Paranormal Story Archives
February 2002 – Page 36

Is My Mom Watching?
by Janetp

My husband and I moved into our present house in Sept. 1984. The house was almost four years old and had one previous owner. In August 1985, my mother passed away. She had never seen my house as she was sick for the whole time I was living here. She lived in Brooklyn, N.Y. and we had moved to New Jersey. In early December 1985, my husband had to go to Florida on business and I was home alone for those three days. 

On the first morning after he left, I was awakened by my dog. He had been asleep on the bed with me and at about 4:30 a.m. he jumped up and ran out into the hall barking like a lunatic. I was so afraid I could not move. I assumed someone had broken into the house and the dog heard it. I lay there waiting to see if I could hear anything or anyone moving around downstairs. I finally got up the nerve to get out of bed and tiptoe out to the hall in the dark. I figured I had the advantage because I knew the layout of the house in the dark. I listened and heard nothing. I finally went downstairs turning on the lights as I went. Everything was fine and no door or windows were open or broken. I went back upstairs and tried to go back to sleep, but it was impossible because the dog stayed in the hall and every once in a while would let out a bark and a low growl type sound. I had to get up at 5:30 for work anyway, so I got into the shower to get ready. As soon as I had a head full of shampoo, the dog again started barking like a lunatic. I rinsed off as fast as I could and got out of the shower and again went to see what he was barking at. I never did find out. 

I got dressed and went into the garage to go to work. The car would not start so I called AAA. By the time they came and jumped my battery, I had missed the train to the city and decided to stay home instead of going in late. At about 11 a.m., I went grocery shopping. On the way home, I was on a back road that ran alongside the railroad tracks. It was very overcast and the weather forecast was snow by evening. I was not going fast at all maybe about 40 when all of a sudden my car began to slip and slide and spin. I could only see the guardrails and thought I was going to slam into them. I was finally able to stop the spin and landed up in the right direction as though nothing happened. I was shaking and couldn't figure out why I spun like that. I could see nothing on the road such as ice, water or grease or even any potholes that I could have hit making me lose control of the car. 

Later that afternoon, I was sitting down to watch TV when I heard the garage door open. I went to see what was going on. Nobody was there. I closed the door and went back inside thinking someone must have been on the same frequency and we are. It was Friday and friends of mine had asked me over to dinner so I went and I took the dog with me. When I got home the garage door was open again. The next day when I was again sitting down to watch TV, I head a loud bang, almost like something heavy falling from a distance to the floor. It sounded like it came from the kitchen so I investigated thinking one of the cats knocked something over. I looked all over and found nothing out of the ordinary. I never did find out what it was.

After that things seemed to be quiet but since then on and off things would happen. We constantly had to replace answering machines, TVs, light bulbs and clock radios which were perfectly fine one minute and then no good the next. They seemed to have stopped working for no apparent reason. Most of the things were new items. My sister came to visit from Florida during the summer. Since I just got a new PC, I gave her my old one for her kids. She e-mailed me the week after she got home to tell me that they set the computer up in the kid's bedroom and when her husband had gone into the room one day, he heard music coming from the speakers. He checked thinking the PC was on and the kids had just turned off the monitor. He found everything was off! He called my sister and the kids in and they all heard the music. When she told me this, she said that she now believed me about all the weird things that happen here and that she thinks she now has the ghost at her house from the PC. She thinks it is my mother. It never happened again after that, but once I read her email, I began to have all kinds of problems with my new computer. In fact, just the other night I had shut it down for the night and went over to the sofa to read. About 1/2 hour later I heard a noise and looked up to see my computer was on!

Then there was the times when my dog would get up and walk over to the basement steps and growl and bark while looking down the stairs. The first time it happened, I assumed he was barking at one of the cats. After this happened a few times I went to look and found nothing. My dog was not fully trained yet and since we both worked long hours, we had to keep newspapers down the basement. In case we were late coming home, he could go on the papers if necessary. After that incident, he began having accidents around the house when we were not home. This was odd since he was very good about using the papers in the basement. I then realized he was afraid to go down the basement for a few weeks after that incident. Every once in a while this incident would repeat and I was never able to find out what he was barking at or what he was afraid of.

I left my job in 1989 when we adopted a baby. My dog was my shadow since I got him and now that I was home full time, it was more intense than ever. No matter where I went in the house, even to the bathroom, he had to go with me. Things didn't change because we now had a baby. He still followed me around like my shadow.

We had our share of "lost" items that mysteriously appeared later in a place the item never should have been or where we never would have put it. In January of 1999 I finally stopped smoking. My husband never smoked and most of our friends do not smoke. When those that do smoke come over, they do not smoke in the house. Still, every once in a while I can smell cigarette smoke as though there were someone here in the room with me smoking. BTW - my mother smoked.

In March of 1999 my dog died. He was my buddy as I stated before so I really took his death hard. I had him cremated and his ashes are in my family room. On the first Saturday after he died, I woke up and went down to the the family room and turned on the computer. I was concentrating on an email to my sister when I heard a loud bark as plain as day. I just sat there for a second wondering if I really heard it or was it because I was concentrating on the email that my mind was playing tricks on me. A few minutes later, my daughter, who was 10 at the time, came down and said that she was asleep but she was awakened by a dog bark that sounded like our dog. I didn't tell her I heard it also but I knew then that I was not hearing things. About a 1/2 hour later my husband came down and said he'd been tossing and turning for the last 1/2 hour trying to sleep after he was awakened by what sounded like our dog barking. It was at that time that I told them both that I too had heard it. Since then we have heard a bark occasionally but other sounds we hear are the same sounds we used to hear when he would walk up and down the stairs or on the wooden floor. His nails made a tapping sound so you always knew he was coming. The most recent thing that happened was two weeks ago my husband and our neighbor sat down to watch the last Jets football game of the season. We have a 53" TV in the family room with digital cable. Since we are in between NY and Phila. we get both ABC stations. When they turned on the TV to the NY station, it was being broadcast in Spanish. Thinking this odd, but not worried, they switched to the Phila station only to find that too in Spanish. The odd part was that the other two TV's we have are also hooked up to cable (not a digital box) but they were not in Spanish. We checked all our settings and none were set to Spanish. We assumed it was the digital box so I planned on calling the cable company in the morning, I asked her why they were broadcasting it in Spanish and why only on the digital boxes. I assumed she was going to tell me that there were many complaints, but she floored me when she said that they didn't do it and they had no complaints at all. She even checked my digital box while we were on the phone and said there was nothing wrong with it, and it was set to English. After that it happened once the next night but not since then. However, the newest "problem" is that when I turn off the TV with the remote, I have to press the "all off" button. When I did this, the TV turned off but the sound could still be heard. This has been happening since and we can't figure out what is wrong.

Maybe all these things can be explained away and god knows we have tried to. In fact, every time something odd happens, I joke about it being the ghost. My husband does not believe in that kind of thing, but after the barking sound and the Spanish Jets game, he is starting to wonder if something is odd here.

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