Jim had a lively, fun personality and had been one of our best family friends for almost twenty years. I considered him one of my partners in crime and he always came to our get-togethers, along with Ashley, and prepared the best food. In fact, when I graduated from college they’d even catered the entire the meal themselves for my graduation party as a gift to me and he’d made my wedding bouquet. We loved exploring old houses together, sometimes crawling through windows to take pictures of abandoned fireplace mantles, winding staircases forgotten by others, and beautiful hardwood floors suffering from neglect. Few people understood my love for exploring or my passion for history like Jim.
Jim was in good spirits that day at the Maple House, making his rounds and visiting with everyone in the house. He was full of energy and laughter, running from one room to the next with excitement as he opened closet doors, peeked into cupboards, and gazed at our fabulous view.
“I could sit here on the porch all day long,” he sighed at one point as we looked at the mountains together. The sun was starting to set and we were on our fourth glass of wine. I was feeling loose and relaxed, content with the pleasant company and good food we had spread out in the kitchen. It was one of those perfect summer evenings that felt like nothing bad could ever truly happen.
“It has to be the best view in the county doesn’t it?” I agreed.
He nodded. “But…”
“But what?” I could sense he had something on his mind, but was hesitant to continue. That wasn’t like Jim. If anything, he put his foot in his mouth more often than not. He certainly wasn’t one to hold back. I was surprised, too. All evening he’d gushed about how much he loved the house, complimenting everything from the bathrooms to the back deck. His hesitation now concerned me.
“Have you felt or seen anything here Rebecca?” It came out all in a rush, like he was embarrassed to even mention it. His ears even turned a slight shade of pink.
“You mean like a ghost?” I laughed. “No. I haven’t seen or felt anything. Just had bad luck with the cars. And heard some music at night. But we’re not real sure where that’s coming from. Could be from down in the valley somewhere.”
“Could be,” he agreed but didn’t look convinced. He looked troubled. “But I doubt it. Too many trees. They’d block the sound.”
“Why James, do you think our house is haunted?” I teased him. “You think every place is haunted!”
It was true and he knew it. James loved a good ghost story and where there wasn’t one he’d make one up. This time, though, he rolled his eyes and lit up a cigarette. “Well, most places probably do have a ghost or two around. I feel something different here, though. Something pulling at me. I can’t explain it. Maybe it’s nothing. Just forget about it,” he shrugged it off and smiled then, looking more like himself.
But I could tell he was still unsettled and troubled. I tried not to let it bother me for the rest of the evening but I’d known him long enough to know that he took these things seriously and if something hadn’t truly been bothering him he’d at least been joking about it with me.
Jim and Ashley weren’t able to attend the second party, the last one of summer, but we saw him two days before when they stopped by to visit. He looked tired, but good. We didn’t have the chance to talk much, but I figured I’d call him in a day or two and catch up with him. Again, we walked through the house together and chatted.
“Are you happy here?” he asked, putting his hand on my shoulder. The gravity of his tone disturbed me. I could count on one hand the number of times he’d looked troubled or concerned during our friendship. Something was definitely bothering him and I wanted to get to the bottom of it.
“I really am,” I answered honestly. “It’s so beautiful and Sam just thrives here. He can play outside and we don’t have to worry about the road. There’s plenty of space to spread out in. And the pool room is great. We spend most of our time in there. Of course, I get to do a lot more writing and that helps.”
“Just be careful, Becky,” he said. I smiled. He was one of the few people who could get away with calling me that.
“I will,” I promised her but I didn’t know what he was worried about. The music disturbed me but it didn’t scare me. In fact, I looked forward to it in some strange, macabre one.
“I know I said it before, but there’s something here I don’t like. It’s not the house, it’s great,” he rushed, “but there’s a…tug. Protect yourself if you can. Use sage. Light some candles. But watch your back.”
“Oh Jim,” I laughed. “We’ll be fine!”
There were about thirty other guests at the last party. It was an epic event. Some people even brought tents and camped out. There was drinking, music being played, enough food to fill a banquet hall, Tarot cards, and karaoke.
It went on for hours and hours. I think I might have even napped, woken up, and started over again at one point. One of my friends was married to a guy in a band and his band played a biker rally that night. They came to our house at 2:00 am for the after party and we were still going strong.
It was one of the best nights I believe I’ve ever had. My last memory of the event was sitting on my deck in the early morning hours with a friend of mine singing John Prine’s “Paradise” and nibbling on a spicy chicken leg.
The next thing I remember, my mom was waking me up in bed, telling me that Jim had passed away from a heart attack. He was fifty-five.
Fall at the Maple House
That fall was one of the last good, innocent times we had in our family. It would be the last time in our collective lives that we would be able to live naïvely, believing things always turned out well. Jim’s death was a sore spot, and hurt me more than I could have imagined, but life had to go on and we let it.
We did the usual things we tended to do in the fall: visited the pumpkin patches, went trick-or-treating, carved jack-o-lanterns, went to as many fall festivals as possible…And we met friends for trips to the movies, nights out to hear local bands play, and dinner. We were very social back then, hardly sitting still for a minute.
Things were going well for us.
And yet, I was afraid.
The music during the night had stopped. I’d come to enjoy the music, depend on it. It didn’t frighten me or upset me. I could explain it away as being leftover energy at worst, as an echo from the valley at the best. Those night sounds had been tolerable. But what was going on during the day was inexplicable.
It started with the blast from downstairs. I was upstairs alone in the early afternoon, working in the quietness of the house, when all of a sudden I heard a loud crash from down below. The sound was so loud I thought the china cabinet or something like it had fallen over. The walls even shook a little, their vibration knocking a picture off the wall in the office and sending it to the carpet with a quiet “thud.”
Startled, I jumped up and flew down the stairs to see what could possibly have made such a racket, but nothing was out of place. Nobody was there and all the doors were closed and locked.
It was only as I trudged back up the steep staircase that it dawned on me that I could be at risk being there alone during the day. What if the noise had been someone breaking a window, coming in on me? Or someone with a gun? I hadn’t been afraid in the house in the daylight hours before, but the noise unnerved me.
What would I do if someone came in on me? I talked to Pete about buying a gun. I started keeping a baseball bat in the office with me in the meantime. I didn’t want to become crazy paranoid, but I didn’t want to be defenseless, either.
A few days later, I was upstairs again, working, when I heard another sound. This time, the clatter was the unmistakable sound of the front door swinging open and hitting the wall behind it. It was a noise I heard every day as Sam ran in and out of the house, forgetting to take care with it. We didn’t have a house phone and my cell wasn’t charged, but I didn’t let that stop me. Feeling like a sitting duck upstairs without any kind of escape route, I picked it up
and carried it down the stairs with me, pretending to be on it as I carried on with an imaginary one-sided conversation.
I wasn’t very far down the staircase when I saw that the front door, indeed, was standing wide open. A red wasp drifted in, took a look around, and then sailed back out. The sunlight poured in through the opening, peppering the carpet with dashes of light. Through the door, I could see our porch swing rocking gently back and forth in an indistinguishable breeze.
Logic told me it could have been the wind that pushed it open. I didn’t want to overreact. Still, I didn’t want to underreact, either. Not having a weapon of any kind in the house, other than the bat which I’d forgotten upstairs, I went to the fireplace and picked up the poker. I quietly shut the front door and locked it and then slowly made my way through the living room, my mother’s rooms, the parlor, and dining room.
I yielded the poker high in the air with trembling hands, uncertain how I’d react if someone jumped out at me. It crossed my mind to run out the door, but where would I go? We didn’t have any neighbors. I didn’t have a car to hop in and drive away.
Again, nothing appeared out of place. I started to laugh at myself for feeling so foolish and nearly put the poker down. When I walked into the kitchen, however, the poker fell to the floor and my cell wasn’t far behind it. Every bottom cabinet door was standing wide open.
From that day onwards, I began documenting many of the unexplainable incidents on Facebook. With a cell phone signal that was sporadic, Facebook was my link to the outside world during the day when I was home alone. I could keep the messenger up and feel connected with friends and family, people who were only a few seconds away in the virtual world when the rest of the world felt miles away in reality. The online world became my refuge and I was able to chat with my friends, fill them in on what was happening, and write journal entries regarding what was going on in the house. These things kept me feeling sane.
That wouldn’t be the last time my door flew open or strange noises would come from downstairs and when something happened, I could reach out to my friends online.
Not everything happened when I was home by myself, although (in the beginning at least) a lot happened when it felt like only I could see or hear it.
One afternoon, while everyone was home, I was in the pool room upstairs. Lying on the couch with the door closed, I watched something silly on television and tried to recuperate from a headache. Suddenly, a noise at the door distracted me. It was a small scratching sound and I immediately thought it might be Sam, trying to get in. Sometimes he had trouble with the knob.
“Sam?” I asked, grunting as I got to me feet. “Is that you?”
Before I could stand up and get to the door, however, the knob slowly started turning on its own and then, with a “whoosh,” the door itself flew open and smacked into the wall behind it.
Nobody was there.
Having no idea what I would find, I walked to the hallway and looked down it. Of course, it was empty. Noises from outside had me glancing out the window where I could see Sam, Pete, and Mom all out in the backyard. I was in the house alone.
My friend Justice, a one-time ghost hunter, suggested that I set up a video camera in that room in particular during the night and try to catch something. She herself had spent the night in my house and had felt something a little “off.” “Turn on the camera before you go to bed or while you’re working, and see what you can get,” she suggested. “It might take a couple of nights but you’ll probably pick something up sooner or later.”
Those I talked to did not act as though they thought I might be crazy. In fact, most people didn’t seem that surprised. Other people besides James had mentioned it, too, but couldn’t put their fingers on it. “I don’t know what I would call it, Rebecca, but there’s something watching you when you’re in that house,” one friend said. “And I can’t figure out if it’s good or bad. But I don’t like it.”
So, I set up the video camera. I let it record for four nights. It didn’t record anything unusual. I put it away after that, frustrated and feeling silly. Maybe I really WAS going out of my mind after all.
In addition to the noises, annoying health problems began cropping up for me. Terrible headaches plagued me and no matter how much Excedrin Migraine I popped, or how many naps I tried to take during the afternoon in dark, cool rooms before everyone came home I just couldn’t shake them. Some days, the pain was so bad it made it hard to sit up in front of the computer. Every little sound irritated me and I felt as though I suffered from constant motion sickness.
I felt like I was endlessly getting sick, too. From stomach viruses to sinus infections and 24-hour colds it was always something. I bought multi-vitamins and fresh fruits and vegetables just couldn’t seem to stay healthy. As soon as one issue cleared up, another one would take its place.
“Maybe there’s some negative energy in our house,” I said to Pete one night as I turned in early. I wasn’t staying up working late at night every night as I had been in the beginning. I missed going to bed at the same time as the rest of my family and as the fall wore on I just seemed to need more rest. “Remember what George said about the family who lived here before us? She was thirty and started coming down with symptoms all of a sudden from out of the blue and within a month was getting diagnosed with MS.”
It had startled me at the time to hear about that. The family of five who’d rented the house before us had been professionals, the mother a nurse and the father a professor. She’s been healthy by all accounts with no previous health issues. And then, wham! The multiple sclerosis diagnosis after just a month of issues. Now we’d heard that she could barely get around and was bound to a wheelchair. They’d moved in with her mother to get extra help with the children. She’d had to quit her job.
“Where would it have come from?” he asked. “The bad energy if it’s here?”
It was a fair question. The house wasn’t that old, we were objectively positive people, and as far as we knew there hadn’t been any deaths in it.
“I don’t know. We have a lot of old furniture in here. Maybe we brought something in. Or maybe we brought something with us from one of our trips to Europe or an old cemetery or an old house or something. Maybe it just found us. But I could do a cleansing…”
Pete smiled. “If it would make you feel better, do what you think you need to do.”
Sam and I had planted some white sage back in the summer so I went outside and cut some. Within a few days it was dry enough for me to burn and I went from room to room, letting the smoke drift into all the corners.
I wasn’t a religious person so I didn’t exactly pray as I did it, but I did ask for all negative energy and evil spirits to be gone. Sam watched me in fascination and I let him wave the bundle around a few times himself, telling him it was “good luck.” If nothing else, it boosted my morale and I knew that Jim would have approved. He’d asked me to do it months ago.
Jim had been on my mind a lot over the past few days anyway and another thought struck me. He’d felt something in the house as well. He couldn’t articulate it to me, but would it be possible for him to communicate with me now?
I waited until everyone was out of the house the next afternoon and walked around upstairs, talking to the air. “Jim,” I said softly. (I felt foolish, even though nobody could hear me.) “Are you there?”
From room to room I went, saying his name and talking about how much I missed him and how much I’d like to be able to talk to him and see him again. A few times I even thought I caught something out of the corner of my eye, but when I turned around it was gone.
After about thirty minutes, I gave up. My attempts at communicating with spirits were not very successful.
That night, however, I sat down in the floor of our office with his funeral program, a couple of candles, and a crystal. Sam was asleep and Pete was watching television in the pool room, so I was all alone. It was a warm night so we had the heat off. No fans were running. His funera
l program lay beside my leg, flat on the ground.
Closing my eyes, I meditated for a moment and brought James’ face to mind. I thought about his laughter, his sense of humor, and the good times we’d shared. I also thought about how sorry I was we didn’t get to talk the last time I’d seen him. Suddenly, a warm breeze glided across my knee. Tingles ran up my leg and back and down my arms. I no longer felt alone in the room. There was definitely something else there, something very close.
When I opened my eyes, the candle flames were flickering wildly, shooting up into the air and waving about in their containers. I watched them for a moment, focusing on their light, and then to my surprise Jim’s funeral program stood straight up, waved back and forth a couple of times, and then gently fell back down to the floor. I was so grateful I cried.
For a fleeting second I had no doubt Jim was in the room with me.
Sweet Baby James
Life went on and although the bumps in the night, and those in the afternoon, continued it wasn’t enough to make anyone constantly fearful. It certainly didn’t make us want to move.
Pete, for instance, never felt or saw anything at all. My mom eventually made peace with what she’d heard. She’d kind of liked the music and wasn’t bothered by it. So far, nobody else had experienced anything they perceived to be negative.
Three True Tales of Terror: A True Hauntings' Collection Page 17