Ghost posties

This creepy tale comes to you courtesy of the combination of threats from The Bully Currently Known as Jessica Rabbit. If anyone would like to take pity on me as a result of these threats of harassment from the Internet as a Whole, as well as the threat of blackmail for things we just won't talk about here (let's call it the Great Poodle Fiasco and be done with the subject), you are welcome to send gifts and cash donations. Nude photos are also mostly welcome, though I do reserve the right to scream and delete. Ghosts I can handle...ugly naked people, not so much.

I've mentioned here before that I grew up in a house that was most assuredly haunted. It wasn't a slamming-doors-and-glowing-spectres kind of haunting, though. For the most part, it was unexplainable sensations and feelings, and noises that shouldn't have been there.

The first floor was pretty much fine, except for maybe the music room, which never quite felt right, you know? Oh, I guess I should mention, we named the rooms in the house. On the first floor, we had, of course, the kitchen, living room, dining room, and bathroom. But then we also had the TV room (which didn't have a TV in it for long, but the name stuck) and the music room (this is where we all went to close ourselves in and practice our orchestra instrument of the moment, or, in Timmy's case, to tape himself playing viola, then play the tape over and over to fool Mom while he dinked around and played Strat-O-Matic Baseball in there).

The basement was a whole different story. The main room was somewhat alright, but then you had the Lab (I think one of my brothers had a chemistry set in there, and the name just stayed) and the toy storeroom (because we, um, stored toys in there), which both gave me an inexplicable sense of dread if I had to be in there alone. Of course, there was a practical reason for this in the toy storeroom, seein' as how it was possible (and fairly easy) to be locked inside that room. The family room downstairs was only borderline creepy, but the little storage room in the back of the family room was a different story. Of all the rooms in the basement, the Mushroom was the spookiest. My family is full of strange people. When we moved to Michigan, our cat Josephine ("Potato Chip Joe") was so freaked out that she hid in that room for a week. My dad warned that if she stayed in there too long, she would turn into a mushroom. Thus, the room got its forever name.

I'm pretty sure that the noises I heard would come from the Mushroom. It was never any loud, banging, rattling, wailing noises. No, none o' that cliche ghost bullshit for our house. On rare occasions when the house was quiet, you could hear the sound of a conversation coming up through the registers. It was never quite loud enough to understand the voices, but it was definitely voices. I'd always ask Mom about it, and she'd always blow it off and say "Oh, that's the TV" (um, no, the one TV in the house, which is not even in the basement, is off right now) or "That's the neighbors talking" (okay, then why don't I hear those conversations even better when I go out in the driveway right next to the neighbor's house?) And believe me when I say that I really, truly wanted to believe her explanations. It would have been much less unsettling for my little psyche. For years, if I was forced to go into the basement alone for something, I'd go and grab said item, usually with my eyes shut, and then race up the stairs as fast as my chubby little legs would take me.

Before you accuse me of just bein' basement phobic, I can assure you that I was alone in the basements of friends, and never felt the same kind of "presence" that I felt in my own basement. Take that for what it's worth.

As unsettling as the basement was, though, it did not hold a bony-fingered candle to Tardist's bedroom on the second floor. That room has earned itself the distinction of being known alternately as the Ghost Room and the Spooky Room.

Granted, Mom and Dad's room was no piece of cake, either. They had a little hallway inside their bedroom door, and there were storage closets built in across one wall of the room, with squatty little doors because the ceiling sloped down there. I used to always have nightmares that something would come out of those little doors and visit some havoc on the family. Mom could've hidden Christmas presents in there quite safely, as this nosy little shit wouldn't have dared to peek in behind those little wooden doors, not even for money.

But Tardist's room took the creep cake.

It was across the hall from all the other bedrooms, and was probably meant more for storage and attic access than for bedroom duty. The walls were never finished, and I don't know the exact term for the material, but they were almost like tough cardboard walls (anybody know what that's called, or even know what I mean?), and they were this pukey greyish-purple color. As you came into the room, immediately on the right was a little alcove with the attic door above it. And no, in all the years I lived there, I never even seriously considered exploring the attic. Are you nuts? I'll bet none of us ever did (though Squirl or Tardist might be able to set me straight on that). And, because the room wasn't nearly forbidding enough, Tardist painted the window to resemble stained glass. I have it on the best of authority that ghosts are just wild about stained glass. Across from the window is a storage cabinet that sits about chest high on the wall. For some reason, we kept a Ouija board in there (which I was always too freaked out to touch). Why, oh, why would we keep a Ouija board in a haunted room?

The scariest spot in that room for me, though, was the part of the room that was back around the corner from the window. When the ghosts weren't gathering in the attic, or playin' Ouija in the cabinet, I was positive they were congregating back in the corner part of the room, back where Mom and Dad could never see us in time to save us from...I don't know, certain doom? The whole doom and dread thing was always very general, more than vague, but never specific about what horrors would actually befall us at the hands of the haunts. They weren't overtly malevolent, but neither were they friendly. Thinkin' back on it, it's more like they were annoyed with us for bein' in their house. And when a family with five kids, multiple cats, and an obnoxious beagle moves in, who the fuck could blame a spook for bein' a little testy?

The only true incident that I can point to happened to Tardist, as he slept in the room longer than any of us did. He will have to fill in any details I miss. Sorry, Tardist, this should've been your blog story, but you just weren't fast enough to save me from the Wrath of Jess.

Tardist related to me, years after the fact, that even though he often felt unexplained presences in the room, as we all did, there was one time that the presence took a more active role in the haunting. One night, Tardist awoke with a start in the middle of the night and had the distinct sensation he was being watched from close up, and not by particularly friendly eyes. He looked, and didn't see anything, so he immediately tried to get up and go downstairs to shake off the feeling.

He couldn't get up. He told me it was exactly like someone was pushing down on his chest to prevent his leaving the bed. He felt watched, and he felt physically trapped while the watchin' was goin' on. He just stayed still for a long time, eyes closed and heart goin' a million miles a minute, and finally the feeling passed.

Correction from Tardist: I don't mind that you told the story of my room, but I do have one detail to change. When I tried to get out of bed that night and couldn't, feeling just like I was being held down, I freaked so bad that the moment didn't pass - I passed out and didn't wake up 'til the next morning. And I still have dreams (always eerie) about that room.


And yet he continued to sleep in that room! What the fuck?

The house became Timmy's house in the '80s, and I used to stay in the Spooky Room when I came to visit. Yes, it was still creepy as fuck, but I kept my bed right by the door, and frankly, I was usually so drunk I would pass out before the night spooks could start to freak me out. Plus, I don't believe Tardist related the trapped-in-bed story to me until later than that. Timmy won't even let his kids stay in there now.

I still have nightmares about that room. I probably always will. In fact, I'm crappin' my pants ever so slightly just thinkin' about it in detail like this.

So there you have it. Certainly not the most interesting or vivid ghost stories you've ever heard in your life, but hopefully this will be enough to get me off the hook with the Internet as a Whole.

Jess, call off the dogs, fer chrissakes!

Note: There is still nothin' in this world that's scarier than the sight of me, with a jumbo box of Tampax Supers in one hand and a bottle of Advil and a pack of back heatwraps in the other hand, chargin' down the aisle of the drugstore like I'm fixin' to come hurt you with 'em. Just ask the poor cashier boy at Walgreens.