True Ghost Tales

Aunt's House

When I was fifteen,we travelled from New York to Michigan to spend Thanksgiving withmy Aunt's family. They had just moved to a new home, a ranchhouse in a subdivision that had been built on farmland. Therewere eleven of us tripping over one another in the four-bedroomhouse, but we managed pretty well.

Until the second night we were there.

I was assigned sleeping quarters in the baby's room. In the roomthere was my cot, the baby's crib, and a chest of drawers onwhich sat a baby scale.

Just as I was falling asleep, I heard the baby scale move. Not asif it slipped across the top of the dresser, but as if somethingcompressed it, making the springs creak.

I told myself I was imagining it, misinterpreting some sound thebaby had made. My little cousin made soft sucking sounds andmurmurs in his sleep, and it was after all a strange house. Icould have heard anything...

But I heard it again, clearly, unmistakably. There is no sound inthe world like a creaking spring. Nor was the sound coming frommy cot, which had no springs. I began to get nervous. I staredwide-eyed into the dark, torn between a desire to hide beneaththe blankets and the fear that something would creep up on me ifI 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 thefamily at the other end of the house in the recreation room. Allthe 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 tosay anything, just insisted I couldn't sleep. She didn't believeme, so finally I admitted that I was hearing things in the baby'sroom, that something was pressing down on the baby scale over andover. I thought she would laugh at me. I knew my mother would bedisgusted. 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 havea ghost here."

It seems there was a cold spot in the hallway just outside thebaby's room that smelled like mildew and mouldering leaves. Itwould come and go, and at first they tried to blame it on theheating system creating a draught.

Then there was the night my aunt thought her daughters had gottenout of bed and were reading books in the living room. She couldhear pages in a book being turned. She came around the corner totell the girls to get to bed (they were only 4 and 2) and foundno one in the living room. She heard the sounds several timesmore.

One night she and my uncle were wakened from a deep sleep by thesound of crockery crashing and shattering. They both leapt out ofbed, thinking someone had broken into the house and charged intothe kitchen, expecting to find every dish they owned shattered onthe floor. Not one thing was out of place.

And then there was her four-year-old daughter asking "wherethe little girl had gone." The little girl who played in theliving room sometimes.

My aunt looked at me and said, "Go ahead and sleep in thegirls' room tonight. It's far enough away from the cold spot thatI don't think you'll have any trouble."

Gratefully, I crawled into the lower bunk and listened to my twolittle cousins snore. I fell asleep.

Sometime during the night, I awoke with a start, having heardsomething heavy being dragged down the hallway just outside thebedroom door. My mind filled in the horrifying image of a bodybeing dragged. Terrified, I couldn't go back to sleep. I listenedto the cuckoo clock in the living room sound every half hour fromthree in the morning until six. My heart hammered so hard I couldhardly breathe, and I lay stiffly, scared to death I would hearsomething...or see something...

I knew my dad planned to get up at six so we could get an earlystart on our trip back. I strained my ears listening for thesound of his stirring. Minutes crept by, the cuckoo sounded thehour of six... and finally, finally, I heard my dad turn on thewater in the kitchen.

I jumped out of bed and hurried out there, wanting never again tobe alone in that house. As soon as I reached the kitchen, my dad,who was standing in the recreation room onto which the kitchenopened, asked me, "What were you doing out here when I gotup this morning?"

"I wasn't out here," I said. "I just came out herenow." I didn't want to admit how terrified I'd been allnight. 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 andlook out the window."

So I did as he asked, wondering.

Then he said, "I guess it wasn't you after all. I was sureit was. I could see your nightgown and long hair...well, whoeverwas standing there was shorter."

He never again said anything about it, except to insist that hehad 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 littlecousins had seen a girl, too. Or did my father simply pick up onmy ardent desire to be out in that kitchen, and see a projectionof me standing there. For years I was inclined to believe thelatter, but I'm not so sure anymore...