Val's Second Rodeo

Let the record show that this is not the first house of unusual happenings where Val has resided. And Val has resided plenty of places. Not because she's a troublemaker who gets evicted! There have been college houses and apartments, and early employment rentals in assorted towns, and summer sublets while pursuing her master's degree. But there is only one other home that exhibited regular paranormal activity.

VAL'S CHILDHOOD HOME!

The childhood home built by Val's parents when she was a tween, moved into when Val started 7th grade. A nice brick split-level house on the outskirts of town, built on several acres purchased for that purpose.

IT WAS ACROSS THE ROAD FROM A GRAVEYARD!

Oh, so typical. A house by a graveyard. Surely Val's imagination must have been working overtime during adolescence. Scaredy-cat Val, who did not want to join in a slumber-party Ouija Board attempt to contact JFK (yes, her friends were nerds), in the basement of a brick house down the street from her future $17,000 house. Scaredy-cat Val, who did not like to look over the rock fence into a graveyard behind the church where she would later have her wedding, while on an evening ride after watching town-team baseball games.

Actually, the graveyard behind Val's house was seldom in her thoughts. It was across a two-lane blacktop highway, which was later widened to become a two-lane concrete highway. The highway bisected our acreage. Some of our land actually adjoined the graveyard. When we first moved in, Dad took us on a tour of the property, showing us the orange corner markers. We also walked around the circular gravel road that enclosed the graveyard. Not a big deal. Broad daylight. Nothing scary. But there's something I haven't told you yet.

THE GRAVEYARD HAD OUR LAST NAME!

My maiden name, of course. The Pre-Thevictorian Graveyard. Most people knew what it was called. It even had the unusual spelling of our fairly common last name. Folks would ask about our relatives buried there. Of which there were none. We had no idea why the cemetery had that name. None of our relatives had owned property in that area. This wasn't a new graveyard. Few funerals and burials happened while my sister the little future ex-mayor's wife and I grew up there. Some dates on the graves went into the 1800s.

No, we didn't think about the graveyard much, even though looking out the kitchen window we could see the wooden sign hanging with our last name on it. We didn't even connect the graveyard to a curious phenomenon.

WE HEARD FOOTSTEPS UPSTAIRS IN OUR HOUSE!

The footsteps were in the master bedroom upstairs, over the family room. We all heard them at some time. I usually thought it was another family member, since I was rarely home alone. The footsteps would start in the hall between Sis's room and the master bedroom. They'd walk all the way across the bedroom, past the two double sliding-door closets, and into the bathroom. Where they'd stop. They never went the other way. Never came out of the bathroom. Oh, and you could look out that bathroom window and see the graveyard.

Once Sis and I had moved out, Mom said they still heard the footsteps. She worked during the day, and Dad came home for lunch, since he worked in the Southwestern Bell building (before they were broken up!), in town only five minutes away.

"Your dad says he has heard those footsteps while sitting downstairs eating a sandwich and watching TV. He thought somebody had broken in, and grabbed a bat to go upstairs and catch them. But nobody was there."

See? Hearing phantom upstairs walking must be a family tradition...