My mom and dad bought our house in 1973, a year before I was born. It was a fixer-upper, to say the least, a 250 year old cape style on the backroads of Maine. One family had been living in the house for generations, until it was finally put on the market. There are rumors that the house was used to run slaves long ago, that a man related to the family who owned the house had shot himself in the back field, and that the land around the house is the burial ground of a once-local tribe of Native Americans. It is an old house, and bears the scars of different inhabitants and renovation.
Anyway, my mom and dad were working to fix the house up so they could live in it. They had to rebuild the fireplaces (there are three, all on a central flue), build steps to the cellar as there was nothing more than a hole in the floor and a ladder, and do other work with the windows and door casings.
My mother tells me that often when she was working alone in the house, things would turn up missing. One time in particular she remembers using a screwdriver to scrape the dirt from between the floorboards. She put it down to go get something to drink, and when she came back it was gone. My mom is a believer in the paranormal, so she put her hands on her hips and said, Now, I'm trying to fix this house up, and if you keep hiding things on me it isn't going to help. She left the room for a few minutes and relaxed, and when she returned the screwdriver was back where she left it.
My dad, who is a great skeptic and doesn't believe in any sort of paranormal things, was working in the cellar one afternoon. He had told my brother (who was three at the time) not to go near the cellar hole as there were no stairs yet and he would fall in. My dad was coming up the ladder from the cellar and his head had just come up to the same level of the floor when he saw a pair of childs' feet clad in shoes and shorts run by the hole. Thinking it was my brother, my dad yelled out, Bobby! I thought I told you to stay away from this hole! My mom heard him and came inside to ask him what was wrong. When my dad told her what he saw, she said that Bob was outside with her, playing in the yard.
My dad saw this child a second time. One night he fell asleep on the couch while watching television, and woke up to that creepy wee-hours static. He looked up and saw a fair-haired little boy in striped pajamas sitting cross-legged in front of the TV. Again, thinking it to be my brother (who was young and fair-haired as well), said, Bobby, go to bed. The child ignored him, and he repeated himself. This time the child turned his head towards my dad, and it wasn't my brother. With that, the child disappeared.
My mother also saw the child. One night she awoke and saw the little boy, in striped pajamas, standing in front of the window next to her bed, looking out. She thought it was Bob (poor kid got blamed for everything) and said, Bobby, go to bed. The child ignored her, she repeated herself, and you guessed it - the kid turned to her and wasn't Bob. She then describes it disappearing as if it were collapsing into itself (like water going down a drain she described it) and then it was gone. She woke up my dad and was pretty shaken up by the whole ordeal.
That's all for tonight, I have plenty more for future posts. A funny note to end on...my brother once spent the day chasing our chickens around the pen and generally terrorizing them (I forgot to mention I grew up on a farm). He had a vivid nightmare that night that a giant chicken was standing on the footboard of his bed, pecking him. He swears that he was awake and that the giant chicken was real. His screaming woke up my mom and she hurried to his room, and the chicken disappeared.
So what are the morals to my stories...? Don't run in the house, we had the idea long before Poltergeist the movie, and be kind to animals. Goodnight!