Your
True Tales
February 2006 – Page
6
It
Destroyed Our Lives
by Chris
In the mid-1970s my parents bought a house in the rural town of Wingham, Ontario, Canada. It was a large, yellow brick place built in 1800s. We moved as soon as the school year ended. For me, that was the summer between Grades 4 and 5. My older brother had just married, and part of what my parents did was divide the house into a duplex. My brother and his bride had one side. The other accomodated my parents, a sister and myself, and our grandmother. Because of the wedding, we had a lot of relatives visiting. We still owned the house we'd just moved from. So it was packed with guests. We also had some uncles and aunts staying at the new place.
It was my first night in our new house. When I was trundled off to bed, my parents made a point of telling me to keep my bedroom door open. They were keeping the upstairs hall light on, so our guests could find their way to the bathroom, etc. And also so I wouldn't get confused and fumble around in the dark my own self. That bedroom was the smallest of all. Just right for a kid, I guess, and at the end of it's own short corridor off the main upstairs hall. I remember that room being cold, regardless of the season.
That first night, a warm summer's night, that room was definitely chilly. So much so that my parents had made up my bed with a winter comforter and had me put on flannel pajama's. When you entered this room, you found yourself at the corner of a rectangular room stretching to the left with a single large window on the opposite wall. As soon as you stepped in, there was a closet to the right. The bed was along the far wall to the left: the furthest point from the door. I was sitting upright and cross-legged, with that comforter wrapped around me and looking around my brand new bedroom while listening to the voices echoing up the stairwell from the big get together going on downstairs. I could clearly see details. The only part of the room in shadow was where my bed was at the far end of the room. The rest was clearly lit by the hallway light shining through the open door. It seemed silly to expect me to sleep with all the noise coming up the stairs and with all the light shining in my doorway.
I was sitting there wide awake. It was just then that one of those lulls happened in the conversation and it was quiet for a few moments. The men had gone out to smoke cigars, the ladies had gone into the kitchen to bring in a dessert tray and a fresh pot of tea. That was when I heard it. That sound that a person makes when they shuffle across a carpeted floor. It was slow, stealthy and deliberate tread and it was right there in my room. It was coming towards my bed from the open closet door. There was no mistaking that. The sound was growing louder the closer it came. And as it came so did a sense of sordid anticipation. There was an unclean feeling building. I had never been in any real danger before in my life. Yet at that moment I believed my life was in mortal jeopardy. I am still absolutely convinced of that to this day. (I'm almost 39 at time of this writing.)
I swear to God that I honest to God felt I had to literally run for my life before whatever it was reached the bed. This sensation built the closer those steps came. I still believe something meant me mortal harm. I guess I always will. It was as if whatever this person was, they knew I was completely aware of their approach. That room only took a few paces for a child to cross. Those steps seemed to take forever. Whatever, whoever was approaching my bed was deliberately making a slow approach, as if confident I was trapped. And please keep in mind that most of the room was lit up from outside: THERE WAS NO ONE THERE. I could NOT see anyone. The hallway wasn't carpeted, only the bedrooms were. No one had come upstairs. The stairs made a distinctive creaking sound. Something was coming towards me. Something that meant to do me harm. Something I could not see. But something I could hear. And something that carried with it this strange aura or atmosphere that built the closer it came. And I did the only thing a child could. I ran screaming for my life. I almost tripped at the top of the stairs, and even then, I tumbled down the final few. In an instant, the men were searching the house thinking it might've been an intruder. I could tell nobody really believed me, thinking perhaps I'd dreamed it. I didn't care. I knew what I'd experienced, what I'd heard, what I'd felt. And no power on earth was getting me back in that room that night. I slept downstairs on the couch. I remember the adults stayed up all night, just to keep an eye on me. That's how it began for me.
I lived in that house until I finished high school, wondering if I was insane: Because the pattern to the haunting followed a set process: Something would happen. Then nothing would happen until the impact of it had faded from memory to that point where I felt I'd dreamt it or imagined it or rationalized some explanation. It wasn't until on night in the summer of 1986 that I had confirmation. I was engaged to my high school sweetheart. We'd rented a stack of comedy movies, and had the house to ourselves for the evening. It was another warm summer night. We were in the living room, cuddled up on a love seat and watching Spring Break. Julie complained it was cold and I put my arm around her. She was wearing a short-sleeved blouse, and sure enough her bare arm was like ice. I thought that odd, but assumed it had cooled down outside because what felt like a chill breeze was blowing lightly against my hand on her arm. Only it was coming from the wrong direction for it to be coming in any of the open windows. That, and the drapes weren't moving. It must've occurred to us both at the same time. We looked at each other, then as one we turned our heads towards where that soft, icy breeze was coming from.
There, on the sofa, was a cushion pressed down as if from someone's weight. You could clearly see the indentation, even the small rise between the legs like someone sitting with their legs slightly apart. She ran screaming. I wasn't far behind. She refused to ever enter that house again and we sat outside until my parents got home. That was apparently the final straw. My parents put the place on the market. At the time, that should've alerted me that they knew there was something going on in that house. I realized that later. At the moment, I was too busy being happy to have confirmation: Someone else had experienced something! She'd seen what I'd seen. She'd felt it too. I was NOT crazy. The relief was overwhelming.
As for the house: It sold before the end of that summer. The side my brother had lived in had been sitting empty for about a year. He'd bought a house in another town because of his work and had moved. My father sent me back down to make sure all the windows and doors were securely locked. And to make sure we hadn't forgotten anything. My fiance, over her fright, went with me. It was a hot day that day. Not a breath of wind, and so humid that it felt like breathing at the bottom of a boiling kettle. There wasn't a cloud in the sky either. Julie and I walked down to the house, we checked it out thoroughly, and my instructions were to leave the keys in the kitchen for the realtor and make sure to lock the front door behind me. We did that, then we walked around the block to the corner store for a couple of bottles of cold pop. That's when Coke and Pepsi still came in glass bottles.
As we walked back past the house, my fiance joked that the only thing we forgot to pack was the ghost. And the new aluminum storm door my father had put on the front door just before we moved suddenly swung open like someone was coming out of the house. There was no wind. There was no one there. There was no scientific explanation for how this could've happened: That door was brand new. Dad hadn't properly adjusted the pneumatic tube thing, so it took a hard pull to swing it like that. Yet that door swung wide, then slammed shut with unmistakable force. We never went back to clean the broken glass off the sidewalk. (I used to joke that we ran so fast the bottles couldn't keep up.) I found out later that a young blond girl HAD fallen on the stairs in that house. She broke her neck, but whether or not she'd died from it wasn't known. I don't think she lived. Something possessed my father to paint the stairwell a bright burgundy. He couldn't explain why he suddenly had the urge to paint the stairs. Or why he chose that colour. He took a polaroid of it for the photo album, but threw the picture away saying it must've been defective film. The reason was that there was an oval blob of smoky light in the photo about half way down the stairs. It was a butter yellow colour.
My fiance and I left that town completely and didn't go back there for almost 15 years. In the meantime, my parents retired and themselves moved away. And when I did go back, it was the worst mistake of my entire life. I'd married that high school sweetheart of mine. We'd had two fine sons. And the past had become tales to tell when Halloween rolled around. In 2002, we went back. It was an October day. I was with our sons. My wife was walking to meet us. She walked past that house. There was a different storm door on the front of the place. But it opened and slammed by itself just like it'd done that hot summer day all those years ago. Julie took off running, same as before. She wasn't going to mention anything that'd happened. Only we started noticed a shadowy figure around our home not long after.
At first, we thought it was just a family member. We all heard our names called. This was always when it was overcast, dusk, or after dark. When we followed the figure into other rooms, no one was there. When we asked who'd called for us, no one had. Something else was among us. Something was in our home. And something was going to finish what it'd started that night in my bedroom. It took my life. My wife had a nervous breakdown. She left, started an affair, and basically abandoned the kids and myself. Her values, likes, dislikes, even her tastes in food and clothing all changed. It's like she's a whole other person. My youngest had suicidal thoughts that he says weren't his. It was like he was being told to do it. Ordered to do it. He overcame this, but left home anyway. My oldest experienced a rash of accidents that had went beyond clumsy and beyond coincidence. And I heard the sound of laughter, directed at me. But same as always, no one was there. It's been almost 3 years since that. I'm divorced. My wife remarried. My youngest lives with friends. My oldest son and I are all that's left. Nothing new happened since all that. We pray nothing else will. We pray to turn this nightmare around. We just plain pray a lot.
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