I’ve told Darin that every so often I hear something in the house that makes me think, “Oh, it’s haunted.” Not really haunted, no—I just hear a noise I can’t figure out, or that sounds like footsteps, or something. Unusual noises in a still-new-to-me house. A house settling.
Today was cold and overcast and sometimes rainy—hello winter, you’re relatively right on time—and the kids fell asleep in the car coming back from the library. So I put Sophia in her bed and I put Simon in bed with me. He’s sick at the moment, and if there’s anything more likely to bring out the mama-bear instincts than a coughing, congested 17-month-old, I don’t want to know what it is: I would probably burst into tears and curl up into a ball. On top of that I was experiencing the kind of midafternoon all-systems shutdown I can’t have too many of these days, because usually if one kid’s asleep, the other’s awake. I had both asleep. Time to take advantage of it. Simon and I settled into my bed and everybody napped.
Sophia woke us up some time later by crawling into bed with us. I’d slept hard and was having trouble getting my wits about me. I heard some of those sounds I hear periodically, sounds of footsteps somewhere in the house far away.
“There’s a man in the house,” Sophia said matter-of-factly. “And he’s angry.”
She was playing around, of course…but the fact that she heard the footsteps too freaked me out. (Her adding the adjective “angry” didn’t help either.) For a few seconds I was completely afraid that there was someone in the house with us, a woman and two kids.
I think I lost about a year off my life over the next minute as I kept listening.
There were no other sounds. If someone was in the house I didn’t hear him leave, which means he’s still here—all of the doors in the house are alarmed to emit a noise if opened (which is nice when you have two tots). I don’t really think anyone was here.
I’m still a little winded by how scared I got, though.
And he’s angry. Quite the storyteller, that one. Always knows the right moment to twist the knife.
Woo. That sends adrenaline up my spine too. I trust there really was/is nobody there. (We have one of those alarm systems too, it’s pretty foolproof.)
We always said we had a benevolent ghost at our last house. We figured it was the ghost of the architect who built the place (and lived there for many years thereafter), and that he was looking out for the place. We’d find oddities — things we’d changed put back the way they were before, stuff like that. But we figured he liked having a family on site, so he was mostly nice.
If, of course, he ever was there. We too have overactive imaginations.
I used to read a lot of haunting stories. The damn things toy with you. If you look for them constantly, they stay away. Then they pop up when you’re reading, sleeping or are otherwise distracted.
Those were the visible ones, though. I was never drawn to the ones where it was just footsteps.
Thank you, Diane. Sophia has given me the screaming meemies and I don’t even live in your house.
Don’t go in the pool!!
I’m pretty sure there wasn’t really anyone there. I never hear anything besides the footsteps. Darin opines the sound of footsteps is actually the ice maker making a deposit.
Brrrr.
–Kynn