Monday, January 18, 2021

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...

14 comments:

  1. Aha! I'm thinking your family built the house on a section that once held another house belonging to whoever is doing the upstairs walking. Perhaps this spirit got attached to you because you are a nice person or maybe remind it of itself when it was living, so when you moved it stayed with you, but didn't go walking around until you once again had a house with an upstairs. You should say Hi, how you doin'? See what happens next. Maybe it is an ancient relative who once owned the cemetery land as the land your house got built on.

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    1. I don't know why it didn't follow my sister the ex-mayor's wife! I don't mind to share. Then again, it may be there but she can't sense it.

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    1. I was pickin' up what you were layin' down, even if it wasn't laid down all pretty and perfect!

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  3. It is obvious that someone in your family is buried in the cemetery with your name. There is more to this plot, and you might have to research at Ancestry.com or the county courthose or the church recorder of deeds. Now this is getting interesting. I think you should say hello to your visitor.

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    1. I have sensed that visitor's presence, and spoken to it. I said, "Don't even think about it." Referring to the mysterious 'burned out/not burned out' light bulb. I said it with my foot on the first step, headed upstairs late at night/early morning. And the light immediately WENT OUT!

      My visitor is either a prankster, or has Oppositional Defiance Disorder.

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    2. I think so. It doesn't feel menacing.

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  4. That does fit in, at least the spirit does not seem to be mean, and it does leave a lot of loose change around you.

    Ouija Board? What were they, insane? Did they not even see "The Exorcist!!"

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    1. This was shortly before The Exorcist came to our local theater. I read the book, and couldn't sleep for a week. To this day, I won't watch that movie! They probably went the first night.

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  5. So, it is YOU that is haunted!!
    I remember the Ouija board and seances conducted by girls braver than me during a huge sleep over at the YWCA in Norfolk, VA. It was an entire club from our middle school, about 200 girls. Some of them actually slept! Not me, there were so many different things going on, the seance, the elevating with mind power, the all night eating binge, the intellectual nerds. Like sensory overload. SO MUCH FUN! I want to have a murder mystery dinner party as soon as things are back to normal. HeWho says he will not participate and I say he will!

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    1. 200??? That would be a LOT of bras in the freezer!

      Hick and The Pony went to a murder mystery dinner a few years ago. The Pony was the murderer! They loved it. The Pony got a little trophy. I guess he was a good murderer.

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