The first thing I want to say here, is that although I have written some stories before of obvious fiction and made some attempts at fanciful poetry, I would never joke about this subject or try to stretch the truth with lies or embellishments. Death and what people do with it is something I consider to be a serious subject, and I will not ignore the passion that other people are possessed with (if you will pardon the pun) to hold their opinions. My own opinions are that the energy universe, (or perhaps spirit universe) and the physical universe are all part of this universe. And, that as long as we have no way to claim an understanding of all the things in the physical world, like quantum physics, string theory or the extra dimensions that are implied in the mathematics of physics for our level of existence, we have no right to insist on the existence, or lack of existence of other levels. With that said, this time of year always makes me remember a house that I lived in in Fayetteville with my father. It was between Bragg Boulevard and Ft Bragg Road, where we lived in the last years I was in high school and just blocks from where I went to school at Terry Sanford High School and my freshman year of college. We moved there from only blocks away after our old land lord had gotten into the habit of letting workmen into our house with out telling us. When Dad found out about it, he was pretty mad and the decision to move was a quick one, and the new house opened up just as quickly. It was the house of the Jealous ghost, and Dad and I called it that. We moved there in October, and I remember this because it was just before Trick or Treats. On Halloween, I sat on the front stoop with one of my high school friends, Mike Fowler, and a bowl of Reeces mini peanut butter cups and watched as all the kids avoided my new home like the plague. After a while we even chased down a group of kids and threw the candy at them. Rude things were said. We got into Mikes green truck, the one with the sergeant stripes on the side mirrors. Eggs got involved. Thats a different story. I never knew anyone that had lived in that house, though it had been around long enough to have a dug and block-walled coal cellar. Stairs from inside the house led down to the cellar, which was tall enough to stand in. It was now clean and the home of a large oil tank, so it was more of a basement. The block walls didnt reach the first floor joists, so when you were there you could easily see into the crawl space and to the foundation vents, which helped as I slid around in the sand under the house to string up speaker wire for dads stereo. We had fun cranking that one up. It was the house with the stereo in the hall way. Elizabeth Croll, Dave Hahn, Roy Marsh and Bob Baker should remember hanging out there. It was on one of these trips in the sand that I found the vertebrae. It was actually half a vertebra, cut across the spinal column. Luckily, I knew Denis Lutman, whose dad worked as a pathologist for Fayetteville (I think thats right, correct me if I got the job wrong Denis). Prognosis: Smaller than a persons. Probably deer. But it was cool! My house had bones. It was a three bedroom home. Dad had his, I had mine, and we used the bedroom next to mine as a den/T.V. room. It was on the opposite end of the house from the kitchen, so if you were trying to get settled in, there were plenty of trips back and forth for drinks and snacks and such. And that was how we figured out something was going on in the house that was not normal. It started with my Dad getting upset with me. He came back from the kitchen after going in to get a drink and asked me why I had left the cabinet open. I told him I hadnt. He said it was open wide. I asked which one. The one with the glasses in it. I had a red solo plastic cup. We kept those in the bar, not with the glasses. The next time it happened was a few days later. I had gone out to the kitchen to get the stuff out to make popcorn. We make stove top (Dad and I just like it better). The cabinet for the pots and pans was open. Soon we realized that, on occasion, when you went into the kitchen to get something, the cabinet that something was in would be wide open. Like we were being helped. Or anticipated. It happened the whole time we lived in that house. There was also the noise in the wall between the kitchen and breakfast nook. It sounded like a timer or wind up toy. Some times you could just hear it in the wall. But only from the kitchen side. On the nook side of the wall, you could only hear the sound echoing from around the door on the kitchen side. I cant remember why we thought it was a female ghost, but three things stand out that gave us a reason to believe it didnt like other women in the house. First was something that took us a while to put together. Dad had two white porcelain deer candlestick figurines on a cabinet near the front door. They were given to us by two friends who were a couple. The man had boxed the female deer and fawn and gave it to us as his gift. The woman had given us the matching buck. One day, a mirror hanging over the cabinet fell off the wall and destroyed the buck. The doe and fawn hadnt moved (still have them). The nail was still in the wall. The hanging wire wasnt broken. Dad put the mirror back up and it hung there with no problem. The second thing involved Janet Housley, a friend of Dads visiting us from out of town. She and her family had been stationed at Bragg years before and she sang in one of dads church choirs. She was going to stay with us for a few days, and Dad asked me to put her makeup case on a shelf in the bathroom linen closet. The shelves were deep and went from the back of the closet right up to the door. I slide the case back about 8 inches from the front edge of the cabinet and closed the door to the closet. The case was latched. I went back into the front living room to hang out with Dad and Janet, but after about a half an hour we heard a crash in the bathroom. The closet door was open and it bumped into the bathroom door as I opened it to go in. The case was on the floor, opened. All the makeup was scattered across the floor. We told Janet about the ghost and she said Im just here visiting. Things were fine after that, and at one point a kitchen cabinet was opened for Janet. The third incident happened in my room one night in my senior year in high school. I was sound asleep. I then remember being wide awake and sitting up. I have good ears now, but back then, at night, I could hear every thing for blocks. Something had made a sound. In the room. A big sound. I listened hard. Nothing. My watch ticking on my arm. Dad snoring. Fridge motor on the other end of the house. A car far away. Another. Dad snoring. A C-130 flying. Closer. Over head. Going. Gone. Dad snoring. That sounded good. Breathing deep. Snoring. And soon I was asleep. I woke the next morning with my Dad asking me if I had been up partying last night. I had a collection of mugs that people had given me. Not a lot, about eight or ten. The first year we moved into the house, another friend of ours, Mark Cook had given me a shelf rack he had built for a class project as sort of a housewarming/Christmas gift. I still have it. Its hanging in my bathroom. In my room, back in the Jealous Ghost House, the rack had been holding all these mugs and was hung from the wall with two 25 pound picture hangers, each hooked in one of the two triangle shaped clasps on it, one on either end of the top shelf. Some how, in the night, both of these hooks had slipped off the picture hangers they had been hanging from. Mugs and rack crashed to the ground. That was the noise that woke me up. The damage was substantial. Glass and ceramic all over the floor, and I had to wait in bed while my Dad vacuumed up the shards and made sure I wouldnt cut a foot on the debris. When I took stock of the surviving mugs, something occurred to me. All the mugs given to me by girls were gone. I looked at the hooks on the wall. I looked at the triangle hangers on the rack. I hung it back where it was and tugged on it a bit and it stayed there on the wall. I told Dad. We remembered the deer. The make up case. I have good memories of that house. In my freshman year of college my Dad was going away to the beach a lot on the weekends, and I could come back home from college and call 5 people and have 40 people there in a half hour. It was a fun party house for me, but it may have been a bit rambling for Dad. Out of the blue, in my sophomore year of college, Dad moved from that house to another that was far on the North side of Fayetteville. 15-20 more minutes away from his work place. I never did find out why he really moved. Rent was about the same. I was in school about an hour away, but he hired people to do most of the work and made it happen quick. Maybe something else fell off the wall. He never did say. Goodnight.
Posted on: Sun, 27 Oct 2013 03:58:33 +0000