Your True Tales
January 2008 - Page 4
The Demlar House
by Lucy
It was the middle of third grade for me, about 1962, when my parents moved from North Carolina back to New Jersey. My parents bought a house in Livingston, but the seller wasn't ready to move until after Christmas, so they rented a house in another small town. The house was a pre-Revolutionary War mansion, with fireplaces in each room, including the kitchen. The house even had secret passages, of which the elderly owner, Mrs. Demlar, said there were ten. We found seven. The house was beautifully furnished with antiques and wonderful furniture. The third floor, that had a special door to it, was also furnished, but had been made into a sort of apartment with a kitchenette and bedroom with an old four-poster bed. The well-stocked, old-fashioned library was up on that third floor as well. We all were big readers in our family. That library was well used. In fact, the third floor was our favorite place to play on wintry days; it had two of the ten secret passages.
My mother didn't work outside the home. She was a homemaker and a clean freak. Being the only daughter of my Irish mother, I was her "little helper." We were upstairs, cleaning the third floor, and my mother swore in her Irish brogue, " I've told you kids over and over... do NOT play on this bed." I started to say we never did and stopped... there was the depression of a body on the made bed; even the pillow was pressed down as though a head had lain there.
Mother pushed me to the library. "Dust and put the books right, girl. Get on with it." I did as I was told and stopped cold... the handmade rocking chair by the closed window was slowly rocking back and forth, like someone was in it. My mother came up behind me and shoved me. "Lazy girl, MOVE!" And I pointed... my mother let out a shriek, grabbed me by the hair and pulled me down the stairs, shrieking. She gathered all us kids in the kitchen and called my father to pick up a padlock and latch on his way home and do it NOW!
My father wasn't one for ghosties and goblins, as my Ireland raised mother was, but he did latch and padlock the door leading to the upstairs apartment. He kept the keys on his key chain, so no kid could sneak back up there. None of us wanted to anyway... we became afraid.
When it came time to move into our new home, and out of "the Demlar House," as we called it, my dad and I gathered up all the books that belonged "up there." When we got up there, the place was a HUGE wreck! The bed clothes torn, the books thrown about, the rocking chair upside down -- and MAN, was it COLD up there! The radiators were warm, but the air wasn't. My father and I set the place right, putting everything back in its place, including the rocking chair. My father made me swear to NEVER tell my mother what we found up there.
I truly believed the entity up there was angry we kids weren't up there playing anymore. It was my first encounter with the paranormal, but it certainly wasn't the last.
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