“I can’t believe that just happened,” said Al’s daughter-in-law.
Al decided to answer Chris right then and there. “Chris, I don’t care, this year I’m in charge, and we’re having hors d’oeuvres at 6:00!” They all laughed, and Al and his family truly felt Chris’s presence there with them at that first Christmas Eve without her.
That first year without Chris was tough on Al. There are always the “firsts” to get through: the first holidays, the first birthdays, and so on. Al had played in a golf league for many years each Thursday evening during summer, and Al and Chris started the tradition that golf night was also pizza night. Somehow, although her timing of the hors d’oeuvres was always off, Chris’s timing on pizza/golf night was impeccable. Nearly every time Al walked into their home at 8:00 p.m. after golfing on Thursday, the oven timer would go off just as he came through the door. And then Al would take out the pizza Chris had made for their supper.
When the first Thursday of golf league started up that spring, Al was sad as he made his way home, remembering pizza night. It brought it all back and made Al think about how badly he missed Chris. When Al opened the door to his house, the oven timer was going off! This was a definitive moment for Al. He knew for sure Chris was telling him she was there, and she missed their pizza night too. Al shut the timer off and spoke aloud to his deceased wife, thanking her and telling her how he missed their lives together. It was an electronic timer that had to be set by hand, and Al lived there alone, so there was no way it could go off by itself.
The oven timer has never gone off since that night when Chris set it for Al. But on that first Thursday evening of the golf league, Chris seemed to know that Al needed a little sign she was okay and that she still watched over him. And that she hadn’t forgotten their pizza night!
Apparently Chris was worried about the man she’d left behind. After all, he’d been the love of her life since their teenage years. Al believes Chris feels the need to check in on him and let him know she’s watching over him. And that’s just what Chris still does.
My artistic cousin Joyce has many like-minded friends. I met Joyce’s friend Rae at an out-of-state event where Joyce exhibited her dolls. Rae is a young artist who also leans toward Halloween art. Of course, she asked about the book I was working on because she’s almost as interested in the paranormal as I am.
“Actually, I’m interviewing friends about their ghost stories right now, Rae. You don’t happen to have one, do you?” It turns out she did.
Rae’s grandparents had been married for sixty-nine years. Her grandpa was in the hospital, sick with cancer, and Rae’s grandma was so upset about his illness and impending death that the stress had recently landed her in the hospital too, just down the hall from her husband.
Rae’s grandpa had gone into a final coma, and her mom and her mother’s sister, Rae’s aunt, were sitting beside his bed. Rae’s mom decided to tell her father it was okay to leave—that they would look after his wife.
“Dad, you can go now, it’s okay. We’ll take care of Mom for you,” Rae’s mother said. As soon as the words left her lips, their comatose father raised his head from the pillow, gave a deep sigh, and left this earthly life. The wrinkles in his face all smoothed out, and he was the picture of peace.
The nurse came in just as this happened, checked the women’s father, and then asked the two sisters if they would please wait to inform their mother that her husband had passed away.
“The doctor would like to be here with her when she’s given the news,” the nurse said.
Rae’s mom and aunt agreed, and they decided to walk down to their mother’s room to check on her while waiting for the doctor. They were shocked to see their mom with one arm raised high in the air, as if someone was holding it. Their mother had been pretty ill, and wasn’t extremely alert at that moment. But she had a story to tell them.
“Daddy was just here—he rubbed my back,” said the old woman. This was something their dad had always done for their mom. “But he’s gone now—he had to go. He just left,” their mother told her daughters. Rae’s young face showed her emotion.
“My mom and her sister just looked at each other. They knew their dad had come to say goodbye to their mom, and rubbed her back while he was at it too.”
I told Rae it was a great story, and we sat in silence for a minute. It is strange how in some families, returns seem to be the norm, yet not at all in others.
[contents]
13
The Children of Death
The spirits of children seem to be common visitors to our realm. Sometimes they’re children who’ve died of illness or accident who don’t seem to know they’re dead. They are known to visit their old homes long after their families have died and gone to their reward. But I’ve also recently heard of a more unusual phenomenon taking place in several local nursing homes, and I believe it may happen on a much wider scale all around the world.
Roughly 4 percent of Americans over sixty-five years old are in nursing homes. The percentage increases with age, so it goes without saying, there are a lot of nursing homes in the United States.
The first time I heard about the children of death, it was from Megan, a friend’s daughter who works in a large nursing home in my town. This incident took place not long after Megan was hired. One day one of the elderly residents, Mr. Miller, didn’t want to go down to the dining room to eat. Mr. Miller had a weather radio beside his bed on a small nightstand. It was his pride and joy, one of the few things he had left, and no one was allowed to touch it. He kept it pushed far back against the wall at the rear of the table.
“Mr. Miller, why don’t you want to come down to lunch?” asked the nurse who had come in with my friend’s daughter, Megan, the aide.
“Because these dang kids keep messing with my radio! They’re gonna break it! They’re jumping on the bed and giving me all kinds of grief!”
The nurse soothingly told the old man that there was no one in the room but him.
“What!? Can’t you see them? They’re gonna tear everything up!” the old man said, pointing to the far corner.
The nurse told him she couldn’t see them and asked where exactly they were. Mr. Miller pointed to the chair in the far corner where the nurse had just seated herself. “One’s under your chair.”
The nurse jumped up uneasily and peered underneath the chair. She told her patient sternly that there was nothing there.
“Now they’re jumping on the bed! Can’t you see them?” Mr. Miller reached toward his precious radio. “Look. They’ve got it almost pushed off the edge.” Megan noticed the weather radio was all the way to the front of the man’s table and was about to fall over the ledge. Puzzled, she moved it back into place, reassuring the old gentleman that it should be safe now.
Finally after much cajoling, they got Mr. Miller into a wheelchair, and another aide wheeled him down to lunch. The nurse and Megan left, and a new aide began changing Mr. Miller’s bed and cleaning the room. This aide was aware of the story Mr. Miller had been telling about the children in his room. Since the old man had been refusing to leave his room for a while, most of the staff knew about it as well.
Suddenly the aide came out of Mr. Miller’s room and called to the other girls in the area. “You’ve got to see this.” They all came into Mr. Miller’s room, and the aide walked to the other side of the bed and pulled the curtain back. The girls moved in closer to see what she was pointing at. There on the glass was a perfectly shaped child’s handprint! Mr. Miller did not have any young family members, nor did anyone else who had visited him. It was then that Megan learned about the death children.
The day nurse explained that the children usually come when someone’s about to pass away, and they actually kept a log book at the nursing home that contained detailed written accounts about everything that happened. There had been some very strange entries about these childre
n.
Megan was a little upset, not to mention amazed, that the death children were considered real by the staff, but she wanted to know more. She still didn’t believe it.
The nurse told her that most staff members were used to them. Some nights, they did nothing but answer buzzers from patients who were being bothered by these children. Then the staff noticed that the patient deaths usually came in threes after the children showed up. Once the children came, the patient was usually within a day or two of dying. Megan could scarcely believe it and asked if the patients couldn’t just be hallucinating these children for some reason, possibly dementia related.
The nurse glanced at the other aide standing there, then back at my friend’s daughter, as if she was afraid to tell her. Finally, she answered that she’d seen the boy child herself.
As soon as she heard this, Megan got a cold chill and wrapped her arms around herself, and the nurse told her the story.
One night, the nurse had taken the medicine cart into a patient’s room. She was checking the IV and going through her routine when she noticed a little boy peering around the cart at her. She stared, hardly able to believe what she was seeing, and then as she watched, the child just disappeared.
The aide chimed in with a story of her own. A friend of hers was working the night shift, staffing the nurses’ desk, when she saw the head of a little blond girl walk past. And she continued to see the girl several more times.
Another nurse had also seen the little girl, and she got a clear view of her. She had blond hair and was dressed in a long, white old-fashioned dress.
Megan found this information nearly unbelievable and had almost dismissed it, until one day while she was talking to a nurse at another area nursing home, she decided to mention the children. That nurse smiled knowingly. “You know about the death children?” Megan asked.
“Oh yes. We see them at our nursing home too.”
Megan was astounded. Apparently the phenomenon went beyond their own facility.
One night Megan had a ghostly experience of her own, although it didn’t involve the children. She was in the laundry room loading the washer with linens from the rooms. Suddenly someone pressed their body, full length, up against her back. She pulled away and turned around to see which elderly resident had done such a thing, but no one was there. Panicked, she ran out and hasn’t been able to bear going back in since.
Megan’s stories brought back the memories of my own mother during the last weeks of her life. She continually told me children were singing to her, and sometimes she would laugh at their antics and talk about the children visiting her. I assumed she was hallucinating, as she’d had dementia for a while. Now I’m not so sure. After hearing Megan’s story, I’m a little less skeptical and wonder how many of us will deal with the death children ourselves.
One of the most incredible true ghost stories I’ve heard involved another child and was relayed to me by a friend. An area couple, Mr. and Mrs. Dolan, were local business owners who bought a grand old home on one of our town’s main thoroughfares. The home was a nineteenth-century beauty, built of old stone and turreted in the late Victorian fashion. After they bought the home and moved in, sometimes when the Dolan family was in the living room watching a movie, books and DVDs would fly off the shelves. It was almost as though something wanted attention. But although several family members were becoming uneasy, they hadn’t yet put two and two together. Then one day Mrs. Dolan had an experience that shook her to her core. And it left no doubt she shared her home with unseen guests. My friend relayed the story Mrs. Dolan had told her.
Mrs. Dolan had an overstuffed easy chair in the corner of her bedroom, but the slipcover she kept on it was constantly messed up. Mrs. Dolan couldn’t figure this out because no one ever sat in that chair, and the family dog was kept out of her bedroom.
On this one particular day, Mrs. Dolan was cleaning, and as she reached her bedroom to tidy up, she once again noticed the easy chair in the corner. The slipcover on it was messed up again! This time, there was a dip in the seat cushion, as though someone had been sitting in it. No one was home at the time—both her kids were
in school. Exasperated by this ongoing problem, Mrs. Dolan walked to the chair with both hands outstretched to tuck in the sides of the slipcover at the edges of the seat cushion. As she reached the chair and leaned down to tuck it in, a tiny but high-pitched voice loudly screamed, “NO!”
Mrs. Dolan jerked back, terrified. Some unseen thing was sitting in her bedroom easy chair! It sounded like a child. Now in a cold sweat, she rushed away and left the house. After her family got home, she told them about it, and they then began to take note of other things that happened. Later they found out a child had died in the house, in a fire, during the 1800s. The little girl’s nightgown caught fire and she was horribly burned. The child lingered for a few days, but eventually passed away. It seems the little girl is still there—and she likes to sit in Mrs. Dolan’s easy chair. But she doesn’t like to be touched!
I was performing at one of my favorite music venues, beautiful Breitenbach Wine Cellars in Amish Country. On my break, an audience member came up to me and we began talking about music. I mentioned my son’s songs and my own. Then I handed him a bookmark for my upcoming book release, joking about shameless self-promotion. This led to an answering wisecrack on his part on the order of, “You play and write music, you write books—what else do you do?”—which led to me telling him about the psychic thing. Then I told him I was working on a new book about ghost stories and how I’ve been fascinated with them since I moved into a haunted house as a teen. The man’s expression turned serious, and he suddenly crouched down beside my chair, confidentially, saying he didn’t tell this story to many people for fear of being labeled crazy. I told him I understood, but added that there are many more believers these days because so many of us had also had experiences. He then hesitantly shared his story.
He and his had wife had lived in an apartment before they’d bought their home. His wife had never had any problems and never saw anything at the apartment. The man had always been a skeptic and never believed ghosts and things like that were real. Then one night while he was fast asleep, something shook the him by the shoulder. He’d been lying on his back, and he opened his eyes. Directly above him was a little girl slowly floating away from him up toward the ceiling, looking down on him. This would wake anyone up in a hurry!
The man said it was unbelievable, but he was wide awake and saw it with his own eyes, so he knew it was real. Somehow, though, he didn’t have a feeling of fear. After all, it was just a little girl. She watched him the entire time as she rose to the ceiling, and then she just faded away. He never saw her at their apartment again. And he was never a skeptic again either. That did it for him—he knew ghosts were real. He told me I could use his story of the little ghost girl that woke him up.
I thanked him for telling me about his experience and then went back up to the stage to finish out my last set of music. I thought about how no matter where I happened to be, I was surrounded by ghost stories. They came in the most unlikely of places, from the unlikeliest people, and from friends and strangers alike.
This stranger’s story brought back the memory of another incident that featured children. This one involved a nanny. I’d gone on an investigation at one of Sherri Brake’s Haunted Heartland Tours events in the quaint little town of Zoar, Ohio. The town was built by German separatists in the early 1800s and was one of the first communes in the United States. There were buildings where they lived and worked, and men’s and women’s dorms—even husbands and wives lived separately. There was a nursery where newborns were taken after their birth and raised by designated women.
The commune also had a pious leader who made nearly all the decisions for the separatists. The members built a beautiful mansion for this leader, who promptly spurned it as too elaborate, opting to live more modestly in a smaller,
plainer house. The fancier building was then used for various purposes, but at one time, a room upstairs was the designated newborn room where a nanny cared for the babies.
Most of the guests who’d attended Sherri’s investigation that night had left, and a few of us were still standing behind the Number One house, the name given to the grand mansion built for the leader. Sherri had been telling the story of the woman who still haunted the nursery and the recent EVPs recorded there. The playback was of a woman’s voice saying, “Shhhh.” The speculation was that the long-deceased nurse of the newborns was shushing people, afraid they’d wake the babies.
Just as Sherri finished the story, she pointed to the nursery’s window and someone said they saw movement. Several of us decided to go up and check it out.
I turned on my digital recorder as we climbed the stairs, and on the recorder, our tennis shoes are heard squeaking on the marble floors. We stopped in the doorway, and I held my recorder just inside the door of the nursery. I asked a question.
“Is there anyone here tonight who would like to say something?” All of us waited in complete silence with our digital recorders running. We stayed a few more minutes then walked back down to rejoin the others. When I listened to the playback, in answer to my question, a tiny female voice answers, “Me.” She wanted to say something. Another digital recorder picked up the same voice. But while we stood there, it had been absolutely quiet. It gave me chills. This poor nursemaid had patiently waited over a century to be heard. She waits there for eternity, tending long-dead babies in the nursery at Zoar, wanting to say something. I wish I’d have asked her what it was.
The Dead are Watching Page 11