I aint afraid of no ghost

Growing up, Granny always told us stories about ghosts; to hear her tell it, there wasn’t a house that she lived in throughout her life that wasn’t haunted. And she always named her ghosts. Mom wasn’t much better.

When I was a kid, I thought they were probably just pulling my leg; telling me these things just to spook me out. But then as I got older, strange things started happening around me, things that could only be described as paranormal. And now, I’m the one who would be hard pressed to think of a house I’ve lived in that wasn’t haunted.

My childhood house was, without a doubt, haunted. The first time Granny stepped foot in the house, she declared it haunted and named the ghost Minnie. Granny was right; the ghost was a female, but how she knew it at the time was, and still is, beyond me.

The ghost made it’s presence known to us the first night we were there. My dad was sleeping soundly with his back to the wall/door when he heard heavy footsteps come through the door and stop directly behind him. He turned around expecting to find me standing behind him, panicked at being in a strange house. I wasn’t there. And neither was my brother or our dogs. Empty air. Just empty, eerie, air.

Another night a year or so later, my brother had a friend sleeping over. My brother slept in his room, his friend slept on the pull out couch in the living room. I woke up in the morning and found the hide-a-bed empty, of both bedding and of my brother’s friend. My mom had two Spanish vases on either side of the fireplace mantle, as I was walking by, I found both vases side-by-side on one end. I thought it was weird, but put the vase back without much thought.

A couple of hours later when the boys woke up, Brandon (my brother’s friend) came out of my brother’s room telling a story in a slightly panicked voice:

Brandon: And then, I swear to God, it moved it from one side to the other…

Danny: Yeah right.

Brandon: No. Seriously. Look!!

*he pointed/looked towards the mantle; his face fell in disappointment*

Brandon: But I swear, it wasn’t like that last night…

Me: The vase?

Brandon: Yeah!

Me: I put it back… Why’d you move it to the other side anyway?

Apparently, he got woken up in the night, saw a hazy figure by the fireplace and that figure picked up the vase and moved it to the other side of the mantle. Naturally, he freaked out, grabbed all his bedding and went to share the bed with my brother. When I told him I found the vases together, I think he was just happy to know that he wasn’t going crazy. I’m not sure if he ever slept over again.

Another time, my mom was doing some spring cleaning; she tore apart our stove to clean it. When she was done, she started putting it back together and discovered that one of the elements was missing. She asked me & Danny where we put it; we said we didn’t touch it. She continued looking around for it; after a couple of hours, she was fed up, she basically pleaded with me & my brother to stop playing tricks on her. We stood by our “we didn’t touch it” defense.

Eventually, Mom gave up the fight and decided to go to bed with the stove not fully assembled. When she went into her bedroom, she found her quilt pulled down to form a triangle. You know when you are about to get in bed and pull just the corner down? Yeah, like that. She thought it was weird because she had made her bed nicely that morning and hadn’t been in her room since.

She crawled into bed, pulled the cover over her and voila… the element was underneath the triangle. She called out to us “Ha ha. Good one you guys”, still convinced we were playing a trick on her. It became pretty obvious fairly fast that it wasn’t us; she put the stove back together and went back to bed. Once Mom was out of earshot, I said to Danny “So… you hid it on her?”. He denied it and asked me the same thing. I didn’t put it there either. There wasn’t anyone else in the house.

One night, I was home alone, I was doing dishes; above the sink was a window, on the window sill was an African Violet. At one point, while washing a big pot, I suddenly had to pee (a normal occurrence when dealing with running water). Leaving the pot in the sink, I turned off the water and went to the bathroom. When I went back into the kitchen, I started washing other dishes, all the while looking out the kitchen window.

Something seemed out of place. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something was missing. As I was finishing up with the dish I was washing, I realized that I hadn’t finished rinsing the big pot. Looking in the sink, I noticed the upside down pot in the left sink. I thought it was strange; I distinctly remembered leaving it right side up in the right sink.

I thought I must be mistaken; I probably wasn’t paying that much attention to where and how the pot was left in the sink. I picked up the pot and found the plant underneath it. It was sitting upright and there was not a speck of soil on the sill or in the sink. I think I had goose bumps from head to toe.