Past Owners

There is a common trope in ghost stories that adults who saw specters when they were children no longer have the ability to do so as they grow older. Children seem to lose their imaginary friends. A woman I knew who had regular visits from her deceased grandfather no longer saw him after a certain birthday. (By the way, she didn't know it was her dead grandfather until she saw a picture of him in an old family album and learned who he was; he had died years before she was born.)

Some people say children don't yet know that they're not supposed to see the dead. Then as they get older and they learn that "there's no such thing as ghosts," or that what they saw "must have just been their imagination," they lose the ability to see beyond the physical. I'm not sure what the reason is, although it seems that some people never lose that ability. Thus we have mediums, psychics, and those that are considered to be crazy. 

I believe in ghosts and I believe in mediums and psychics, so I must fall into the last category. Crazy. But I kinda like it here. 

At any event, my oldest grandson, like his mother, sees ghosts. I guess I shouldn't be surprised; it does seem to run in this family. He used to talk about who and what he saw more often; I can't decide if these conversations are becoming less frequent because he is beginning to realize that others don't see the same thing he does, or if it's because he's actually outgrowing the ability to do so, the way so many people do. But he did give me one last ghost story. a year or two ago.

Jim and I decided to redo our kitchen. Our house was built in 1961 and the kitchen was original to first construction. It was tired and worn and totally bedraggled in some areas, so after my sister and her husband renovated their kitchen, we decided to follow suit. The process took several weeks (that's a LOT of frozen dinners and take-out, by the way) but it was so worth it. Our beautiful new cabinets gleamed and the floor no longer looked like 1960's linoleum with many decades' worth of ground-in stains and marks.

Shortly after it was finished, I was standing in that kitchen when my grandson came to me and said, "Who lived here before we did?"

I was surprised by the question. "An older couple," I said. "They retired and decided to move back to the East coast because that's where they were from originally and they wanted to be close to their families."
 

He thought about that, and then he said, "They're dead."

That made me just a little uneasy. "Well, I guess they could be," I answered. "They were a bit older when we bought this house from them."

He nodded. "They're dead," he said again. And then he turned and started heading back to his bedroom.

"Did you see them?" I called after him.

But he didn't answer.

For me, he didn't have to. Yes, I'm pretty sure he did see them. Probably even spoke with them since he knew who they were. After all, they had lived in this house since it was built and were very proud of it as it was. I'm sure they wanted to find out what was going on, and who better to speak with than the child who could have that conversation with them? I hope they liked what they saw when the renovation was completed. 

I think they probably did, because my grandson never mentioned them again.

The Last Ghost of Summer

     

So one last ghost story from this past summer season.

Last September, Jim and I went to Mackinac Island with two other couples. We had never been there before, and had always wanted to see this interesting island that didn't allow motor vehicles and promised all sorts of interesting sites to visit.

We weren't disappointed. We arrived by ferry from the mainland, and spent hours on our self-guided walk, checking out Fort Mackinac, wandering through the historic cemetery, enjoying the spectacular water views, and dodging bicycles as well as horse-drawn carriages on the paved streets. Mackinac Island is an amazing place.

We only had the one day visit (on a round-trip ferry ticket) and the day we chose to visit was hot. I mean HOT. After hours of walking around with occasional stops to rest and frequent sips from our water bottles, we eventually decided it was time to get lunch in an air-conditioned restaurant. Now, the main street there is a tourist hot spot with souvenir shops, candy stores featuring Mackinac Island Fudge, ice cream venues, hotels, and eateries. After some speculation, we wound up in a hotel restaurant and amazingly got a table for six after a fairly short wait. The serving staff was friendly, the food was good, and -very important- the room was wonderfully cool.

After our meal, we readied ourselves to walk back out into that fiery hot sunlight, and this included a quick stop at the restroom. Anyone who has read this blog since its inception knows that I have frequently wondered why ghosts choose to haunt bathrooms. I mean, seriously. If I were a ghost, I don't know that I'd want to hang around the women's room day and night. For what? But then, I'm not a ghost and I don't know how they think -if they think- so I can't explain it.

While I was drying my hands in one of those devices where you put your hands between two blowers and "slowly draw them upwards" as the sign indicates, I turned my head and noticed, for just a flash of a second, that there was a woman to my right who was watching me. I blinked and looked again, and she was gone. That was odd. I know there was only one other person in the lavatory with me, one of my friends, and she was finishing up in a stall. So why did I see a woman standing there, watching me? I thought, that was weird, and went back out to the lobby.

A few moments later, my friend joined the rest of us and before we headed out, she said, "There was a woman in the bathroom." I said, "Really? I thought we were alone." And my friend said, "That kind of woman." And then I knew she meant the dead kind. "I saw her, too," I admitted. "She was just standing there to my right, watching me dry my hands." And my friend said, "Exactly."

I didn't get a long enough glimpse of the lady to describe what she was wearing, although I will say she didn't seem to be dressed in contemporary fashion. My sense of it was that she had on a long dress, and that her hair was done in style that suggested turn-of-the twentieth century.

I might have doubted what I saw if my friend hadn't volunteered seeing the same thing. And if it lends any credence to this story, the friend who also saw this ghost woman was none other than the acclaimed and highly-talented paranormal writer, Terri Reid, herself.

Validation!

Phone Calls from the Dead

Phone Calls from the Dead

My father, God bless him, passed away in April of 1986. My siblings and I were all lucky enough to be adults by the time this happened, but you never really outgrow your parents, do you? My oldest brother had an interesting relationship with our father, something that ranged from amicable to volatile with stops in between. Nevertheless, my father's death was very hard on my brother. Likewise, I know my father always worried about my older brother.

I suppose none of us were totally surprised when my brother, starting a new job some time after my dad passed away, came to work and was handed a message slip from the switchboard: "Your father called." My brother reread the message a few times, then went to the operator and asked her about it. She told him the call came in a few minutes earlier, and that the caller simply said, "Just tell him his father called."

Of course, the first person he talked to about this was my mother. My mother, practical as always, just asked "Are you about to do something stupid?"

The story is kind of a joke within my family because it underscores the relationship between my brother and my father. On the other hand, it also brings up one of my favorite kinds of ghost stories, and that is the phone call from beyond the grave. Have you heard descriptions of this phenomena? About the phone that rings, but there is something quiet or shortened about the ring? About the caller's voice itself, and how it can sound far away or faint, although unmistakable? Or how about the static that fills the line, and then the abrupt end to the call, usually with a heavy silence?

This is the one kind of story that is deficient in my collection. Anyone got one to share?