The Door At The End Of The Hall

There is one room in our house that was not investigated during our paranormal investigation last fall, and it's perhaps the creepiest room in the whole house.  Our main floor bathroom.  People are terrified of it.  A lot of our guests opt to use the bathroom upstairs instead, some of our more rustic guy friends use the great outdoors when they have to tinkle (which are also haunted, I might add), some refuse to go to the bathroom at all in our house, and those who do use it usually either take someone with them, or come running back out of the bathroom like a bat out of hell after they hear something or something falls down or tips over.  (Which always happens.)

Our bathroom is at the end of a long, narrow hallway, kind of separated from the rest of the house.  And I'll admit, even with all the crazy things that have happened in our house, it's the one room that still gives me goosebumps on the regular.  Especially at night.

I mentioned this to the paranormal investigator that's getting ready to come back out and do some more investigating next month (more on that in a minute), and he said that haunted bathrooms are pretty common.  Who knew?  He said there's a theory among paranormal investigators that it has something to do with the water and the pipes, that spirits are drawn to them.  So, maybe there's something to that whole "Bloody Mary" urban legend afterall??



Anybody gotta pee?

Now, back to that other thing I mentioned.  We are having our house investigated again by one of the investigation teams that came out last fall.  Most likely, some time in March.  To answer your questions: YES, I'm insane.  And YES, I'm worried.  (A little.)  Here's the thing, though.  All of the "experts" are in agreement that our ghosts aren't evil or bad.  Quite the opposite, actually.  The fact that they were so willing to communicate and cooperate with the investigators and so active even with the ghost-busting equipment there means that they WANT to talk.  They've got something to say.  And call me crazy, but I want to know what that "something" is! 

In addition to further research being done on the property, there is now a bonafide historian digging into the history of the house and the property it's built on.  I cannot waaaaait to see what he finds. 

In response to my announcement last night about the upcoming investigation, one of my friends suggested that I'm going to make the ghosts mad, and that they're going to start coming at me Poltergeist style.  Another friend said, "There is going to be a creepy preacher that shows up at your screen door and demand to come in! Don't let him in!!!"  At which point I informed her, he's already been to our house.  THREE TIMES. 

The first time was shortly after I signed the lease, but a good couple weeks before we moved in.  I was there painting and working on the house when there was a knock at the door.  It was a creepy old man in a black suit, with a gray comb over and eery blue eyes.  He was holding a briefcase and had the weirdest smile.  There was a small, elderly woman with him with curly orange hair and glasses.  She didn't speak, just stood there and smiled.  He wanted to talk to me about my salvation.  I told him I wasn't interested.  As he walked away (which puzzled me, because we live on a very busy highway with no sidewalk, and he had no car), I thought, "Man, he was like that creepy dude from Poltergeist."  I wondered if he was there because he knew something about the house that I didn't.  (At that point, I had no idea it was haunted.) 

He came back again that summer, a couple of months after we moved in.  I was home alone, doing some cleaning upstairs when I heard the doorbell.  I looked out the window at the top of the stairs and saw him and the same weird old lady standing on the porch.  I knew the door was locked, so I just ignored them and they eventually went away.  The third time was this past fall.  And I swear to GOD my husband answered the door and talked to him.  I remember it clear as day.  My husband, however, has no recollection of it whatsoever.  Weird, right?

"Excuse me, ma'am, may I come in?"

BOOM.

Soooooo.....I finally did it.  And by "it," I mean a few different things.  I:

• Put out an open call for help to anyone who knows anything about historical research to help me figure out if my house is built on an old Indian burial ground or the former home of a serial killer or something- anything that would explain the level of activity in the house and on the property.  I've Googled the heck out of this place, and it's just not getting me anywhere.
• Sent an e-mail to one of the paranormal investigation companies that participated in the investigation at our house last fall, asking if they'd be interested in coming out again and investigating further.  (On the condition that they try to research the history of the house, as well.)
• Sent a super creepy, stalkerish message to a prior tenant of the house, who I located by way of mail that still comes here in his name, asking if he knew anything about the history of the house, or if anything happened to him and his family when they lived here.

So, with any luck, one or all of these olive branches will lead to some MOTHER FLIPPIN' ANSWERS.  Because it's time.  It's really, really time.

Within These Walls...

I always tell people my house is “in the country,” but I feel like that’s sort of a lie.  It is, pretty much, in the country.  But it’s also on a main highway that is busy at all hours of the day and night.  So we’re not out in the middle of nowhere.  But…we are cutoff from society, for the most part. 

Our nearest neighbors are across the street, but since our street is actually a busy highway, it’s not like we can just run across the road and ask for a cup of sugar or an extra egg if we need one.  Our neighbors to our west are on the other side of the marsh and a mini-forest.  We can’t even see their house.  Our neighbors to the east of us are close-ish.  If I stood outside and yelled SUPER loud, they could probably hear me- only if they were outside too, though.

I’m telling you all of this to highlight the fact that the only noise we ever hear, besides the insanely loud road noise, is our own.  Lawnmower?  Ours.  Snow blower?  I wish.  Kids being loud and crazy?  Those are definitely ours.  It’s important that you understand this before I tell you what happened to me yesterday.

Yesterday, I had the day off (thank you, Presidents of yesteryear!)  I was home alone, and after spending the morning working on things around the house, I decided to get dressed and go to the store.  I was in my room, half naked, when I heard the unmistakable sound of a chainsaw firing up outside my bedroom window.  A CHAINSAW.  OUTSIDE MY WINDOW.  I almost shat myself.  True story.  With shaky hands and my heart in my throat, I tiptoed to the window in my room that was furthest away from the noise and peeked through the blinds, fully expecting to see Leatherface staring back at me. 

It was my landlord.  He’d come over, unannounced, to chop down the remnants of a tree that fell during our last major windstorm.  Oh, that Bob….

I was thinking, as my pulse slowed back down to a normal pace, about how long it’s been since we’ve had an “incident.”  It’s been at least a couple of weeks.  That’s gotta be a record.  Be careful what you wish for, right?

Last night, I was cleaning up the aftermath of my 14 year old’s birthday party.  We’re talking soda splattered on the walls, food crushed into the floor, holes in the walls, broken glass (P.S. He is NEVER having another slumber party).  As I was cleaning the floor for the tenth time, I noticed that him and his friends had been so rowdy, they’d knocked loose a couple of floorboards that had apparently been cut out of the flooring and replaced years ago.  (Important fact: When we moved into the house last spring, I pulled carpet out of the upstairs bedrooms that had been therefor decades.  So whatever was underneath it had been there for a good long while.) 

I removed the pieces of floorboard, and what I found set my heart racing instantly.  What was hiding under my son’s bedroom floor was a multilayered contraption of weirdness.  Two boards, nailed together so that one was facing north/south and the other was facing east/west, sort of like a cross only not really.  I believe they were nailed together like that so they would be impossible to remove from under the floor without removing all of the nails first.  On top of the criss-crossed boards was an old, dusty manila envelope, folded over multiple times.  On top of the envelope were four smaller strips of wood, all nailed down.  I had to pry them up, one by one, to get to the envelope.

I was giddy, wondering what I would find.  An old love letter?  A murder confession?  Money?  Savings bonds?  Photos?  Gaaaah!  I was so excited, my hands were shaking as I finally broke the envelope free from its shackles.  What I found was…..unexpected.  Baseball cards from the 1950’s, one of which looked like it had been cut from the back of a cereal box.  These weren’t some young boy’s hidden treasures, however.  Each card was folded into teeny, tiny pieces, and had a nail going right through the player’s head.  Ummmm……???

I don’t even know what to say.  Was it some sort of weird baseball ritual?  A voodoo curse?  I have no idea.  I did Google the players today, Eddie Joost of the Philadelphia Athletics and Jim Pendleton of the Milwaukee Braves.  They both lived long, seemingly happy lives, and only died within the past few years.  (I’ll be honest, I expected to find that something horrible happened to them both in 1952, which is the year I’ve deduced the cards were hidden under the floorboards.)

Add another mystery to the list.  We’ll file this one under “WHAT THE HECK?!”  Seriously, I have no idea what to think.  This has got to be my strangest discovery to date, aside from maybe the old arcade games in the barn.  It just makes me wonder….what else is hiding within my walls and under my floors?   And what’s hiding in the attic?  Oh, did I never mention that?  Yeah, we totally have an attic.  What’s in it?  I can’t tell you…..because none of us have ever been up there.  Cue the Twilight Zone theme song…..