Ghosts I

The first time that Bob set foot in our new house, he told me it was haunted. I wrote him off as joking, or paranoid, or both. In the earlier days of our ownership of said house, i often felt a little uncomfortable being there at night, like i was being watched, you might say (i wouldn't say that). Later, we deduced the presence of mice, and much of the unease and very small unexplained phenomena could be attributed to that. For example, the bag of Hershey's Kisses which was left on the counter for weeks as we slowly ate our way through it, which seemed to be emptying faster than we were eating. When we pulled the oven out from the wall for the first time, there was one massive grave for Hershey's Kiss wrappers which still had 60-75 percent of their original form retained. After the first mouse got caught in a mousetrap, mouse-related goings on seemed to have stopped.

Of course, with the mouse happenings ended, what may or may not have been supernatural happenings began. I judge these occurrences to be the work of a non-corporeal being, you may feel otherwise, and i'd respect that viewpoint.

The first of these that i can remember was the night of November 12, 2009. We were having band practice in the basement. Before practice, i had gone out to the garage to retrieve a couple of items. For some reason i grabbed an 8mm videotape, which was not related to the practice at all, but i brought it downstairs and set it on the counter behind where i stand during practice.

At the time, there was this pegboard across one wall, the wall that i face when we play, which had metal hooks in certain places. We were in the middle of a song, i forget which, when i noticed a tambourine hanging from one of the hooks. I was reasonably sure that i hadn't seen this tambourine before, so once the music stopped i inquired of Bob and Natalie whether either had brought a tambourine to practice for some reason. Both responded negatively. Plausible explanation: it had always been there, and i am not observant.

Next up was a letter which randomly appeared at my feet while playing. It's of greeting-card size, yellowed, and sealed. It was addressed to somebody in Mount Horeb, WI, which is about 20 miles East of Madison. There was no specific address, just a name and the city. Postmark date: November 1, 1936. This letter predates the house by about 40 years or so. I didn't open the letter at that time, but it was a little weird that it would suddenly be on the ground at my feet. I can say positively that it had not been there before practice, at any time since we'd gotten into the house. Plausible explanation: it fell from the ceiling, somewhere in that mess of joists and beams that hold the house together.

But the third item i cannot explain away so easily. After practice, we head upstairs and i realize that i had forgotten something, so i head back into the basement literally seconds after we had left it. I find the forgotten item on the counter. Very near to it is the aforementioned 8mm videotape. On top of the tape, there is a silver fork with a string tied around it.

I left that fork there for a good long while, not wanting to disturb it. I couldn't, and still can't, come up with any good explanation as to why it had appeared there.

Subsequent band practices brought out more items. Why they items only appeared during band practice, i'm not sure. One theory, in the 'plausible' column, is that the vibrations were knocking them loose from wherever they'd been hiding (like joists, support beams, etcetera), but we later disproved this. My guess is that the ghost just likes the band (right?). New additions to the ghostly items bin: another unopened letter, this one from 1937 (also to somebody in Mount Horeb, this time the "Mrs." that matched the original's "Mr."), a small card reading "Best wishes, Selena Jordan." Natalie, Bob and i scoured the basement after practice to see if we could find more stuff hidden in the nooks and crannies. We came up with nothing. We reasoned that, this way, anything else that showed up could not have fallen out of a secret location, and therefore must be the work of a supernatural force leaving things for us.

That night, Amanda + i left the dogs alone in the house while we were out. When we came back, the smaller one seemed terrified (which, really, isn't overly unusual; she's a border collie with the demeanor of a chihuahua) and the larger one, overly clingy. We attributed this to their being left alone in what was still a more or less unfamiliar area.

I don't remember exactly when this occurred, but one night while Amanda was at work, when the bed was in the lower level since we were working on the upstairs, i had gone downstairs to go to bed, took off my pants and laid them on the table (yeah, that's what i do with pants), then turned around and noticed the upstairs light was on. That's funny, i thought, i was sure that i turned that off. So, i went back upstairs and turned the light off. When i got back into the lower level, i turned around, and it was still on. Well, i said, i guess the ghost wants the light on up there tonight. So i left it alone and went to bed. It was still on in the morning.

So i posted a couple of notes on Facebook about it and the story generated a certain amount of interest among my friends. Most people wanted to know what was in the letters. So i made a promise to everybody that we'd open them at my upcoming birthday party. I made good on this promise.

The earlier card turned out to be a handmade Father's Day card. It's a sheet of paper folded in quarters, you know the type. The latter card was a card for the mother on her birthday. But here's what really tripped me out: i unfolded the card and inside there is a thumbprint dried in blood.

The party latched on to this and many headed into the basement themselves to see what they could come up with. Items were indeed found; i don't remember the precise order of them. Most staggering was the ten inch knife that David found on a shelf that Bob and i had each personally searched the previous Thursday. Then letters started to be found, not cards, but actual letters. The first few were from the late sixties and were from a sailor writing to his then-girlfriend in California from the boat, addressed through his APO. We read them, they were pretty much just a bunch of sappy love letters with all the basics you'd expect therein. But then a letter was found wedged into a pile of copper pipes that we had put there. This one came without an envelope and was written on loose note paper; same man writing to the same woman. This time, it's 2002, and he's writing to her from jail to her home in Wisconsin. Apparently, she had been responsible for his arrest (his crime is not specified), and he had heard that shortly after the cops hauled him off, she had broken into his house, and he angrily demanded to know why.

I finally inspected the fork. It seems to be actual silver, but it's tarnished all to hell. The stamp in the back of it lists its manufacture date as 1893! Drew, via his cell phone, googled the company which manufactured the knife and found that the specific logo stamped in the blade was only used in the mid-1930s.

There have been other items found since the party, creepiest among them being a picture frame with three very old portraits in them. Things tapered off pretty quickly after the party, though, and nothing's been found in a while. The house feels a lot more comfortable, but that may be due to the addition of simple things like carpet and paint since the party (there was not yet any carpet last November). Maybe the ghost's gone, or maybe she's just given us all she wanted to give, i'm not sure. Maybe we fulfilled whatever it was she wanted from us, though it's not like we contacted any of the addressees from the letters (we'd considered it at one point). So maybe the ghost is gone, maybe she's not.

I'm pretty sure her name is Gail.