Damn It, Bobby!

Whether it's accurate or not, pretty much everyone has taken to calling our little ghost boy Bobby.  And we're pretty sure that his favorite place to hang out, besides outside on the tire swing, is in the downstairs bathroom.  Which makes him the likely culprit of the mess I found in the shower this morning. 

I live in a house full of boys, so it's safe to say that I'm the only daily bather in the C Family Estate.  So when I stepped into the shower this morning, it was the first time anyone had taken one since the previous morning when I took one before work.  I know this for a fact.  I also know that my kids, who are 14 and 10, know better than to mess with my stuff.  Because I will cut them.  (Not really.  But don't tell them that.)

Yet, as I attempted to enjoy the steamy goodness of my morning shower today, something caught my eye. A big glob of my pink, girly shampoo on the shower wall.  And more on the built in shelving.  And even more on the top of the shower stall, where I usually set my shampoo.  It was everywhere.  Both my shampoo and conditioner bottles were almost completely empty, their contents smeared and splattered all over the shower walls.  I spent more time cleaning the shower than I did actually showering.  And now I'm out of hair product.  And all I have to say about it is this:

Blessed Be

I don't want to jinx myself here, but I just have to say....things have been really, really quiet at home since the paranormal investigators visited us again a couple weeks ago.  My overactive imagination has a theory as to why.  My theory is that the spirits in my house finally did what they needed to do- shared what they needed to share and said what they needed to say.  Whatever it was that was making them so crazy....they handled it, the results of which will turn up in the evidence the investigators are still reviewing.

You've seen scary movies.  That's how it works, right?  Ghosts act all crazy because they have some message to pass along from beyond the grave, and once they do that, they go peacefully into the light.  Right?  We shall see.

Another possible reason for the calm in our casa is a little simpler, but equally Hollywood.  Unlike during the first investigation, one of the investigators blessed our house this time, as well as The Hubs and myself.  (Turns out, he was an ordained minister.)  He also left a blessed candle that he used during the investigation burning on our dining room table.

I lamented over that candle so much during the four days it took to burn itself out.  I HATED leaving it burning during the day while we were gone.  I would leave it in the kitchen sink with just the slightest trickle of water running, just to be safe.  The investigator/minister said it would help to calm the spirits, maybe even "draw them into the light."

And I have to admit....our house has been calm.  Probably calmer than it's ever been.  (As I type this, I'm knocking on wood.)  Is it weird that I'm a little sad about the idea that our spirits might have left us?  Still waiting on the results from the investigation.....STAY TUNED....

The blessed candle on day two of its four day life.

The Morning After

It's the morning after our second paranormal investigation.  Okay, so it's more like mid-afternoon now, but I'm still in my pajamas, so it's still morning to me.  I've been trying all day to put my thoughts into words, but they've been so scrambled until now.

You might think that I shouldn't be surprised by anything that happens at my house anymore.  You might think that I should be "used to" our ghosts by now.  And you might even think that us allowing the house to be investigated again was completely frivolous.  So let me explain.

The initial investigation last fall was just that- an initial investigation, the purpose of which is to establish whether or not there is activity at a certain location.  We got that established pretty quickly the first time around- within the first half hour.  Subsequent investigations delve into the whos, the whys, and the wheres; and those are the questions that have been driving me crazy.

So last night, we shipped the kids and the dogs off for the evening, went out to dinner, and then came home to get ready for the ghost hunters.  While the house has to be as empty as possible, I did invite one friend over during the investigation- just about the only friend I have that I knew for sure wouldn't get scared and freak out.  Don't get me wrong, she got scared- she just didn't freak out.

The Hubs and I getting ready for the ghost hunters to arrive.

My biggest misstep of the evening was my plan to livestream a video chat during the investigation.  I was able to get the video feed up and running, but there was no sound.  The harder I tried to fix it, the worse it got.  Video started going in and out, then cut out altogether.  Then the internet itself started acting up.  If I didn't know better, I'd say our ghost friends didn't want to be broadcast to the world.

It was just as well, though.  It was dark, we had to be quiet, and a lot of what happened wouldn't have translated well over webcam.  Unlike the first investigation, there was no radio station crew this time.  Unlike the first investigation, where we had three teams of investigators, there was only one, Marter Paranormal.  There were six people- three who were here for the first investigation, and three whom I'd never met.  They arrived around 8 pm and started bringing in cases full of equipment.

One of the new investigators, as it turns out, is also an ordained priest.  So before the investigation started, he performed a sort of ritual just outside the back door.  He lit a candle to be "the light," a symbol of the Lord that is meant to attract spirits.  He poured a glass of rum and lit a cigar as gifts for the spirits from their "former lives," almost as a reward for cooperating during the investigation.  He left a glass of water out for the spirits to quench their thirst.  (I guess I never realized spirits got thirsty.)  And he left a strange looking tiki/voodoo head statue, for what reason I honestly don't know.  The items sat outside for the duration of the investigation.

A strange ritual....

Cameras and static detectors and motion detectors and all sorts of Ghostbusters-looking devices were placed methodically around the house.  And then the investigation began.  Joe, the investigator that picked up the voice of the little boy in the chicken coop during the first investigation, was anxious to get back outside.  Three investigators started in the master bedroom, where several EVPs were recorded last time.  The other two started upstairs.  Because we weren't broadcasting live over the radio or the internet, The Hubs, my friend and I decided to get a little liquored up to calm our nerves.  It definitely added a fun element to an already crazy evening.

The lights are off, the drinks are poured, and the investigation is underway.  This is a shot of the master bedroom with the door closed while investigators were inside.

Unlike the first investigation, during which we had the opportunity to listen to EVPs and review evidence on the spot, the investigators were pretty tight lipped about what they found.  It's the company's policy to review all evidence before reporting any of their findings, which usually takes about three weeks.  But we were able to catch little bits and pieces of what was going on here and there.

One investigator claimed to have had an entire conversation with a little boy in the master bedroom, who he called Bobby (not sure if it was because of the story I told them about Bobby, or if the spirit somehow confirmed for the investigators that that was his name.)  Joe was able to obtain several "pieces of evidence" in the chicken coop again.  And it sounded as though a team of investigators caught something on video in the master bedroom while talking to "Bobby," although I have no clue what.

One of the pieces of equipment the investigators brought this time that they didn't have last time was an EMF detector along with a short wave radio, the idea being that if they were able to pick up a freestanding EMF, or electro magnetic field, (essentially a spirit in physical form), they could use the short wave radio to pick up its frequency, and the spirit could communicate with them through that. One of the investigators was using the equipment upstairs, and we were able to hear him talking to "something" and that something talking back.  It was reaaallly creepy.  We later found out that after investigating upstairs for a short while, he detected a freestanding EMF and began talking to it.  When he asked it where it had been hiding all night, it said "bathroom."

Pictures were taken, notes were written down, data was collected.  We drank our margaritas and beer, sneaked around and listened outside of closed doors, and tried in vain to pick up any information we could from the conversations the investigators had amongst themselves.  It was a crazy, scary, fun night.  Unlike anything else.

We ain't 'fraid of no ghosts!

Probably the strangest thing that happened all night was when the entire team of investigators was upstairs.  I'm not sure what happened, but SOMETHING happened.  And the upstairs became the focus of the investigation, which was a bit unexpected because the upstairs turned up no evidence at all during the first investigation.  They turned the lights on, were videotaping, and one investigator started reading "Where The Wild Things Are" out loud.  Why?  Your guess is as good as mine.  But I can't wait to find out.

While most of the investigators were packing up and getting ready to leave, the ghost hunter/minister (who is also a Navy veteran and an avid biker) went downstairs to talk to the "grumpy old man" everyone had been referring to all night.  He came back up after a few minutes and announced that the old man isn't grumpy, he just wants me to clean up the basement.  (Which....not happening.  Even if our basement weren't haunted, it's still scary and gross and I never go down there.)

Before the investigators left, the minister blessed the house, blessed The Hubs and me, and then brought in the candle that had been sitting outside all night.  It's still burning, and will continue to burn for several days.  It is meant to be comforting to the spirits and to help protect our home.

The night following the first investigation was awful.  I didn't sleep and kept hearing noises and kept feeling like things were touching me.  I woke up the following morning violently ill, and was sick the whole day.  I was so worried about it happening again this time, I almost didn't sleep at home last night.

But I was too tired to leave.  So I drank a tall glass of water, took a couple ibuprofen and took one of my anti-anxiety pills (yes, they're prescribed....I don't self medicate) that has the added bonus of making me sleepy.  I left all the lights on, turned on the TV, and fell asleep on the couch.  (Our living room is part of the addition, not part of the original house.  So I've convinced myself that it's less haunted than the rest of the house.)

Until I fell asleep, I heard noises.  Lots of them.  But once I fell asleep, I slept HARD.  And I woke up with a headache, but that's it.  I suspect the headache was more because of the tequila than anything else.  I spent the majority of the day home alone.  I wasn't scared.  Nothing happened.  Okay....that's not entirely true.  Maybe the doorbell rang around 3:00 and maybe there was no one at the door when I went to check.  But that's it.

So now we wait.  For how long?  About three weeks, according to the investigators.  Sit tight, all.  I know I will.

Bobby

If you've ever been to my house, I don't have to tell you what the creepiest room is.  Aside from the basement (which we essentially pretend doesn't exist), the room that freaks people out the most is our downstairs bathroom.  Why?  Who knows.  

Last weekend, we had some friends over.  One of my especially-afraid-of-ghosts friends took her two year old daughter into the bathroom to go potty.  They came running out a few seconds later.  Apparently, my sweet little toddler pal started talking to someone named "Bobby" while she was  in there, causing her mom to have a panic attack.

A few hours later, her teeny tiny bladder was full again.  She had to go potty.  Again.  So, with reluctance, her mom took her into the bathroom.  Again.  After about ten seconds, she was yelling my name.  I ran into the bathroom to find her wide eyed and shaking.

"She started talking about Bobby again and I can't handle it," she told me.  "So you have to stay in here with us."  I looked at my little princess seated on her porcelain throne.  She was smiling.

"Is Bobby in here?"  I asked her.  She smiled and nodded.  "Where?"  She pointed to the bathtub.  My friend started backing out of the bathroom slowly, torn between her fear of ghosts and her motherly instinct to protect her daughter.  I walked over to the shower and opened the curtain.  Nothing.  But she seemed to see something.  "Do you see him?" I asked.  She nodded again.  "In here?"  

She smiled, hopping down off the toilet, then waddled her naked baby booty to where I was.  She looked into the bathtub, then made the cutest little gasping noise as she appeared to watch something rise up slowly out of the bathtub, to the ceiling, then hover above the sink.

"Is Bobby up there?" I asked.  

"Yeah," she whispered.  With that, her mom grabbed her and fled, using the kitchen to clean her up and wash her hands.  Huh.  Bobby.  That's a new one.

A couple of things you should know- my friend's two year old has no clue that people think my house, the bathroom, especially, is haunted.  Also, my landlord's name is Bob.  And he lived in the house back in the 90's.  He's still alive, obvi.....but what if there was once a Bob Jr., or, Bobby????  Things that make ya go...

HHHMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.............

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…..