Monday, October 30, 2006

As promised - in time for Halloween

Terrifying tales of the truly spooky



We hear lots of ghost stories this time of year. It's easy to dismiss them -- unless they happen to you.

This story is true. I know, because it happened to me.

Volume 1: The ghost in the kitchen


This happened a good 20 years ago, in a house on the beachside.

The house was only 10 or 15 years old at the time -- a younger, modern house where the paranormal would not be expected. There had been no deaths or weird things associated with the house, as far as I know.

A gentleman friend of mine (I hate the word "boyfriend" for anyone over the age of 21, and this reserved gentleman was older than me) lived in the house.

Something about that house made me feel uncomfortable, but I didn't know why. Maybe it was the dark red wall-to-wall carpeting against the stark-white plaster walls in the sparsely furnished house. Maybe it was the opaque light feeding in from the green-tinged glass-block windows in the living room.

It was a nice house, but there was something a little oppressive about it.


One evening I was there, with my friend. We were watching television, when I got up to make some tea. I walked out of the sunken living room, across the hall and into the open kitchen, from which the living room was visible, if I looked sideways. I busied myself with kettle, water, tea and tea cups.

As I prepared to pour the tea, I became aware of my friend walking up behind me. I got a glimpse of his white shirt reflecting in the kitchen window. He said nothing, but stood very close behind me. I could feel his breath on the back of my neck.

This silent "game" was totally unlike him.

I felt hemmed in by his lurking behind me, sighing his breath on my neck and standing so close, as he watched my tea-making over my shoulder. I whipped around to tell him to stop it.

Nobody was there.

I quickly looked into the living room, and he sat in the recliner, feet up, watching television -- as he had been when I left him to make the tea.

No living soul was in that house but the two of us, yet I am still, to this day, certain there was another presence within inches of me that night. What its intentions were, I can't say. Maybe it intended to be friendly - humorous - and a little flirty, the impression I had when I thought it was my friend.

Maybe it intended to spook me.


My friend had to travel sometimes because of his job, and he would ask me to pick up his mail and water the potted plants on the patio while he was gone. I could have stayed at the house and walked to the beach every day.

I would stay at the house sometimes while he was there, but something was just not right. I refused to be in that house alone after that, even for an hour.

Something there might have liked to have been alone with me, though.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Pat,

I have long noticed that I am always somewhat dubious when I hear stories like that. Of course when it happens to me, that is a different story. I remember a night when I was a teenager. My father was overseas (military) and only my mother, my brother, and I were in the house. Both my mother and I heard the footsteps walking across the living room. We finally got up the nerve to check the house and, of course found nothing.

Some months later my father received a short term assignment to a base a couple of hundred miles away and we went with him, while my girl friend (she was under 20) watched the house for us. It was broken into and she called the police. As they walked into the house one of the policemen commented that this was the house where a woman had been murdered in the living room.

When I was in the seminary there was a ghost story about a dead priest whose ghost would show up and ask some seminarian to serve mass for him. I often thought about that and what I would do. I finally decided that I would simple act as a server for him while he said mass. I would probably have died from the shakes afterward :-). Luckily, he never appeared during the year I was there.

Hugs,

Mike L

Saint Pat said...

Thanks for your story, Mike.

It's easier to be dismissve when it's not me, that's for sure.

This incident happened in my old PC (pre-Christian)days. Now, it wouldn't spook me as bad, and I would know what to do from my prayer minister training: starting reading Scripture to it, and tell it to go to Jesus(the light). I was on this way before Ghost Whisperer.
I know to bless the house, also --I have a stash of Holy water and blessed oil.

I guess that makes me a Charismatic liberal! Or a liberal Charismatic?

Saint Pat said...

P.S. --I don't do any house blessings, except periodically of my own house, alone.

This kind of stuff should be done in teams.

Anonymous said...

Pat,

Just noticed that you comment counter still says "zero" despite there being three comments for this post. Computers are just wonderful.

Yeah, Christian faith makes a lot of difference in these matters.

Hugs,
Mike L