Your
True Tales
February 2005 – Page
16
My
Mom's Haunting
by Elizabeth Gibson
My mom used to live in a house in downtown Vancouver, Washington, ,which is full of supposed haunted houses. I don't know if all the stories are true, but I CAN tell you that my mother, myself, and my younger brother have all experienced strange things in her old house.
When my mom first moved in, she and my brother (who was 10 at the time) heard knocking on windows in the house late at night, at the exact same time. At first, they thought maybe someone was either playing a trick on them or something like a tree was rubbing against the house. They tried to recreate the sound after realizing there were no trees near the windows. The only way they could duplicate the sound was to knock on the windows FROM THE INSIDE! Since the windows are double-paned, you can hardly hear if someone knocks from the outside, so that kind of shook my mother up a bit. She does believe in ghosts, but she kept trying to come up with some other explanation.
After she told me about this, she also mentioned that when she first moved in to the house, she would be lying in bed next to my step-dad and hear the nightstand drawer handle jiggling. It is brass, so it is very distinct sounding, not to mention kind of loud! It would stop then start again. When I suggested maybe the cat had been playing with it, she nervously laughed and said the cats had been locked out of the room. This finally stopped as suddenly as it had started.
Once when I stopped by with my newborn son, my mom ran down to the Safeway down the street, and I decided to stay there and eat my burger I had picked up for lunch. I had been sitting at the kitchen table, eating for only about a minute when I heard the back screen door open and slam shut, then heard someone come up the back stairs and heard a pair of wet shoes squeaking across the kitchen floor, coming my way. I looked up and yelled, "What did you forget, mom?" But there was no answer. I got up and walked out to the back porch and called to my mom again, and again there was no answer. I then looked out the window, and that's when I realized I was alone (except for my son) because my mom's car was still gone! I walked out of the sun porch and took my food out to the front (outside!) and finished eating out there because I was so spooked! After my mom came home, I told her what had happened and she looked just as puzzled as I was.
Once, my mom had just gotten up and was sitting out on the sun porch in the back of the house, drinking coffee and trying to wake up, when she saw out of the corner of her eye, a figure walk past the sun porch door and into the kitchen (the porch is attached to the kitchen). She just assumed it was my step-dad and didn't really think anything of it, until 10 minutes passed and my step-dad didn't come join her on the porch. She called out to him to see what he was doing in the kitchen for so long, and no one was in there! My step-dad was still in bed, sound asleep! Also, when my mother was getting dressed for work one day, she was rushing around, and was looking for her shirt when she walked past the open basement door and she heard a distinct male voice say, "Nice!" from downstairs! That really freaked her out, and I think that was the last thing that happened before they sold the house.
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