…And Still Insists She Sees The Ghosts
From the ages of, oh, I don’t know, 3 to 24, my brother hated me. Unresolved issues, a sprinkling of jealousy and a (now ex) wife who fanned the flames of contention with her equally fcuked-up relationship with her own little brother made for a gigantic cluster-fuck of a relationship. For years I was baffled, then sullenly resentful, then I got over it.
You can’t make people (even family) like you. Period. End of story. Fin as those wily French say. Or is it the Eye-Tal-Ians? I can’t be sure.
(Years later, thanks to my sister-in-law, we get along just fine, thankyouverymuch, to the shock, I think, of us both)
But back then, when I was a teenager and he was my current age (28), he and his shrew of a (then) wife who shared my name (first, then last) bought a house in St. Charles, not too far–maybe 5 blocks–from where I live now. The only difference is, my house is in a 70’s construction subdivision, and his house was one of the original in the town. And, because he has a penchant for the dramatic and macabre, the old house he bought wasn’t any old house.
No, not a bit. Not MY brother.
It was built in 1837 in the heart of what was then downtown St. Charles, by a builder whose wife was a member of the spiritualist movement. Her name was Caroline and she believed that she could send and receive messages from the dead. As a famous medium of her time, she held many seances in her home, including one for Mary Todd Lincoln, who came to St. Charles in hopes of communicating with her deceased husband Abe.
But no, the macabre doesn’t stop there.
Once Caroline passed away, one of her daughters picked up right where her mother had left off, conducting seances in the same house. Her daughter later married a man who was an undertaker. The house was then used as a funeral home with one of the basement rooms used as an embalming and viewing room. The name of the undertaker is still etched into the glass on the front door, my brother happily pointed out when we came to tour the house.
(To think I was happy that my own home had central air.)
Anyway.
My brother and his then wife bought this home in the later 1990’s when I was a teenager. Shortly after this, my brother began to travel for business, leaving the country for weeks at a time. Also around this time, my former sister-in-law asked for a divorce. Even less reason for Aaron to be home.
So, when he was gone, I was occasionally asked to house sit, which confounded me: here I was, 18 with a boyfriend, and I was asked to stay in a house ALONE without parents, by my brother who hated me? Surely, there was a catch.
Turns out there was.
For someone like me, who firmly didn’t believe in ghosts, I wasn’t scared by the rumors that the house was haunted. Sure, the chalk painting on the wall in the basement (later, I learned, was the embalming room) of a wide-eyed girl with the phrase “JUST A PURE GIRL” underneath it was a little creepy. But St. Charles is an old town and between the houses I’d been to that had passages for the escaped slaves on the Underground Railroad and all the other old weirdness, I chalked it up to nerves.
He’d bought a creepy house.
End of the ever-loving story.
But no.
One night, after I’d promised my mother that I would pop over there to water the plants and hang out so that it looked occupied and lived in, I dragged my then-boyfriend over with me. Figured we’d listen to some music, hang out without any interruptions and maybe get a chance to have The Sex.
But no.
We pulled up, parked and walked in after I unlocked the door. It was like walking into a wall of unease. All merriment, all joy, all laughter was suddenly just gone. Sucked out of the both of us, like we’d entered The Vortex of The Fun-Free Zone. I eyed him and he eyed me back. The disenchantment was mutual, but we were going to power through it. Maybe it was just nerves or something.
But no.
We walked around the house and if we’d been actors on a stage, the directions would have read “The couple walks about, trying their best to act normal.” Very awkward and highly unexpected for the both of us. I went to the CD rack to pick out a CD as I knew my brother’s collection was far better than my own, hoping, I guess that a little familiar music would still the feeling of disquiet.
But no.
We sat down on the rug in front of the stereo and began to listen to some Mazzy Star. Okay, I thought, maybe it was just a case of The Nerves. Then the phone rang. Startled beyond anything, I jumped up, my heart thudding unhappily in my chest as I realized I was sweating profusely. Better answer that, I thought as I went for the handset in the kitchen. Give the illusion that someone is home, yeah, that’s the ticket.
(my brother hates to talk on the phone, so in hindsight, this was NOT what he’d have done)
Having been somewhat of a phone aficionado for most of my life, I was shocked that I couldn’t answer it. I tried to answer it, I pushed the right buttons on his new-agey looking phone, but no one was there. On and on it rang, Tim and I looking frantically at each other like answering this fucking phone won us the right to live or die. I couldn’t manage to answer it. No way, no how.
Then, just as the phone stopped ringing, the sirens downtown began to go off. The house wasn’t super close to the police or fire department, but the sirens were loud and close. All of a sudden, I got a vision of a car wreck somewhere close where people I loved had died. Popped into my head out of the clear blue sky. My whole body was covered head to toe in goosebumps and I began to shiver uncontrollably in the warm summer air.
It was then that I knew we had to get the fuck out of there before something Really Bad happened.
There was a murderer there and I could smell his sickeningly sweet cologne right behind me with a knife and a gun and a rope and i was going to die like this, in this creepy house, there was a fire about to start oh my god a fire a fucking fire and we would be trapped, burnt to a crisp, the gas main oh my god the gas main was going to suddenly pop a leak killing us quietly while we slowly drifted off into a never-ending sleep DANGER!DANGER!DANGER! red danger, red danger!! the porch was going to collapse on us wow it must be unstable holy shit got to go got to go, killing us in a load of dusty horsehair plaster where we can’t get out and crushed, oh my god crushed the swarm of bees in my head, oh my head, oh my god, my head.
I took one look at Tim who looked back at me, both of us ashen under our summer tan, and we ran. We fucking bolted from that house as quick as we fucking could, panting and breathless. I called my mom to beg her to come and lock up after me because I couldn’t do it. My hands were too shaky to work the key into the lock.
Aaron sold the house several years later, had a couple of good laughs at my experience with the ghost, whom he claimed “hated women.” My mother, conversely, loved the ghost in that house who, apparently, loved her back. So the ghost, just like anyone else, had preferences.
It sounds so flimsy when I retell it here, because I can’t inject terror into your body like it was injected into mine. The analytical side of me says that what happened was just a stress response to being in the house of someone who didn’t like me particularly. It says it that I was feeding off the emotions of my surroundings and letting it overtake me. It says that there’s no such thing as ghosts.
The irrational, emotional side of me, though, doesn’t agree. The emotional side of me calls bullshit.
————–
Do you believe in ghosts? Have you had anything like that happen to you?
Ghosts tend to follow me around no matter where I live. I’m beginning to think that someone I used to know is trying to tell me something, but is non-verbal.
Or just likes fucking with me.
This is so funny. I just posted today about a strange and eerie experience I’ve had.
I have poltergeists come out when I’m at our little shack on Dog Island. They move shit around, drop things in the toilet, hide things. But they don’t freak me out for some reason. They’re just being silly and naughty.
my older brothers ghost follows my mom around and he is very possessive of her. i have 4 people who follow me around so i got use to it, i never beleaved in ghost for a while untell freaky shit started to happen to me.
when i was 8 we went to a native reserve and i had a meltdown fight with my mom and ran away to the woods , where i meet grandfather a ghost who has followed me all my life and trys to keep me out of trouble.
i have a lady who looks like a librarian or a teacher and a solider who have been with me since i was born and a little girl named Amanda who was friends with me in a past life.
i come from a family of mediums so i guess the only thing i can say is what happened to you was real (but you now that) and that they cant hurt you . they may freak you out and work things around you and push their feelings on you but they cant hurt you physically .
I go believe in ghosts. I don’t know that I believe in scary, horror movie type ghosts… but that is b/c nothing like that has ever happened to me. but I do believe.
What a great story. I believe in ghosts, and I’ve had unsettling experiences, but nothing quite like that. I used to work at a very old country club in Georgia, and the linens were stored in the basement. The first time I went down there, I felt like I HAD to get out of there FAST. I ran up the stairs, surely looking silly to anyone who saw me. A few weeks later, one of my co-workers told me about the ghost who hung around down there. You best believe I didn’t go back down there alone!
I don’t know why, but ghosts terrify the crap out of me. Probably because my great grandfather used to tell me all these ghost stories and would be like “don’t clap your hands or whistle, then the ghosts get attracted to you” when I clapped or whistled. IDK.
Anyways, my ghost story – back when I was around 17 I was having sex with my boyfriend at the time in the back seat of my car parked in the woods somewhere (so creepy to begin with). At some point I looked up out the window and I swear I saw a face looking at us and then turning away. But there was no one there. We got the fuck out of there right away, I can tell you that 🙂
In retrospect it might have actually been the reflection of one of our faces in the car window….
Also once when I was smoking the pots (probably when I was around 19 or so) I was hanging out with some friends and I could have sworn someone left the room and didn’t come back..and I kept trying to remember who else was there with us. But no one else was. And my friend also though someone had left the room and didn’t come back. And then we thought it was a ghost for some reason and got really freaked out.
Plus I’ve seen all sorts of things on hallucinogens, but I don’t think those count 🙂
No, like you I don’t believe in ghosts.
But… When I was a kid my mom, my aunt and I took a trip Out West. We ended up in some farily podunk Arizona town looking for a hotel room one night. The nicest looking hotel in town said that they had some vacancies. And even a “haunted” room for rent, if we were interested.
Of course we were all over that. Well, mom and I were. My aunt insisted on renting a second room to sleep in. She was too weirded out about it.
So, we survive that night and then in the light of day the next morning, we convince my aunt to come in and check out the room. One thing leads to another, and next we are attemping to have a seance. Poorly.
Right in the middle of it, we hear this loud crash outside. We ran down to see what was going on. Turns out, some parked car had just started rolling on its own, and smashed into another.
Creepy.
Holy hauntings, I’ve got goosebumps from this post. My only ghost encounters have been of the benevolent, music loving kind. And I’d like to keep it that way. I worked in a haunted theatre right after college. There was no piano in the stage area, the electricity to that part of the building was shut off at night after the peformances so we couldn’t blame a radio or other equipment being left on, yet when we locked up to leave, we could hear a woman singing and a piano playing on the stage. Creepy – a little, but not like your ghost story. *shudder*
I don’t think you can grow up around New Orleans and not believe in ghosts or spirits or voodoo. I think rationally though, I’m with you. But I’m a scary movie horror fiend! I have tried (unsuccessfully mind you) to talk my husband into staying overnight at a local bed & breakfast that is supposedly haunted just to see what all the hoop-la is all about. I say bring on the ghosts….I’m a likeable girl…we could be friends!
Totally creepy you brought this up today. Was just talking to a co-worker who will bet her life her grandparent’s home is haunted and she’s chicken shit to house-sit.
Therefore I offered to visit with her a few nights.
After reading this I e-mailed her and said based on some totally factual shit from a leading media outlet (www.mommywantsvodka.com) I can no longer accompany you.
I”m not sure I believe in ghosts – plenty of creep stuff happens though to make me question it.
My Aunt and Uncle used to own this OOOOLD duplex style house in Maryland. It was a bit spooky, with narrow hallways and steep stairs and creeky floors but loved going there when I was little but was told to never go in the cellar and stay away from the third floor unless I was with a grown up. The only freaky thing that I really remember is laying in bed one night and hearing footsteps in the hallway. The bedroom door opened but no one was there…and then I fell asleep.
Many years later she told me that the house had been haunted by a Civil War soldier. The soldier had been found hanging by the tree in the backyard. Apparently, he was a rather malevolant spirit and the story goes that a woman that lived in that house, a couple of years before my aunt and uncle moved in, was painting the staircase one afternoon. Then, in a fit of abject terror, she ran screaming from the house. No one knows what made her run exactly but her husband had to pack and move everything himself because she refused to ever go back.
This spirit seemed to like my Aunt and she had many stories about little tricks the ghost would play on her but my Uncle would not stay there by himself if it could be helped.
My husband has a creepy story that includes a dark road and being followed by a figure that seemed to get closer each time he turned to look. He is not one for ghost stories or even scary movies so his telling of this tale always gives me chills.
[…] Weekend Experience Ghost Stories… June 16, 2009 So Aunt Becky over at Mommy Wants Vodka posted about her brother’s house that had a ghost. She then asked us for our experiences […]
Hi Becky!! I actually lived in a “Haunted House”. It was with my ex-husband in this huge house for only 3 people, but it was a beautiful house and had great potential to be a fixer-upper….but….it was very haunted! I always heard my name being called, esp. when I was in the bath tub , I also felt constant touching each time I went up and down the stairs, saw a little boy in the corner of the room one night…you name it I saw it! I am a firm believer in the after life and had an experience with my grandma shortly after she died. It is very interesting and I love to research the subject…
Also for the record, you might really like the show, Ghost Hunters”. Maybe this is old news to you though! LOL
Good to talk to you!
Oooo freaky!
So I was going to post my stories in this comment area….but realized it was getting WAY too long.
So I made my own post.
http://mrssoup.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/ghost-stories/
Oh scary and col at the same time. Cool NOW, scary then! I totally believe in ghosts. I believe my mom has come to see me twice since she died. It could be that I imagined her voice, her smell, her touch, but I will swear til the day I die, she was THERE! Both times were about a week or so after she died. I tried to move the washing machine that had “walked” itself away from the wall and I heard my mom say “Danielle! Don’t move that! You’re going to hurt your back!” I couldn’t move it because I was in a puddle of tears in said washing machine. The other time, I was just about to fall asleep and she touched my leg and kissed my cheek. I FELT her hand on my leg and her lips on my cheek. When I woke up from the touch, I could smell her. It could be said that it was my grief bringing up all these memories. Grief is a pretty powerful thing, but I’m TELLING you it was my mom! Crazy, probably but it makes me feel good.
*HUGS*
We have a ghost cat in our condo. I certainly believe ghosts exist, there is even evidence in the Bible that spirits are around us.
My grandmother owned a haunted house when I was a kid, into my early 20’s. I once was there alone on the third floor when I heard my aunt calling my name. I came down and she was nowhere around, or anybody else who could have called me. That also happened to a cousin of mine who lived there as well. Gives me the heebie jeebies even now.
Yep, I’m a believer. Every once in a while, I will feel someone shaking the bed, as if trhey’re trying to wake me up. Or sometimes it feels like someone is lying across my body, maybe a child. Everyone has had experiences in our house. Daughter heard someone whisper in her ear, and one son felt someone tug his hair. Husband was painting one day, and the jar of painting medium just started to shake on its own, while nothing else was shaking! Crazy stuff, but it doesn’t bother me or scare me. I know these spirits aren’t mean at all.
“I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks”…just channelling my inner cowardly lion, there. Sorry.
I have never had anything super weird happen to me but I love real ghost stories and totally believe they exist.
I watch ghost hunters on sci-fi and would love to stay in a haunted hotel. I would probably pee my pants but it would be super worth it.
Yeah, I believe in ghosts.
Oh Ghosts!!! I think one lives in my 70’s house and I think it hates me. But it can’t be very old so I am hoping it hasn’t graduated from real scary haunting school yet and will only be able to continue making me bump into walls and trip and fall for no reason and not cause any serious harm to me or my relations till after I get the house cleansed by freaky gypsies…
You do realize in every horror movie ever made it is the teenagers who go off to have sex in the scary house that are then murdered by whatever is haunting it?
Girlfriend, you are lucky to be alive.
I don’t believe in ghosts.
But I did have an experience like this once. The day after I lost my virginity (stupid phrase) some friends and I went to visit a fancy, unoccupied house on a hill in the woods. And then it turned out someone very scary lived in a trailer near the house. Terrifying!
Oh, but: I didn’t take a live-in nanny job once because the attic room of this old New England house freaked me out in a non-logical kind of way.
My story is cool and not at all scary. Several years ago my mother and I went to Savannah, GA for girls get away weekend. We went on all the usual Savannah tours, including the Ghost Walk, Ghost Talk tour. They take you around and talk with about the supposed haunting in Savannah and about some voodoo and stuff. As you may or may not know, Juliett Gordon Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts is from Savannah and of course both the home she was born in and the home she shared with her husband are on most tours of the city. Well, when we go to her home our tour guide made some very mean remarks about Mrs. Low’s physical appurtenance. My mother and I being a former Girls Scout leader and Girl Scout respectively took great umbrage at this and defended Mrs. Low’s honor and appearance.
Well, later that evening when we were back at our hotel (which was on the river front and far from the Juiliett Gordon Low house) I had to go to my car to get something from the trunk and laying on my trunk I found a Girl Scout badge. I kid you note; my heart skipped a beat. It had to mean something, right? I checked with our hotels and the hotels surrounding ours and there were no Girl Scout troops staying there. In fact it was fall and school was not out yet and we had seen no troops in the area during our site seeing. I can only imagine and this was reward from Mrs. Low for being a good Girl Scout!
I don’t really believe in ghosts. But here in the biochemistry lab we develop our own films so we have a dark room. It is the darkest dark room I have ever been in. The red light isn’t very bright. So when I’m working on the weekends all by myself I get kinda creeped out… I always feel like someone is cackling in the very dark dark room. I try to do my developing as quickly as possible.
Well, I was writing a comment about 1/2 hour ago, about the ghosts I’ve lived and worked with, but then my computer went dead and I don’t think they want me to tell that story. I respect that, even though I had forgotten to plug the computer A/C power cord in and it was just the battery going dead and it’s not this house I’m living in now that’s haunted, just where I lived when the future-ex and I first got married, and it’s not the office building I work in now that’s haunted, it’s the one I worked in before this job. But, anyway, as I said, I’m not leaving that comment.
I don’t believe in ghosts, but I do know people (cough, my husband’s aunt, cough, my mother-in-law, cough, my brother-in-law, cough, you know, I’M SEEING A TREND HERE, so we’ll just go with my in-laws) who do.
The one that always gets me is that my husband’s aunt swears she saw a Civil War soldier writing a letter beneath the tree in her front yard. He was constantly out there writing letters. What I want to know is how some 1860s guy with a massive head injury: a) can write letters at all, and b) made it all the way out to California. I mean, what the Hell appeal is there in California to a Civil War soldier?
No matter. The woman burned sage and had a priest bless the house and apparently that took care of the problem. I have no idea where the ghost now resides, but it is, at least, no longer writing letters in her front yard.
I don’t let myself believe because I am too chickenshit to handle it in a mature and rational way. I really wish I could be all cool with it, like Winona Ryder’s character in Beetlejuice, but I am a poop-in-the-pants type of scaredy cat.
hear them and see them … they are real
I don’t believe in ghosts, but I want to. I watch all those Ghost shows on TV and I research the paranormal clubs around here. I’ve gone into houses and been open to experiences, but sadly (or luckily, I don’t know) I haven’t had one.
I love history and I admit to being a little macabre myself, so the thought of old, tortured souls still inhabiting the present for whatever reason, intrigues the shit out of me.
Oh dude. DUDE. You’ve read about the crazy shit that’s happened here, right? Like the washing machine that just randomly turns itself on? (It did it AGAIN a couple of weeks ago. The guy who lives (or maybe lived -I haven’t heard from him in a couple days so he may not be coming back-) on my couch didn’t believe me when I told him about it. The next day, it decided to show him! And the stuffed frogs that Greg got me flying into my face in the middle of the night when it was only me and my many cats in the house? Or how my back door will randomly unlock itself? Or about how once when Greg was taking a shit, my brush FLEW from the back of the sink into my shower which is clear across the bathroom? Yeah… I think I has a ghostie. Or ghostez as my son says. When me and my Becky moved in here, there had only been one other occupant (possibly a couple?) who lived here and they moved out in the middle of the night the first month they were here. Considering I am trailer trash and the trailer was actually made and then put here the same year I moved in, I don’t think anything happened INSIDE. But maybe on the land before my place was here? At any rate, all sorts of freaktastical shit happens here. And it’s scary sometimes. I will randomly find myself running down the hall after I go to the bathroom or something cuzz I feel like there’s someone behind me. And then the cats freak out. I’m still trying to decide if it’s cuzz they can see the ghost behind me or if just the sight of my fat ass barreling down the hallway towards them makes them fear for their lives. Probably a little of both. o_O
That post scared the shit out of me so much, the sticky date pudding I was eating started to taste yucky. Now THAT’S scary.
I totally believe in ghosts, 100%.
I absolutely believe in ghosts but I do think that the vast majority of the stories are bullshit. However, I absolutely believe that you damn well better listen to that inner voice…when it says to get the fuck out, you get the fuck out.
Lord woman,
Warn be before I start reading that it’s not for pussies! Ok no, don’t. It was fun to be a little scared.
I lived briefly in a haunted Victorian in Lynn, Mass. The previous owner died in a room on the second floor and would nightly make his sorry way up the stairs and into said room. Gave me nightmares. He wasn’t one for the little girls.
Jeebus, I shouldn’t have come back to read the rest of the comments when I need to go to sleep. Shudder.
I lived on a haunted dorm floor my sophomore year of college. My room mate felt a cold hand on her while she was trying to go to sleep. Later that year the door to our entertainment center opened on its own and the bottle of tequila inside slid around the shelf. Two of us saw that. In the room next to us, CDs would float around the room and at the end of the year the senior’s graduation gown floated around the room. While playing Oijia board one friend started her period and had a terrible overwhelming flow until she came back and finished the Oijia session and it quit.
Someone in my family sees and hears ghosts regularly. At my grandmother’s funeral my mom chose a song off the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack that was a pretty peppy version of a hymn my grandmother loved. She and her sister appeared and were leaning on the casket tapping their feet and enjoying the music. Also a choir of Amish children made an apearance. Grandma would also ride in the car with my parents until my mom told her she didn’t need to take a car anywhere she wanted to go now. SHe could just go.
I’ve told both my grandparents who are dead that they can come talk to me, I’m open to it, but alas I don’t seem to have any gift for it.
I LOVE ghost stories. This totally creeped me out. And some of your readers? Wow. They should totally elaborate on some of that crazy shit.
I have a pretty good one of my own, but it started to get too long to write here, so I’m starting a post. I know you’ll be waiting for it with bated breath.
OMG YES!!!! I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve come home and things are NOT where I’ve left them – dishwasher emptied – dirty clothes washed – bed made!!
Of course my mother has a key (as well as everyone else in effing Horry County), so it could just be her. But she scares me sometimes. So she’s like a ghost. Right?
CREEEEPY! I believe in ghosts, but I don’t call them that. Sounds like Becky is a bit of a psychic, too. 🙂
I’m so glad my only real experience with ghost wasn’t a bad one!
http://fancynancypantsinct.blogspot.com/2008/07/clock.html
I’m still undecided.
I’ve totally had that “you better get out of here” feeling, but in my basement, and my parents built the house and I don’t think any other than goldfish died in it.
I also LOVED hearing all the stories my classmates would tell about feeling things sitting on them, hearing ghosts, seeing ghosts etc when we’d have those little girl sleep overs.
Also, I am for some reason terrified to go to the bathroom at night when it’s dark in the bathroom. The mirrors scare me. I can’t tell you why. And I also have no explanation for why I don’t just turn the darned light on!
Good story Becky!
My sister’s house has a ghost. It is a friendly ghost. It open and closes the door.
You can be sitting in the living room and you will hear the door open then shut, and no one is there.
We are all ok with this, because we know he is friendly, and believe he is there to let us know all is well.
But then again…………..I’ve never been there alone…………
I see dead people…
Having spent many, many nights in a house that was said to be haunted, I can tell you that I have no other choice but to believe in ghosts. No doubt about. CRAZY shit happened all the time in that house, when quite a few people would be there to witness it.
The spookiest part of your ghost story for me was the fact that the seance bitch’s name was Caroline. That’s my sister-in-law’s name that I wrote so lovingly about today 😉
When I originally moved in with my ex (and we can debate the bad luck of that choice another time, thank you very much), we had several roommates living with us in the house his parents owned.
One of our roommates committed suicide there, rather gruesomely, and we all might have died because he used airborne poison (dude – I know my life is full of weird shit but I could not MAKE this stuff up, hand to God). After that lovely incident, I found out that the woman whose father had originally had the house built for her had died of a fast-moving cancer before she could move in. And that the ex’s grandmother had died in his arms in the house. Then I started seeing figures in the dark and hearing things and then it was time to move out. Then the girl I found out he’d been cheating on me with who had lived in the house for a time died from a miscarriage, of all the things. Later, the ex’s mother died of another fast moving cancer. All could be coincidences, sure. But I remember all the hair standing on the back of my neck after I heard someone call my name clearly when I was alone one night and I don’t think so.
I remain convinced that it is a bad house, a bad place, and if you don’t get out in time, it gets you.
I absolutely positively believe in ghosts, spirits, whatever you want to call them.