Haunted (6 page)

On the exceptional nights when I had fallen asleep and Matt remained undisturbed, a smoke detector would inevitably go off somewhere in the house, jarring everyone awake. The smoke alarms were becoming a very serious problem for us. We had a total of nine detectors installed throughout the three-story house. Within a six-month period, the alarms sounded a total of nineteen times, always around 3:00 a.m. and for no apparent reason. Regardless of where they were located, or whether they were battery operated or wired into the electrical system of the house, all of them went off at one time or another. It bothered us that none of them ever shrilled during the day when everyone was up and wide awake. Nor did they ever go off while I was lying sleepless in bed late at night. The detectors only screeched when every person in the family was in a sound sleep.

After detecting the chill in Matt's room, which I had noticed only after construction had begun on the addition, I called a furnace repair man to fix the problem. We had replaced the furnace shortly after we had moved in. It heated the rest of the house very efficiently, and the persistent chill in Matt's room was a mystery to the repair man I called time after time. He could detect no mechanical failure, although he checked both the furnace and the radiator several times to ensure there was no blockage. Each time he was there he managed to get the radiator heated, but within hours of his departure, it would grow cold. I stacked blankets and quilts on Matt at night to keep him warm.

By the time the addition was completed and all the furniture was in place, both Matt and Kammie were on summer vacation from school. We celebrated Matt's birthday by holding a party for him in the new room. Then, the following morning, we packed up the car and headed north to our family's cottage on the coast for a much needed holiday. It was so peaceful for us there. Everyone slept soundly, with no interruptions at all.

On the day we returned home, I walked through the house and the new room and out the back door. I started down the stairs to the backyard but stopped on the first step and stared straight ahead at the tree growing next to the wooden fence between our property and Donelle's.

The previous year we had noticed a small walnut tree starting to grow in the grass near the property division, apparently after a squirrel had buried a nut there and forgot to retrieve it. It had been only a very small sapling when we first noticed it, and several times Ted had accidentally run over it with the lawn mower, cutting off its top. Because Donelle had told us that walnut trees emitted a poison to surrounding vegetation, Ted would occasionally mention that he was planning to get rid of it. Yet the tree had not seemed to pose a threat to our garden or the grass that grew in abundance around it.

By the time the new room was completed, the sapling had grown slightly higher than the six-foot fence. Its top had been severed where Ted had cut it with the lawn mower, and only a few scraggly limbs had branched out from its thin stem. I had videotaped the addition's progression, and the small tree was clearly visible on the tape.

Now, only weeks after those images had been captured, I stood looking at the same tree in disbelief. It towered over the whole corner of the property. It had become so large that it covered not only Donelle's kitchen window on the first floor but her bedroom window on the second. She would no longer be able to watch the children and Piper playing in our yard, which was one of her favorite pastimes.

When Donelle saw Ted unpacking the car upon our return from the cottage, she called over to him, and told him she wanted that tree pruned. He did not understand her request until I called everyone into the backyard. We all stared at the walnut tree in shocked silence. I watched Ted as he slowly shook his head in disbelief. How could the tree have grown so much in such a short period of time? It was beyond our comprehension.

SOS

S
oon
after our summer holiday, my sleep was disturbed one night by Kammie calling me to come to her room.

“Mommy!” she cried. “Come and see what my bonker lamp is doing!”

The children's grandfather had recently given them new bedroom lamps similar to one they loved to play with at his house when they visited. They were not switched on like an ordinary lamp but were turned on and off with the touch of a hand. Because Rosa made a “bonk” sound whenever she touched her lamp to turn up the light or turn it off, the children now referred to their gifts as “bonker” lamps. The first touch turned the light on, and the next two caused the light to grow increasingly bright. On the fourth touch, the light would turn off.

I gasped as I sleepily entered my daughter's room and saw the lamp on the small dresser beside her bed. All three of the children's new lamps were left on low at bed time as night-lights. Instead of glowing with its usual low light, the lamp in Kammie's room was quickly blinking from low to medium to high illumination, then turning off. At a slower speed it again began to go from low to medium to high, in a steady pattern.

Kammie thought it was hilarious and howled with laughter. “It's doing it all by itself!” she roared.

I called for Ted to come and see. He walked into the bedroom and stared at the blinking light.

“There must be a power surge,” he suggested.

“But the other two lights aren't blinking,” I replied, trying to sound calm.

The three of us continued to watch as an unseen hand seemed to tap the lamp over and over again, turning it on, then turning it brighter and brighter still, and then off, only to begin again. It went on for quite a long time. Ted suggested that it might be caused by lightning, but the sky was perfectly clear. The children had had their new lamps for a few months, and none of them had behaved like that, including Kammie's.

“Fast, fast, fast, slow, slow, slow, fast, fast, fast...” Kammie kept saying, as she called out the light pattern we were witnessing. The only way to stop the light was to finally unplug it.

The next day we plugged the lamp back in, and it functioned normally. It did so for the most part, but occasionally it would turn itself on and then grow brighter and brighter and then off, over and over again.

Kammie never tired of this entertainment and would call us into her room each time it happened. “Fast, fast, fast, slow, slow, slow, fast, fast, fast...” she would call out along with the pattern of the light. We tried switching lamps. When placed in any other bedroom, Kammie's lamp never malfunctioned, nor did any other lamp placed in her room. But when we switched them back at her request, within a day or two her lamp began to “bonk” out the now familiar pattern on its own.

Although Kammie found the lamp amusing, there was an occurrence in her room during that same period that she did not like. Throughout her childhood she had been collecting glass globe ornaments that appeared to contain falling “snow” after they were given a slight shaking. Several of the globes were musical. If the tab beneath them was cranked, they would play a melody.

The large collection of globes was kept on two very high shelves in her bedroom. Neither Kammie nor Matt could reach the ornaments. Even Ted could not reach them without standing on a chair. Yet, on several occasions that summer, two particular globes would simultaneously begin to play their melody. Certainly they had never done so before, although Kammie had owned those globes for years. One had a nativity scene and played “Away in a Manger.” The other contained a grouping of angels. Its song was “Lara's Theme.” Those melodies would play only in the middle of the night, waking Kammie. Then her calls to me would wake the rest of us.

The tinny sound of the musical globes in the stillness of the night was incredibly eerie. The music only played for a few moments if the globes were cranked by hand, but on those occasions when they turned on by themselves, it was almost impossible to get them to stop. I could understand why Kammie found that so unsettling; I too was frightened by it. At her request, I removed the entire collection out of her room and placed the globes in an unused cupboard downstairs. Once moved from her room, they remained silent.

We then displayed her china dolls on the shelves. These too eventually had be to moved into storage. Kammie, with Matt as her witness, insisted that the head and limbs of the beautiful doll dressed in pink had moved as if someone were playing with it. I hoped they had only imagined that. Still, the fear in Kammie's eyes was quite real, and I did remove all the dolls, because she was afraid to have them in her room.

Shortly before the end of the summer we took a weekend trip out of town. The night we returned, everyone settled into bed for a sound sleep. Ted and I were covered with only a light sheet, as it was a fairly warm night. I awoke after someone poked my right big toe through the bed covering. I lay still for a moment, groggy with sleep, before I felt it again. Ted was lying with his back towards me, so I knew it had not been him. I was not startled; I just assumed it was one of the children wanting me for something.

When I again felt my toe being poked, I sat up slightly to see which child was trying to get my attention. As I could see no one there, I sat up fully, and as I did so, I felt one last child-like poke against my toe. When I got up to check on the children, they were all fast asleep in their rooms. I lay awake for a long time after I returned to bed. Shortly after I had managed to doze off, the smoke detector in the hallway right outside our room began screeching, and I rested no more that night.

I was reluctant to mention the strange incidents to anyone outside our family because I knew how difficult they were to believe. Ted lived in the same house yet even he insisted that there had to be a logical explanation for everything that had happened. Other than during the incidents with her globes and doll, Kammie did not really seem to be bothered. I doubted if Rosa gave it very much thought at all, aside from those occasions when she had seen a girl waving to her from her bedroom window. And although I thought Matt had the most reason to fear being in the house, he seemed to love living there the most, at least during the day.

I was feeling so exhausted from lack of sleep though, that I could barely think straight. I did not know what to do or where I could turn for help. We had worked so hard to restore the house, and it looked beautiful, but I did not think I could stand to stay in it much longer. Yet the children became upset if I even suggested moving.

Finally, during a long-distance telephone conversation with a friend, I confessed everything that had been happening in our home. I had known Sylvia Norton for most of my life, and I felt comfortable confiding in her. She listened quietly while I listed all the events that had taken place. By the time I had finished telling her about the latest incident from the night before, when someone or something had poked my toe and then set off the smoke detector, I was close to tears.

The desperation in my voice convinced my friend that I was serious about those “ghostly” events. She responded by asking the obvious question of why we did not simply leave. I explained to her how attached to the house the children seemed to be and how Ted did not want to sell it either. His work kept him so busy that moving our household was the last thing he wanted to think about. Sylvia then asked if we had crosses hanging anywhere in the house. We did not. She suggested that I purchase some religious items and place them in the rooms that seemed to have the most unusual activity.

After our telephone conversation, I went shopping. I bought a cross to put on the wall in Matt's bedroom. Although our family did not attend church on a regular weekly basis, the children had been taught about God and Jesus from an early age bedtime prayers were a part of their bedtime routine. I knew that Matt would understand the significance of the cross, and I hoped having it there would make him feel safer in his room at night.

When he came into the kitchen after school that day, Matt gave me a big hug.

“Hi,” I said. “That's a nice greeting.”

“Thank you, Mom,” he said.

“For what?” I asked, not realizing he had already been to his room.

“Thank you for putting that cross up in my bedroom. I really like it,” he answered.

It surprised me that he had noticed it so quickly and that he was so grateful for it. I explained to him why I had put it there.

“Are you going to put one in Kammie's and Rosa's room too?” he asked.

When I showed him the framed prints I had purchased for the girls' rooms of a guardian angel helping two lost children across a bridge, Matt seemed relieved.

“Can you put them up now, Mommy?” he asked anxiously, and I agreed to do so.

The children seemed so happy with those items that we soon added similar artwork. Above Rosa's bed, we hung a painting of a blonde, curly haired guardian angel wearing a long pink dress. She liked it so much she insisted upon kissing it goodnight before going to sleep each evening. In Matt's room, we put up a picture of a little shepherd boy watching baby Jesus sleeping in the manger. Above Kammie's bed, we hung a picture of another blonde, curly haired guardian angel.

Following Sylvia's suggestion, I soon had the children's rooms adorned with religious items that I hoped would create a more peaceful atmosphere. I did not expect that all the strange occurrences would stop because of a few items, but I hoped they would be helpful in some way. But, to my relief, everything seemed to settle down completely. No one saw anyone or anything that frightened them, no smoke detector blared its alarm in the middle of the night, and the footsteps on the stairs seemed to disappear altogether. Our house became an ordinary home and everyone, including me, began sleeping through the nights undisturbed.

I called Sylvia back to tell her of this development and to thank her for her suggestion.

“I've been thinking about everything you told me, and I was going to give you a call tonight,” she said. “Does that lamp still blink out that pattern?”