My Haunted House
Sunday, 10-19-2003: I wonder if my house might be haunted. Not that I’ve seen any ghosts or anything. But back in 1998 or so, Colleen was putting Emily to bed. She said good night to Emily and then they both hear a male voice repeat, “good night.” Colleen tells me about it and I tell her it was probably one of Emily’s toys or somebody outside. She says nope, the sound was from inside the room and there was no way it was a toy. Emily heard it too. I think Emily was about 2 years old at the time. So then a few months ago, Emily is in her room playing by herself. She comes out and tells me that somebody in her room just said, “Achoo!” I tell her that it was probably one of her toys talking. She says that she doesn’t have any toys that would say that and it sounded like a man. I tell her that maybe it was somebody outside talking really loud. Nope, she says, it came from inside her room. So I tell her that maybe her room is haunted and I tell her the “good night” story that happened years before.
When she told me about the “Achoo” thing, it reminded me of this time I was carrying some stuff out of the basement. The outside entrance to the basement is right next to her window. As I’m going down those steps I hear a male voice say something. I couldn’t make it out but it sounded like it was right next to me. But nobody’s there so I don’t think anything of it. I figure it’s somebody walking down the road talking too loud. But maybe it was that same male voice we always seem to hear around here. Then I remember this girl I dated last year. We were sitting on my couch watching a movie and out of nowhere she’s like, “You know, I think your house has ghosts in it.” I ask her why she thinks that. She says that she keeps getting chills and she’s pretty good at feeling ghostly presences or something like that. I tell her that I’m doing a lot of construction upstairs and there are walls torn apart going to the attic and she’s just feeling the cold air coming from outside. She tells me that it’s not just cold air, I’ve definitely got ghosts. “Wow, you’re a real fucking moron, aren’t you?” I say to her. No wait, that’s what I was thinking. I think I let her tell me some ghost stories so I would believe her. That was our last date. A few months later I got all the attic walls finished and our “ghostly chills” mysteriously went away.
But anyway, those are my ghost stories. This house was built in the 1940’s and none of the neighbors have told me about any gruesome murders happening here. I’ve opened up many of the walls and floors and haven’t found any skeletons yet. I read this book a long time ago that was about debunking unexplained phenomena. It talked about this old “haunted” bar. After it was closed and everybody had gone home, the employees could still sometimes hear a room full of people talking and they could hear a clock ticking. They later found out that decades ago, there was a big clock in the room. So they figure it’s ghosts, of course. Then these researchers come in and figure out that the old stone walls have this magnetic material in them and that when they apply a lot of voltage to the walls, they’re actually playing back sounds from the room that were recorded decades ago onto the walls. Kind of bizzare. So maybe that’s the logical explanation to the mysterious voice in my daughter’s room. I should buy a bulk eraser and erase her walls. That should take care of the problem.
So today was typical. I hung around the house with the kids all day. Took them shopping at Lowe’s for some door locks, then to Target for Payton’s holloween costume (he’s Spiderman this year) and then to the park for a few hours where they ran wild while I read the Sunday paper.
