Not our home!

When I turned 14 my parents, moved for the 2nd time in 2 years to another century old home. This one was a little different from the first old home as it’s builder was buried next to the driveway. Conveniently no one mentioned this to me.

The expansive white two story home sat on the slope of a hill with a leveled front yard encased in a white picket fence. Surrounding the front porch was a thick grove of trees that’s branches intertwined creating a canopy when it rained. I found out later in the summer nights that they were home to tree frogs and katydids so loud you couldn’t have a conversation outside. The porch overlooked layers of rolling hills that turned purple and blue in the distance.

We kept my dappled gray mare and a few head of cattle in our fenced pasture across the dirt road. At the edge of the back fence our property dropped off sharply into a small stream where the deer drank, the wolves ran and coyotes yelped at night. We lived in BFE. (Bum Fuck Egypt), nowhere, 25 miles from town and 5 miles down a dirt road, deep in the woods with our nearest neighbor 1/2 mile away.

Being that I couldn’t just ride my 10 speed on a dirt road, I hiked the woods exploring hidden openings in the trees and riding my horse which is how I found his grave. We’d just moved in that summer and the trees were still thick with leaves but when fall hit and the leaves collected on the ground you could see from the driveway something grayish white peeking out from the sloped hill.

I trounced up the gravel drive and into the woods, scaling 30 feet up a hill to the above ground tomb. I was freaked out. I knew the previous owners name, Emy, and we called our home Emy’s Place. She was very old women when she moved out and when I questioned my parents I found out this was her Father. When my brother came home from college I showed him. After that I stayed away from the cold stones but the sight of it loomed in the distance from my bedroom window.

My room was on the second floor and being raised all my life in older 2 story homes, I knew how they shifted and creaked but I wasn’t prepared for my nightly visitor.

It began with me hearing footsteps on the lower stairs, and then the door opening that lead to the attic. They were heavy booted and sounded like my Dad. Let me explain briefly. There were about 6 stairs leading to a heavy door, then after you opened that door you were suddenly on a very steep stairwell leading into the attic. The attic had been floored in on the left and to the right was my bedroom door. If you opened my door and stepped in, a few more feet to the left was another door leading to a second adjoining room.

Then it progressed to hearing my bedroom’s old iron doorknob turn and footsteps walk to the end of my bed. I held my breath and I could hear it breathing. It just stood there breathing, not speaking, not moving and this happened almost every night. At the same time I had other occurrences happening which I won’t get into here but suffice it to say I became an insomniac. I’d stay up late watching a little black n white tv that used to be my grandmother’s until the end of programming when it went to white noise, how it looks like when you can’t receive a satellite channel.

I’d crawl into my bed exhausted and try to sleep but eventually I’d hear the tale tell door knob twist, the ascending footsteps with the creak of each stair and the breathing at the end of my bed.

At some point my brother entered the service and moved across seas, met a girl and was living near a graveyard. They had sent me photos of their ghost and so I explained how I was having problems with a haunting. They eventually got married and she became pregnant. So, she moved back to the states and into the adjoining room. Yes, she knew the story but she wasn’t afraid, in fact she wanted to experience it.

The first night she stayed, I heard the footsteps and breathing as usual. She heard nothing. The second night was a repeat of the first. The third night is where things changed. In all the years of living there the footsteps only ever stopped at the end of my bed. The third night of my sister n laws stay the stairs creaked with the heavy footfalls. My door opened. The steps stopped at the end of my bed, and the breathing was loud and raspy as usual, then the footsteps moved toward her door and opened it! I could only hear from my bed what sounded like the footsteps enter her room and close the door.

I don’t remember hearing anything else. I finally went to sleep and the next morning I could hear her and my Mom downstairs making breakfast and talking in the kitchen. As I descended the stairs leading into the dining room she met me at the landing and said, “I heard it last night! I heard it come into my room!!!” I didn’t even have a chance to tell her that I heard her door.

That was proof enough for my a Mom who started praying and anointing all the rooms, doorways and windows. Although after she did her part in cleansing the house, the footsteps stopped I had other visitors that I’ll tell you another time. But, I no longer had to wonder if all of it was in my head, and if I’d have put two and two together I’d have figured out that it was a haunting from the old man who built the house who’s grave loomed in my window.