Ghost Stories

Staircase Footsteps

I think I havelived in two different "haunted" houses in my life andI never get tired of telling about them. But I'll just tell youabout the first right now. When I was a child, we lived in an oldwhite house in a small community about 15 miles north of the cityof Cincinnati. When I was 10 we moved--two doors down the street.The people who bought the house and moved in naturally became ourneighbors. They had a boy name Alan who was my age and a girlnamed Barbara who was 4 years older than we were and much toosophisticated to mess around with us. But Alan and I became goodfriends even though he was a boy and I was a girl because therejust weren't any kids in the neighborhood. The mother of thefamily worked and during the summers it was Barbara's job to"watch" Alan--babysit, in other words. One summer whenAlan was 11 and I was 13, Barbara - now 17 - got an invitationfrom one of her cousins to come and spend two weeks with them .While she was gone my mom was going to "watch" Alan.The usual routine was for him to get up, eat breakfast, dress andcome over to my house. We then would play monopoly on the sunporch and after lunch we would usually jump on our bikes and headto the local pool for the afternoon. But one monrning he cameover and we didnt feel like Monopoly so we decided to ride ourbikes down to the woods. By the time we got back we were drenchedin sweat and so thirsty. Now, of course, there was no airconditioning, but we knew that Alan's mom always kept a bottle ofcold water in the refrigerator and it seemed like a very invitingthing right at that moment. So we parked our bikes and went intothe kitchen. After pouring our water we sat down on the basementsteps where there was a nice cool draft. All of a sudden, weheard the front door open and slam shut and someone walk up thestairs right over our heads! Alan said, "Who could that be?The front door's locked!" We just about killed one anothergetting out of there. At my house we poured this story out to mymom, who seemed unimpressed. She just told us to stay therebecause she was going to have lunch ready in a few minutes. On mytwenty-first birthday mom and dad had a big party for me withlots of relatives and when they all left, mom and I sat on theporch and talked about the neighborhood and how things had beenchanging. I found myself retelling the story of the ghostlyfootsteps I'd heard as a kid. "I know you didn't believe us,Mom, but it really happened. I swear." She was quiet for amoment and then said, "Oh, I believed you. I can't tell youthe number of times I went down to do laundry when we lived inthat house and heard the front door open and someone go up thefront steps." Turns out she was often so spooked that shewouldn't go back upstairs, instead she used to go out thebasement door to the backyard and sit in a lawn chair until mybrother and sister came home from school.