October 29, 2002

• Do you believe?

  
  

  Okay…I figure that I’ve done more than my share of serious talk lately…so, in the spirit of Halloween, I’ve decided that it’s time to share a few stories with y’all.

  
  

  Yup…I’m talking real, authentic ghost stories!   What?  You don’t believe in the supernatural?  hmm…well, we’ll see if you change your mind after I’m done. 

  
  

  Now I’ve not always been one to believe in spirits staying here on earth or entities haunting people and places and such…but, I think that I’d probably should after what I’ve experienced in my life.  Talk about denial eh?

  
  

  Here…let me clue you in…

  
  

  I grew up in Michigan (most of you know that already) in a very small farm town in between Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids.  I lived in a quite large house…it was referred to by the town folks as the “Monterrey Mansion”.  It was three stories high and ninety feet long…and had twenty-one rooms. (yup…I said 21 and they weren’t small either)

  
  

  Most people thought that our house was haunted…mainly because of it’s size.  However, that wasn’t necessarily the case.  When my parents first bought the house is was merely an old run down one bedroom farm house that an old farmer and his wife had previously owned.  The rest of the house was built by my parents and added on.  (Dad went a little overboard on the building thing)

  
  

  Anyway…most of our neighbors and such thought that house was beautiful…but, didn’t care to be in at night.  Now growing up in this house was an experience all of it’s own…considering I was the one who had to clean the damn thing. OY!!

  
  

  I’ll get to the point now…I promise.

  
  

  The old farmer that lived in the house before us supposedly killed his wife and then committed suicide (hello!! why in the world did my parents buy the house knowing this?).  He supposedly killed her in the bedroom…which was later used as the spare bedroom. (I wonder why that is eh?)

  
  

  Well, my room was at the opposite end of the house from this ‘spare bedroom’…but, in order to get to the only working bathroom (at the time) I had to walk past the ‘spare bedroom’ to do so.  I always felt as if I was being watched when walking past there.  Now mind you…I didn’t know about the house’s jaded past until I was older (good thing too) but, it still creeped me out!

  
  

  I used to run through that section of the house if I had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.  See, I had to walk down a very looonnnggg hallway that had NO windows or anything in it before I got to the landing just above the stairs where there was a HUGE picture window that let in a ton of light.  There was a set of french doors that seperated the old section of the house from the new (I don’t know why), I had to go through the doors and then through a small room that was linked to the ‘spare bedroom’ and then through a larger room that was also open to the ‘spare bedroom’ before being able to reach the bathroom.  I tell you…it sucked!

  
  

  So…I usually sat in my bed a while contemplating on whether or not I REALLY needed to go.  Unfortunately, I usually wound up having to go more than not. 

  
  

  I used to hear noises and such in the hallway.  You know, like footsteps.  My Mom didn’t believe me until one night when we were in her room, which was about 5 feet further down the hall from mine, and my dad and brother were asleep downstairs in the living room (too much late night t.v.) and we were talking when we heard footsteps coming down the hall.  Mom called out thinking that it was Mark or Dad…but there was no answer.  Then she thought that it had to be one of the dogs (we had 4 in the house)…but, then she realized that there was no jingling of the tags against the collar.  I knew what it was…but I didn’t say anything because I also knew that she wouldn’t believe me if I told her.

  
  

  After a couple minutes, the footsteps became louder and were getting closer to the bedroom door.  Mom called out again and of course…no answer.  I looked at her and asked her if she was going to look and see.  So she got up off of the bed, walked over to the door…opened it and flipped on the light in the hallway. 

  
  

  She looked at me, shrugged and said, “there’s no one there”. 

  
  

  I said, “then why can I still hear footsteps?”

  
  

  She had this look of fear come over her face and turned very white, “I don’t know, but I still hear them too”.

  
  

  She shut the door quickly and locked it.  She then got back on the bed and just sat there…we both just sat there.  In silence…not a word said, just listening to the footsteps as they grew closer and closer. 

  
  

  I looked at her and said, “Mom…they stopped.”

  
  

  Yeah…they’d stopped alright.  Right in front of the bedroom door.  Just then, the door flew open and the light in the bedroom came on.  We both screamed!

  
  

  There was no one there….no one that we could see anyway…but there was definitely someone there.

  
  

  Mom grabbed my hand and yanked me off of the bed and down the hall.  She picked me up and took me down the spiral staircase that lead into the living room downstairs where my Dad and brother were sleeping.  When we got there, Dad and Mark were still snoring away.  The dogs (all four of them) were lying on the floor in front of the fireplace also asleep. 

  
  

  My heart was pounding and my hands were shaking as I held on tightly to my Mom.  She wasn’t doing real well herself at this point.  She woke my Dad up and told him what was going on.  He just looked at her as if she had lost her mind. 

  
  

  After a while, she finally gave up trying to plead her case to him and she and I went back upstairs…leaving on every light in the house behind us mind you.

  
  

  We didn’t hear  anything else that night…but, then again…we didn’t get much sleep either.

  
  

  That’s just one of many of my memories of growing up in that house…I’ll share more with you as the week goes on. 

  
  

  For example…do you believe that you can get letters from the deceased? 

  
  

  Don’t go away…I’ll explain.

  • 12:46 pm
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