Your
True Tales
September 2005 – Page
1
Clean
Fanatic Ghost
by Bea T.
Back in 1979 I was working as a second-shift secretary in an old mansion in on Avon Street in Flint, Michigan called the Crawford-Zimmerman Mansion. The estate had been donated to a University I was working for and was used for classes.
One of the house rules was that no wet garbage could be kept in the facility over night. I was making an urn of coffee for the night classes and was alone in the building. The wet coffee grounds were left in the urn from the day classes and I had to get rid of them. I couldn't dump them in the wastebasket; I didn't want to run them out to the garbage can outside, so I decided to flush them down the sink drain.
As I was washing them down the drain, a very meek, mild female voice from behind me said, "Don't do that, you'll plug up the drain." I turned around and saw the oldest lady I had ever seen standing in the entry to the kitchen, near the back door to the house. She was wearing a black and white polka dot dress and very high shiny black leather heals with pointed toes. Calmly, I told her she shouldn't be in building because it was locked up. Of course, all the while I was trying to retrieve the coffee grounds that hadn't yet made their way down the drain.
When I turned back around to escort her out of the building – she was gone. I went to the outside door she was standing by and it was still locked. I checked the other entry doors to the building and they were all locked. Still oblivious to the fact that all the doors were locked and I saw this lady, what bothered me most was that this old, very old and wrinkled woman was wearing high heals that had to be at least 4" high with very pointed toes (I think they call them stilettos) and she was able to move VERY fast.
I then went back to the pantry, to the sink to finish cleaning the coffee grounds out of the sink. I was sure she'd tell my boss and I was getting rid of the proof. I looked up out the window over the sink and there she was again, now standing outside by the carriage house and waved to me. I waved back. Still, I was wondering how that old woman could walk so fast in those high heels. Since she was now outside, I figured she must have come from the Senior High Rise that was down the street and had wandered in to the house.
After all the grounds were out of the sink, I looked up again to see which way she was heading... and she was gone.
A month or so later, the custodian who worked during the day at the center told me that the house was haunted and wondered if I had ever heard anything. Like what, I asked? He said, like footsteps. I still didn't think of the old lady and told him I heard footstep-like sounds when I was alone, but thought it was marble floors (I didn't know marble floors would be done settling after 100 years). I also didn't want to tell him about the old lady; after all, then I'd have to tell him about the coffee grounds I was shoving down the sink, something I shouldn't have been doing.
He then asked if I noticed anything about the first floor toilet. I said that I didn't. It was a unisex bathroom and the seat was often left up when I went in to use it. I figured it was one of those man things. He then explained to me that when ever anyone used the toilet, the seat would come up. He explained the old woman who originally owned the house was a fanatic about cleanliness and whenever she used the toilet she'd leave the seat up as a sign for the servants to disinfect it.
I didn't believe him, so I went in and did my thing, left the seat down and stood their waiting for it to go up. It didn't. I figured he was just trying to freak me out because he knew I was nervous about being in the building at night. The bathroom entry was right in front of my desk. So I knew whenever anyone went in to the bathroom – and nobody did. A few hours later, I went in... and the seat was up! Kind of freaky.
That night I went home and told my mom about what had happened and told her I was thinking about quitting the job because the custodian told me the place was haunted. She told me I was full of it and there was no such thing as a haunted toilet. Still insisting on quitting the job, I told her to check it out herself.
A week or so later, mom and dad visited me at work one evening and mom went to use the bathroom. Like me, she waited to see if the seat came up. It didn't. We talked for a few moments and she told me there wasn't any such thing as a haunted houses or ghosts. I told her to go back in with me to the bathroom and look at the seat. The seat was back up. My dad checked for springs or something that would make it go up; there was nothing. I was glad I proved my point, still not worried about how it pops up after its used.
I loved my job at the house. It had a very peaceful feeling to me, in spite of the weird toilet thing. One day a reporter came to the house to do a story on it (nothing to do about ghost). The building was/is quite beautiful. In fact, while I worked there it was used in catalogs and professional models would come in and pose. It was that day I saw a picture of the original owner of the building, Mrs. Crawford. It was also the same day I gave two-weeks notice because it was Mrs. Crawford who told me not to put the coffee grounds down the sink. She had been dead for years.
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