UNTITLED TALES
Untitled 26
In 1988 we
moved into a home just outside of Chicago. From the very first night we stayed
it was apparent something was wrong. The sound of faint voices and pipes
clanging could be heard all through the night. At first we thought it was
neighborhood kids outside. My father even had a plumber check the pipes in the
crawl space to see what was causing the noise. There was no rational
explanation. We all started to joke about a ghost in the house until we found
out that an old lady died just recently in the home.
One Saturday
afternoon as we sat at the kitchen table for lunch one of the kitchen cabinets
slowly opened. Suddenly a loaf of bread projected across the room from inside
the cabinet and landed on the floor. My father simply walked across the room,
picked up the loaf of bread, and said "Do not tell your mother what happened".
Well it wasn't long before everyone was starting to feel a little uneasy around
the house and there was no hiding it from mom.
Things really
got weird one particular night. I was attending college at the time and was up
very late studying. There was a heavy thunder storm moving through the area and
as the storm intensified so did the clanging in the basement. I also heard
voices on several occasions and footsteps. I went out into the kitchen to
investigate numerous times only to find no one there. Finally, after a loud
crash of thunder I distinctly heard footsteps coming down the stairs. Figuring
it was my dad coming down from the upstairs bedroom I went out towards the
kitchen to greet him since I really wasn't getting any studying done. What I saw
next I will never be able to explain as long as I live. Above the kitchen table
we had a ceiling fan with 4 small light bulbs surrounding a larger bulb in the
middle of the fixture. The center bulb was "unscrewing" itself so to speak. It
spun out of the socket and shattered on the kitchen table. Then all the power
went out in the house. I was paralyzed with fear. ( I still get shaky even
writing about this). When I came to my wits I ran into my parents bedroom
screaming. Can you imagine a nineteen year old bursting into his parents bedroom
babbling like a mad man. My parents tried to explain that a power surge may have
knocked the bulb loose and the storm knocked out the power but I'm not sure they
were buying their own story. I know I wasn't. I refused to stay that night and
drove back to my dorm 45 miles away.
Later that
week my mother sought some type of professional help, (who gave her the advise
is still unclear to most of the family). Apparently she performed some ritual
explaining to the ghost that we now lived here as a family and the ghost could
leave in peace. Whatever she did that day caused everything to stop. Weeks later
my sister, brother and a friend of the family all confessed they had seen the
entity. An old woman in a pink flowered dress just floating above the floor.
Each person described her identically to the other.
I am 36 years
old and have a doctorate degree. While I don't know if I truly believe in
ghosts, (I have never seen one myself), there is no denying what I saw on those
two occasions and no rational explanations. None of my family members talk
openly about what happened those first few months in the house. I'm not sure
why. My parents still own the home and I recently spent a week there with them
while on vacation. I'm happy to report nothing strange happened while I was
there.
-Jeff.
