. Even my aunt whowas a nurse thought it was a human kneecap. We thought abouttaking it to someone for verification but no one really knew whoto take it to, police? museum? where? We never really got aroundto it.....besides, we were kind of afraid to find out the answer.