Coolest Story of the Month

The Clothes in the Garden
by M. Seimen

My experiences with the paranormal have been heightened in the past few years, but until then, it was all child's play. I can't really say I had believed in ghosts until I moved into an old, ramshackle house in the center of town. I had always felt a certain presence in the house with me - not a bad one, just a presence. The front door would open on its own (a faulty hinge, I'm sure) cold spots within the home (it is an old house, it could have drafts). Nothing could prepare me or explain what followed.

Strange things began to happen within the sanctuary of my home. I didn't recognize the signs right away, I could probably still find a humanly explanation in all of the goings-on, but suffice it to say, there came a point in all this that I realized that my house was haunted. It is hard to say exactly when the occurrences started happening, but upon reflection, I would have to guess it was around the time we started to dig a vegetable garden in the far corner of our backyard. We didn't just dig up soil... in fact, about two feet down, we came across a perfectly placed pair of shoes - sneakers to be exact. As we continued digging up the soil, we came across a pair of blue jeans, neatly arranged to fit with sneakers. As we continued digging, we eventually uncovered a t-shirt and a jacket (as if the person took the items off together) and a baseball cap. At the time, we didn't put much weight into this, for we had found other odd items in and around the house. We threw the articles of clothing into the trash and continued on with our daily living.

Thereafter, we encountered events that can't easily be explained. One such incident involved my husband as he was getting up in the morning. He found his way to the top of the stairs, ready to make his descent, when in his words, "I was just at the bottom... I don't remember going down the stairs, I was just there, lying at the bottom of the stairs." With no bumps or bruises, he believes that he didn't fall down the stairs, but merely ended up there without knowing how he got there. He said it was as if he was picked up and carried down the stairs and placed at the bottom. This is just one of the strange things that we couldn't explain.

Other incidents followed; this time, involving my son. In total, most of the incidents did involve my son. This one in particular happened around the first Christmas that we spent in that house. I was in the family room watching TV and waiting to wake up my son to pick my husband up after work. I usually sent my son to bed and would wake him at a certain time to arrive at my husband's place of work just as he was finished, but this night was different, I started to hear Christmas carols from my son's bedroom. Thinking that he may have left his stereo on, I proceeded to climb the stairs to turn it off. As I bounded up the stairs a feeling of intense panic came over me, I felt the need to wake my son and whisk him off to pick up my husband right then and there, an hour earlier than I would have. When I got to my son's room, I was so filled with the feeling that I had to leave immediately that I had barely noticed that the stereo wasn't even on - it was almost an afterthought. Loaded up in the car and ready to go, I took the usual route which involved driving up a steep hill with little or no street lights at 100km/h in the snow. The hill is steep enough to cause many accidents because of difference in speeds of the vehicles (a larger vehicle would be slower because of their weight). It's a two-lane highway which usually has the slower vehicles in the right lane. That night, however, as I rounded the corner leading to the hill, I was the only one on the road at that time. I had seen up ahead that there was a slower vehicle in the lane in front of me and gently braked so as not to skid across the slippery road, when it suddenly and quickly occurred to me that this car wasn't just going slower, it was dead stopped in the middle of the freeway. I quickly skirted around the car thanking anyone who would listen that there was no one in the lane beside me. I had avoided an accident and didn't think anything of it - until I made my way back home again, back down the hill and saw the multi-car pile-up that occurred because of the stopped car. Had I left at the usual time, I would have been added to that list of cars.

I believe that I had a guardian angel with us that night. But I'm sure it wasn't a guardian angel that came to visit us the next week. I was at work when I received a phone call from my husband, in a panicky voice he said, "You've got to do something, I just heard [our son] talking to someone else in his room! It was a different, distinct, man's voice!" At this point, I think I realized that this is something I know virtually nothing about. Was it a ghost, a spirit of some long ago person who once lived in the house? As night fell, that's when things became even stranger. My two cats were intent on staring at nothing at the top of the stairs, and the house which was almost always cool, was extremely cold (although the weather was not below average) and I couldn't stop my uncontrollable teeth chattering and all-around shaking. I began to worry about my son. He was upstairs alone and I was terrified of the unknown that may be with him. I urged my husband to bring him downstairs, I couldn't bear the thought of him sleeping upstairs alone when I, an adult, couldn't bring myself to even walk up the stairs. But as time wore on, I grew more insistent that I had to get out of the house - camping out in the family room just wasn't "safe" anymore and we would have to leave. I managed to gather the strength to get my son and arouse him. I told him that something had come up and that we would have to leave the house. With all my efforts, I couldn't wake him enough to get dressed. As my panic level rose even more, I finally asserted my voice and told him that we would have to leave now and that he would have to tell whoever his "friend" was that he would have to stay here and that his "friend" was not allowed to come with us. That was when my son turned to me, rolled his eyes and opened them wide and said in a clear, deep, distinct voice, "I'm not allowed to go anywhere!" I knew that wasn't my son, it wasn't even his voice, he slumped back onto his bed and we had to dress him ourselves. We packed up and spent the night in a hotel.

These are just a few of the many incidences that occurred, there are many more that I can relate and most of them involve the stair way in that house and my son's room. As any protective parent, I couldn't allow any more things to happen to him. We moved from that house and are safely residing in a fairly new home. Nothing has happened here that can't be explained and I kind of prefer it that way. And if a spirit does happen to stumble upon our happy abode, I didn't and won't ever invite them in.