FEATURED TALES 3
Ghost House
(NOTE: Okay, everybody, get nice and comfortable for this
one, it will take a while to read. But, while you're nice and comfy, be SURE you
have more than just the glow of your monitor to illuminate the room, or you won't be
comfortable for long...)
Ghost House I
The following events occurred in Rochester, New York. The
location was 364 Scio Street.
We should have known something was wrong the moment we laid eyes
on the place. The rooms were just too damned large for any ordinary apartment. But the
rent was cheap and we needed to find a place fast.
I was ten years old when my Dad and I moved into that old house
on Scio Street. Mom had passed away one year before, which left he and I to make it on our
own. Dad was a good provider and we did all right, but he felt we had to move from our old
neighborhood because it brought too many memories of my Mother. It was slowly killing him.
There were four humongous apartments in the house; one on the
first floor which was now ours, and three on the second. I'd never seen rooms this large.
My bedroom alone was big enough for three people, and needless to say, I was in puppy
heaven for the first five days. The living room was so big that Dad couldn't even find
enough furniture to fill it.
I was sleeping in my bed one night, but awoke when I heard the
sound of what seemed to be a woman crying. At first I thought it was coming from one of
the other apartments. I got up and went to the doorway of my bedroom. It was fully opened
and I knew that I'd closed it before going to bed that night. I stood there and listened
for a moment. The woman’s sobbing was getting louder, sounding almost angry. Clearly
it was not the sounds of another tenant, it was coming from our living room. Throughout
her crying I heard her speaking to someone, as if another was consoling her in her grief.
Finally after a few minutes she began to scream loudly. This woke my Dad who came running
into my room to check on me. He turned on the light and found me standing there, sheet
white and shaking like a leaf. The crying had stopped. There was total silence except for
the sound of my father’s voice.
"WHAT'S WRONG?
ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?"
I couldn't answer, but he could see the terror in my eyes.
The next day, Dad asked a few neighbors some questions about this
place we were living in. It had been a Funeral Home for more than thirty years, one woman
told him. The owner had retired the year before and sold the house to another man who
converted it into apartments. The other tenants had moved in only a few weeks before we
did, she added, but the place was unoccupied for almost nine months. No, she had never
heard any noises coming from the place, but every now and then the lights inside the house
would flicker on and off, even though No Electric Power was On. It had all been
disconnected after the Funeral home closed down.
A few days past by after that first episode without anything
unusual happening, but I kept thinking I could see someone standing next to me at times
out of the corner of my eye. Of course, every time I'd turn my head quickly to look, no
one would be there. It might have been my imagination.... I didn't really want to know.
There was many a night after that, when my dad and I would be
awakened by that crying woman. On some nights the episodes would only last for a few
minutes, on others, it seemed like it would never end, but in every case, my bedroom door
would always be open when I awoke. My Father even put a lock on my door so I'd feel safe,
but the door would still be open when morning came.
There was this one particular stormy winter night I was alone in
the house because my Dad had to go out of town for the day on business. He had asked me to
go with him, but I wanted to stick around my neighborhood with my friends. When night
came, I was tired from the busy day, so I went to lie down on my bed for a while. I soon
fell asleep. Later, I awoke at 9:00 PM and heard my Dad moving about our apartment but I
was still too tired to get up and greet him. He wasn't alone. I could hear my dad and
someone else talking to each other in the kitchen. My mind was in that place where minds
like to go when you’re half asleep and half awake. The body wants to get out of bed
but you're just too damned tired to make that first move. After a few more minutes I heard
my Dad and the other person quietly walk into my bedroom. One of them pulled my blankets
over me, tucked them in, then they quietly left my room and returned to the kitchen.
The loud shrill ringing of the telephone that was next to my bed
shocked me awake at 10:30 PM. I waited to see if dad would answer his own extension, and
when he didn't I picked up my receiver.
"Hello, Peter," my dad's voice said, "Look, I'm
sorry son but I'm still in Buffalo. We're having one hell of a storm here and all the
roads are closed. I've been trying to call you all night but the phone lines have been
down. You gonna be all right until morning?"
"Yeah dad, don't worry, I'll be fine," I said.
We talked for a few more minutes, then I tried to get back to
sleep. That's when I remembered!
I never told my Father about that night. I don't know who was in
my house, or who or what tucked in my sheets, but I do know that I wasn't dreaming.
Ghost House II
It was in late September that this happened. By this time my
Father and I were quite aware that our little Paranormal Palace had its own dark side. I'd
been out of school for a few days with the flu. Sick or not, the Nuns who taught at Mount
Carmel School didn't let you get away without homework. One of your classmates would bring
you your work, and then collect it from you the next morning while on their way to class.
I had an appointment with the Doctor on this day at 3:00 PM. My
dad came home from work early so he could take me. While we were gone, Lisa,
another
student, had come by with a book I was to read, and later write a report about. We
returned home after the visit with the Doctor, had a light dinner, and then dad sent me
back to bed. The next morning my dad left for work. Shortly afterward, there was a knock
on the front door. I opened the door and saw Lisa smiling at me.
"How are you feeling today Pete," she asked?
"Like Hell," I said. "Still can't keep anything
down."
"My mom's got the same flu," she said, "and she's
having a real bad time with it. Well anyway, I forgot to tell the lady that your book
report is due on Friday morning. Who is she, your Aunt or something?" I didn't have a
clue what she was talking about.
"What lady," I asked?
"The lady who answered the door. I gave her a copy of Lord
of the Flies to give to you."
Lisa explained that a strange looking woman had answered the
door, when she'd stopped by the day before, and accepted the book from her. The lady had
never said a word to her. I asked Lisa what she meant by Strange, and she told me the
woman had no expression on her face at all. It was totally blank until she reached out and
grabbed the book from her. At that point, the lady smiled, and then closed the door.
"It was her eyes," Lisa said, "It was like they were looking right through
me. It gave me the creeps."
Two nights later my dad received a phone call from my teacher.
She was upset about the missing book and wanted to know when my dad would pay for its
replacement. My Father told her that no such woman lived in our apartment and that Lisa
must have stopped by the wrong house. His explanation was lame, Of course, because Lisa
had been to our house at least a dozen times before, so you can imagine the argument that
went on between my dad and teacher.
About one month later, a friend and I were in my basement
exploring all the wonders that kids find in those old places. We came upon an old and
beaten looking green suitcase that was resting behind a small stack of wood in a storage
area. It was covered with thick layers of dust and smelled moldy and rotten. Lord knows
how long it had been there. My friend placed it on a large workbench not far away and
tried to open it. Its lock was rusted and completely unworkable. We looked around and
found two screwdrivers among some tools nearby, then began to hack away at the lock until
it broke away. It took a few heavy tugs to get the rusty hinges to loosen up, but it
finally popped open after one mighty jerk. My friend reached inside and pulled out a few
old cloth napkins along with a rotted pair of a woman's leather gloves. The leather had
long before dried out making them rough and hard. There were a few other items of no great
importance...............no hidden treasure for he and I.
There was a cloth compartment along the upper lid that was
obviously used for additional storage. I reached in and pulled out a small hard cover
book. YEP, YOU GUESSED IT! It was a copy of Lord Of The Flies. My heart stopped for a
moment while my mind tried to reason this out. "There's no F...ing way this could be
the same book," I said to my friend.
"Let me see that," he said. He then took the book from
me and opened it up to the inner cover. "This is weird, Man," he said.
"Look at this." When he held the book up to show me the page I could see the
hand written words inside.
“Property of Our Lady Of Mount Carmel School.”
Ghost House III
It had been thirty years since Victor
and his family had
lived in apartment # 2 at 364 Scio Street, but he still remembered every detail of the
"Bad Nights." This was the name his Mother and two younger sisters used to
describe those times when the house seemed to (pardon the expression) come alive with the
dead.
As I told you before, we had met at a VFW Pig Roast, one Sunday
afternoon, and got into a discussion about the old place. We'd found a quiet spot at a
picnic table away from the crowd where no one would bother us. At first, Vic didn't want
to speak of it, but after a few cold beers his mind began to wander back to that dark old
house that had once been a Funeral home for thirty years.
"I was the first one to see something." Vic said.
"It was a school night and I was in the bathroom talking a shower. Do you remember
that scene in the movie, Psycho, where the lady is in the shower and all of a sudden you
see the door to the bathroom open, and the shape of Norman Bates starts walking toward the
shower curtain?"
"Of course I do," I said, "it scared the living
s--- out of me."
"Good, because that's what I saw. I heard the door open, and
when I turned to look I saw someone standing in the doorway. The curtain was this white
cheap piece of crap my mom made. You could almost see right through it because the
material was so thin. Whoever it was, slowly walked right up to that curtain and started
to reach out at me with her right hand. Pete, I could see her clearly, as if I was looking
through a veil."
"So why didn't you yell for your mom or something," I
asked?
"How in Hell should I know? At first I thought it might be a
friend of my Mother's screwing with my head or some bs. She had on this white
nightgown kind of thing. S---, I could even see her hair! It was long and black from what
I could tell. It came down and swept across her chest. She reached out and touched me
right through that curtain. I could see her hand as clear as I see you now. She touched
me, Pete! That f...ing thing touched me! I could feel her fingers against my shoulder.
They were cold, you know? Like if you placed an ice-cube against your skin."
"Did you get a good look at her face?" Vic nodded.
"She was smiling at me, but it wasn't a real smile...more
like when an animal snarls at you. Really evil looking, ya know? When all you can see is
the teeth? That's when I really started to get scared. Then I felt those fingers and I
lost it. I yanked back that F...ing curtain so hard it almost ripped off the rod."
For the next few seconds Vic was silent. He just sat there looking straight into my eyes.
"And," I asked impatiently? A few more seconds of
silence.
"AND," I repeated?
"And nobody was there," he said, almost in a whisper.
There was a slight tremble in his voice when Vic spoke. "I mean one second there's
someone standing less than a foot away from me, and the next, there's no one." We
looked at each other for a minute, neither of us knowing what to say. Vic drank the rest
of his beer, and then stood up.
"So how the F.. k do you explain that," he asked?
"I can't," I said. " I can't explain the things
going on in my apartment either, but they happened. Did you tell your Mother?"
"Sure I did. She thought I was crazy," Vic laughed.
"She thought I was crazy until a week later when we were about to have dinner one
night. My sisters and I were in the living room watching `I Dream Of Jeannie` on the tube.
Dinner was on the table and Ma was standing on this foot stool reaching up to grab a bowl
from the cupboard, when all of a sudden this big glass picture of milk came flying at her
from the dinner table. The damned thing smashed into the wall, barely missing her head.
The three of us came running into the kitchen and found Ma still standing on that stool
shaking like a leaf. Broken glass was everywhere. She believed me after that night."
He smiled again and popped open another beer.
Vic told me of another event that occurred the following weekend.
He, his Mother and two sisters had spent the day at the home of his Grandparents. When
they arrived home later that night, they were exiting their car outside the house when his
Mother looked up and saw that all the lights were turned on in their apartment.
"Mommy, who's that," his sister Cathy asked? "In the window, Mommy,"
Cathy said, while pointing to one of the living room windows. They all looked up and saw a
man standing in front of the window looking down at them. The light of the room showed the
dark silhouette of a mans shape. A few moments later the man turned from the window and
slowly walked away. Vic's mother and the girls went to the home of a friend and called the
Police, while Vic waited outside the apartment house. The Police arrived and searched the
apartment, but found no intruder. One Officer explained that the man must have run off
after seeing them outside. Vic was quick to interject; "No way, Man. I was standing
here the whole time they were gone. There's only one door into our place and there ain't no way anyone could have gotten out without me seeing them!"
Vic's mother later called her brother who rushed over and spent
the night with them while the family slept. All was peaceful and quiet.
For the rest of that afternoon Vic and I exchanged at least a
dozen other stories with each other. Neither of us had any idea that everyone in that
apartment house was experiencing similar events. At days end we went our separate ways,
promising to keep in touch, which we have.
One thing Vic told me has always stuck in my mind. He said;
"Pete, ever since that night I saw that woman, I haven't been able to close my eyes
when I take a shower or a bath, not even for a second. I'm afraid of what I might see when
I open them. I got some soap in my eyes one night and had to rinse them out so the burning
would stop. I was terrified until I was able to open them again. All I could picture was
that thing on the other side of that curtain smiling at me."
We both tried to fake a bit of laughter, but there was nothing
funny about it, nothing funny at all...
-Unsigned-
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