Ghosts

by Hans Holzer

  “I am so glad you have brought life back into the house, so glad,” she kept repeating.

  It made Naomi even happier with her accomplishment. Too bad her husband couldn’t be here to hear the lady’s praise. Mr. S. had sometimes grumbled about all the hard work they had had to put in to make the place over.

  “The begonia over there…oh, they are still missing, too bad. But you can fix that sometime, can you not?” she said and hurried to another part of the garden, as if eager to take it all in in whatever time Naomi allowed her to visit with her.

  “Wouldn’t you like to have a look at the inside of the house, too?” Naomi finally suggested. The lady glowed with happiness at the invitation.

  “Yes, I would like that very much. May I?” Naomi pointed at the garden door and together they stepped inside the house. The cool atmosphere inside was in sharp contrast to the pleasant, but warm air in the garden.

  “Over there, that’s where the grandfather clock used to be. I see you’ve moved it to the den.”

  Naomi smiled. They had indeed. The lady surely must have an excellent memory to remember all that, for they had not yet entered the den. It never occurred to Naomi that the visitor knew the clock had been moved prior to seeing it in the den. So much at home was the little old lady in what used to be her house, that it seemed perfectly natural for her to know all sorts of things about it.

  “The table is nice, too, and it fits in so well,” she now commented. They had brought it with them from their former home, but it did indeed blend in with the furniture already in the house. The visitor now bounced gaily to the other end of the long room which they were using as a day room or parlor.

  “That chair,” she suddenly said, and pointed at the big, oaken chair near the fireplace, and there was a drop in her voice that seemed to indicate a change in mood.

  “What about the chair?” Naomi inquired and stepped up to it. The visitor seemed to have difficulty in holding back a tear or two, but then composed herself and explained—

  “My husband died in that chair.”

  There was a moment of silence as Naomi felt compassion for the strange lady.

  “He was raking leaves one morning…it was a nice summer day just like today…just like today…he always liked to do a little work around the garden before breakfast. I was still in bed at that hour, but I was awake and I heard him come into the house when he had finished his chores in the garden.”

  Naomi had not said anything, but her eyes were on the lady with interest. She noticed how frail and ethereal she looked, and how old age had really rendered her thin and somehow tired. And yet, her eyes had an unusual, bright sparkle in them that belied her frail and aged appearance. No, this woman was all right, despite her advanced age. Probably lives alone somewhere in the area, too, now that her husband is dead, Naomi mused.

  “My husband came into the house and a little later I got up to fix him breakfast as I always did,” the visitor continued, all the while holding the back of the chair firmly with one hand.

  “When I called out to him to come and get it, I received no reply. Finally I thought this odd and went into the room—this room—and there, in this chair, I found him. He was dead.”

  The account had given Naomi a strange chill. It suddenly occurred to her how little she knew about the former owners. But the icy hush that had settled over the two women was broken when the lady let go of the chair and turned towards the door.

  “I’d like another look at the patio, if I may,” she said and as if she wanted to make up for her seriousness before, now she chatted interminably and lightly about the pleasures of living in such a house as this.

  They had arrived at the rose beds again and the visitor pointed at a particularly fullblown dark red bush Naomi had fancied all along more than any other rose bush in the garden.

  “They were always my favorites,” the lady said, almost with a whisper.

  “Then let me give you some to take home with you,” Naomi offered and since the visitor did not protest her offer, she turned around to reach for the scissors, which she kept at the foot of the patio.

  Her back was not turned more than a second. But when she looked up at her visitor again, the little lady was gone.

  “That’s rude of her,” Naomi thought immediately. Why had she suddenly run away? Surely, the offer of roses from her former home was no reason to be offended. But then it occurred to Naomi that perhaps the lady’s emotions at being back in her old home, yet no longer mistress of it, might have gotten the upper hand with her and she simply could not face getting roses from her favorite bush by a stranger.

  “I wonder which way she went, though,” Naomi said out loud. She heard no car drive off, so the lady must have come on foot. Perhaps she could still catch her, for surely she could not have gotten far. It was plain silly of her not to take the proffered roses.

  Naomi quickly went down the garden path and looked and then the driveway and looked there but the woman was not on the property any longer. She then ran out onto the street and even looked down Elm Street but the visitor was nowhere in sight.

  “But this is impossible,” Naomi thought. “She can’t just disappear.” So little time had elapsed between their last words and Naomi’s pursuit that no human being could have disappeared without trace.

  Naomi, still puzzled, went back into the house. The whole episode took on a certain dreamlike quality after a while and she forgot about it. Surely, there must be some explanation for the lady’s quick disappearance, but Naomi had other things to do than worry about it.

  For reasons of her own she felt it best not to tell her husband about the visit, for she was not at all sure herself now that she had not dreamed the whole thing. Of course, she hadn’t. The lady’s footprints were still visible in the soft soil of the lawn several days after the visit. Such small feet, too. But somehow she felt reluctant to discuss it further. Besides, what of it? A former tenant wants to visit the old home. Nothing special or newsworthy about that.

  * * *

  Several weeks later she happened to have tea with the neighbor across the street. Over tea and cookies, they talked about the neighborhood and how it changed over all the years Mrs. G. had lived there. Somehow the visitor came to mind again, and Naomi felt free to confide in Mrs. G.

  “I had a visitor the other day, only person I’ve talked to except for you,” Naomi began.

  “Oh?” Mrs. G. perked up. “Anyone I might know?”

  “Perhaps…it was the lady who built our house… who lived there before us.”

  Mrs. G. gave Naomi a strange look but said nothing.

  “She was a little lady with a faded pink dress and kind of sparkling eyes, and she told me she and her husband had built the house,” Naomi said, and described what the visitor had looked like in minute detail. When she had finished, Mrs. G. shook her head.

  “Impossible,” she finally said. “That woman has been dead for years.”

  Naomi laughed somewhat uncertainly.

  “But how could she be? I saw her as plainly as I see you. She looked just like any little old lady does.”

  “Maybe it was someone else,” the neighbor said, half hoping Naomi would readily agree to her suggestion.

  “I don’t think so,” Naomi said firmly, however. “You see she also pointed out the chair her husband died in. He had been raking leaves before breakfast, and when she called out to him to come and get it, he didn’t answer, and then she went into the parlor and there he was, dead in that big oaken chair.”

  Mrs. G. had suddenly become very pale.

  “That is absolutely true, I mean, the story how he died,” she finally managed to say. “But how would you know about it?”

  Naomi shrugged helplessly.

  “I didn’t know it until the lady told me about it,” she repeated.

  “Incredible. But you’ve described her to a tee and he did die the way she said. They’ve both been dead for years and years, you know.”

  Naomi fi
nally realized the implication.

  “You mean I’ve been visited by a ghost?”

  “Seems that way,” Mrs. G. nodded gravely.

  “But she seemed so very real…so solid. I’d never have known she was just a ghost. Why, we even shook hands and her hand felt fine to me.”

  The woman went over the experience once more, detail for detail. There was one thing that was odd, though. On recollection, Mrs. S. did recall that she had not heard the woman enter her garden. She had looked up from her chores, and there the woman stood, smiling at her from in front of the roses. No sound of footsteps on either entering or leaving. Then, too, her intimate knowledge of each and every plant in the garden.

  “She even knew the Latin names of every one of them,” Naomi pointed out.

  “No doubt she did,” Mrs. G. explained, and added, “she and her hubby were great horticulturists and took enormous pride in creating a genuine arboretum in their garden.”

  But why had she visited her old home?

  After some thought, Naomi felt she knew the answer. They had just finished restoring the house and garden to their original appearance and probably the same flavor they had had in the years when the original owners had the place. The ghostly lady felt they should be rewarded for their efforts by an approving gesture from them. Or had she simply been homesick for her old home?

  Naomi was quite sure, now, that she had never really left it. In her mind’s eye it had never fallen into disrepair and the lovely roses never ceased to bloom even when the garden had become a wilderness.

  She never discussed the matter again with her neighbor or with anyone else for that matter. Her husband, whom she later divorced, never knew of the incident, for Mrs. G. also kept the secret well.

  The house may still be there amid the roses, and the little lady in the faded dress no doubt has a ball skipping along its paths and enjoying her beloved flowers.

  * 120

  The Ghost Car (Kansas)

  MARLENE S. IS A thirty-seven-year-old housewife leading a typical American housewife’s life—which is to say she is neither given to explorations into the unknown nor particularly involved in anything out of the ordinary. After two years of college, she found that her married life took up most, if not all, of her time, but she is still hoping to get her teacher’s degree after which she would like to teach English literature on a secondary level. But with four youngsters—ranging in age from eleven to fifteen—and a husband around the house, time for study is limited. Her husband, Mr. S. is a district manager for a shoe company.

  Marlene came from an average Nebraska family and nothing particularly shocking ever happened to her, that is, until she, her husband and children moved into a house in Kansas City that will forever be etched in her memories. The house itself was nothing special: about seven years old, inexpensive looking, with four bedrooms, built ranch-style all on one floor.

  They moved into this house in 1958 when the children were still quite young. A few weeks after they had settled down in the house and gotten used to the new surroundings. Marlene was lying awake in bed, waiting to fall asleep. She never could go to sleep right away, and lying awake trying to sort things out in her mind was her way of inviting the sandman.

  Because the children were still young, ranging in age from one to five, she had to be always alert for any moves or noises in case something was wrong. Perhaps this contributed to her light sleep, but at any rate, she was not yet drowsy at this point and was fully cognizant of what might transpire around her.

  Suddenly, she felt pressure at the foot of the bed as if one of the children was trying to climb into bed to sleep with the parents.

  Marlene sat up quickly but quietly, leaned toward the foot of the bed, made a grab, at the same time saying, “Got you!”—only to find herself grabbing thin air.

  She assumed the little culprit had quickly scuttled back to his own bed, and got up and went across the hall to the boys’ bedroom. After that, she inspected the girls’ room, but all four were sound asleep, tucked in precisely the way she had earlier tucked them in and it was clear that none of her children had caused the pressure at the foot of her bed.

  She decided she had imagined the whole thing and went back to bed. But the following night, the pressure was back again and again she grabbed nothing but a fistful of thin air.

  It got to be such a common occurrence she quit checking on the children whether or not they were doing it. She then decided that it had to be caused by her husband’s moving his foot in a certain way. Somehow she reasoned that his moves gave the feeling the covers were drawn up against her foot, creating the impression of an outside pressure. Far-fetched though this explanation was, she accepted it gladly. But she kept her foot against his for several nights after this to find out what move of his caused all this to happen.

  As her husband slept, she observed, but it got her nowhere: the pressure was still present, but there was no connection with her husband’s foot or his movements.

  She had hardly accepted the strange pressure in her bed when still another phenomenon caused her to wonder about the house. Near the doorway to the bedroom she heard someone breathe deeply and heavily when there was no one but her around. When this recurred several times she decided to tell her husband about it. He shook his head and said he had heard nothing. She did not tell him about the pressure on the bed, thinking it just too absurd to discuss. That night she heard the crackling of what sounded like someone stepping on cellophane just before she felt the pressure at the foot of the bed again.

  She knew she had left a cellophane bag at the foot of the bed on the floor and she was sure one of her children had come out and stepped on it. Again she grabbed but again her hands held only air and the children were all soundly asleep in the respective rooms.

  By now a little bit of fear crept into her mind when she came to realize that there wasn’t really any rational explanation for the strange noises and especially the heavy breathing.

  But she pulled her knees up at night and thus avoided coming in contact with whatever was causing the pressure at the foot of the bed.

  For a while, nothing untoward happened, and the family was busy getting on with the problems of daily living. The strange occurrences drifted into the background for a while.

  Then one night, several weeks later, Marlene was awakened from sleep by a most incredible sound. It was as if a giant vat of water was being poured on the house. The swooshing sound of water cascading down upon them reverberated for several seconds afterward. Her immediate thought, being just awakened from deep sleep, was a logical one—one of the kids had not been able to make it to the bathroom and what she was hearing was the result! But no: they were all fast asleep in their rooms.

  The next morning, she examined the floor. In the boys’ room she found a strange liquid spot. It was like water, except much thicker and did not ooze out as water would, but lay there on the floor, perfectly cohesive and round. It had neither odor nor color and when she removed it with tissue paper, it left no trace. Her husband explained that probably the liquid had oozed up from the ground or dropped from the ceiling but her logical mind refused to accept what was obviously not likely.

  There was absolutely no rational explanation for either the swooshing noise or the presence of the thick liquid in the boys’ room. Several months afterward, a similar spot appeared in the girls’ room. Since they had no animals in the house, the matter remained a puzzle.

  The house was so new that any thoughts of ghosts were far from Marlene’s mind. But strange things began to occur. One day, a car securely parked across from the house on a slanting driveway, came downhill and crashed into the boys’ bedroom. Luckily no one was hurt.

  Not much later, another car from across the street did the same thing, only this time the car went into the girls’ room. The owner swore he had put the car into parking position on leaving it. Just as he got out, he saw his car roll down the driveway by itself!

  This wasn’t too reassuring
to Marlene. Was some unknown force trying to “get” them? Was there a connection between the spots of liquid in the childrens’ bedrooms and the two car crashes?

  Somehow the atmosphere in the house was different now from the time they had first moved in. It seemed heavy, as if some sort of tragic pressure was weighing upon it. Her husband did not notice anything unusual, or if he did, he did not discuss it with her. But to her there was an ominous presence in the house and she didn’t like it.

  One night her husband was working late. She had gone to bed and had just turned the lights out. No sooner had she lain down, than she began to hear the heavy breathing again. Next came the pressure at the foot of the bed. With the breathing so close to her, she was absolutely terrified and did not dare move. Whatever it was, it was very near and she realized now that all her reasoning had not explained a thing. Someone other than herself shared her bed and that someone was not friendly.

  But what was she to do? The children were asleep in their beds and her husband was at work. She decided that under the circumstances the best thing was to play possum. She lay there as if asleep, barely breathing and not moving a muscle.

  She did not know how much time had passed when she heard the car drive up to their door. The headlights shone through the bedroom window and she heard the motor being turned off.

  “Thank God, Don is home,” she managed to say under her breath.

  Even though the presence was still close by, she somehow managed to get enough courage to jump out of bed and race to the window. Turning on the lights on the way to the living room as she went by, she reached the window and looked out to the driveway.

  Instead of seeing her husband and the family car, she was greeted by the blackness of the night. Nothing. No car.

  “This is the last straw!” she almost cried and ran back to her bed. Pulling the covers over her she lay there in terror, not knowing what to do next. When her husband finally returned after what seemed hours upon hours, she managed to sob out her story.