#14 Ghost Stories -- Don

Today is Halloween.  Tradition holds that after dark tonight, the wall between the land of the living and the domain of the dead becomes paper thin so some unfortunates living on our side may find themselves temporarily in the Great Beyond and some of the departed may find themselves once again walking this earth.  The whole “Trick or Treat” thing came about because people used to leave food out for ghosts to bribe them into leaving them alone.  Furthermore, a lot of our superstitious ancestors had the bright idea that “if you can’t beat’em, join’em” so they would dress up as ghosts and wander around thinking that the dead would leave them alone if they thought they were just some other ghosts walking about.

Naturally, having a lot of people costuming as ghosts led to more and more ghost sightings and reifying the belief that there sure were a lot ghosts wandering about the night before All Saints Day.  I’ve never met a ghost, myself.  But I’ve had my run ins with the supernatural so I’m happy to tell you folks about them here.

When I was a kid, there was a few years when Ouija boards were popular.  They were sold in the toy section of Sears or J.C. Penny’s alongside Monopoly and Twister.

I think my parent’s generation didn’t see them as any different as any other board game that kept the kids out of their hair for a few hours.  I’m pretty sure that my parents thought the odds of their children actually conversing with the dead was about as likely as the corner drugstore actually accepting Monopoly money as real cash.

Another thing we used to do in addition to using Ouija boards was to hold séances to try to scare the heebie-jeebies out of ourselves.  Basically, we’d sit in a mostly dark room (not completely dark because we didn’t want to hurt ourselves when we finally ran for the door) and chant the name of the dead person we wanted to contact.  I don’t know why but typically it was Houdini or Amelia Earhart.  One time during one of our séances, we were doing this trick where we would lift someone off the floor by surrounding them and lifting them with just two fingers; we had my brother Dan about four feet off the floor when someone broke wind and the sound scared us so badly that we all jerked our hands away at once.  My brother was nearly knocked out when he went crashing into the floor and he ended up with a knot on the back of his head the size of a goose egg.

Now as an adult, I don’t think Ouija boards have a ghost of chance of actually contacting the dead, but I don’t think I’d want children playing with them anyway.  The whole idea seems a bit shaky; you wouldn’t let your children just go talk with random strangers so why would it be any different for talking with random dead strangers?

Okay, now here are a few of my “real encounters” with the supernatural (or, at least, the ones I’m aware of anyway).

Once about 25 years ago, I was looking to buy an old house in Racine, Ohio (where I teach).  The house had been empty for a few years and was in need of a lot of fixing up, but the price was right because the people who owned it had been left the place when their parents died, and they had no intention of ever fixing it up or moving back to Racine.  It has sat empty long enough that they had cut the price to where I could afford it even on a starting teacher’s salary.  It was a big place, and it was before I was married.  I had the idea that I could work on fixing the house up basically one room at a time and restore it over several years.

I got to the point where I was about to say “I’ll take it,” and the realtor said, “You’re pretty serious about this place, huh?” and I said something like “Yes, it’s a lot of work, but at least I think I can afford it.”

At that point, the realtor got a funny look on his face, drew a deep breath, and said, “Well, I feel obligated to tell you something, but if you ever repeat this, I’ll deny it.  I just want you to know what you’re getting into.”

“Okay,” I said.  I had no idea what he was going to tell me.

“I’m just going to come out with it,” he said.  “The first time I was in this house checking it out, I was standing at the top of the stairs on the second floor and I saw a civil war soldier standing at the bottom of the stairs as clearly as I’m looking at you now.”

“Wow,” I said.  “What happened?”

“He looked at me, and I looked at him,” the realtor said.  “It couldn’t have been more than 10 seconds but it felt like an eternity.  He turned and walked into the next room.   It took me awhile to go down those stairs, but the house was completely empty when I looked around.”

I didn’t buy the place.  If I had someone to live with me, I might have changed my mind, but I didn’t want to move into a haunted house all by myself.  Now, I know it’s possible that the realtor was pulling my leg, but he certainly didn’t have a financial motive to do so.  If he had kept quiet, he would have made a decent commission that day, and I watched the place after that; it stood empty for another year and a half before someone finally bought the place and fixed it up.  I’ve often wondered when I drive by the place if the people living there have seen anything, but there’s no way to ask, I reckon.

My other couple of ghost stories, to make them brief since I’ve already run on too long, involve the time as a college student when a wallet I owned went missing for two weeks only to reappear in the middle of my bedroom floor in plain sight (and this after I had numerous other people search my place for the wallet).

And my mother-in-law, Pat, owns a mantel clock that doesn’t work at all, but somehow on holidays (Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving), the clock knows what days it is and will randomly start to chime.  I was standing next to it one Easter when it started chiming and I know no other person was around to tamper with this clock.

Happy Halloween.  Until next week, keep in good spirits.

Olivia says:


Ouija boards are creeeeeeeeeepy.  And creepiest of all, is who thought of that?  Actually, I don't want to know.


The part about the wallet story that is particularly haunting is the fact that the forces that be seemed to know what would really get your goat the most.  If doors were slamming, or things falling off shelves, I don't think it would really phase you.  I think you would shrug to yourself and find some perfectly reasonable excuse and skip through the rest of your day.  But when they tampered with your things like your wallet, well shoot, that's personal.  


I mean, I've seen your keys misplaced non-paranormally, and you're a little still shaken up.  The mystery of your wallet wandering out from it's hiding place weeks after the fact is strange.  Like temporary paranormal identity theft.  Creeeeeeeepy.  


And Grandma's clock, somehow, though I've totally seen the haunted holiday clock in action myself, it's less creepy than the Ouija board.  Go figure.