Bump in the Night
October 25th, 2007Given that Halloween is upon us, I thought I would take a break from the black dog and scare you with a little something besides depression in today’s post. It is true. Everything happened just as described . . . believe it or not.
The Pink House
The color is what I remember. It was pink. Not salmon, corral, dusty rose or mauve, just a faded pink house with a few dark runny splotches on it. Some kids from the neighborhood had shown their displeasure by cracking a few eggs against it. I really couldn’t blame them. I have yet to see a pink house that a couple of eggs wouldn’t improve. Apologies to John Cougar Mellancamp.
My folks bought this bi-level in 1970 when we moved from Austin Texas to Topeka Kansas. It was about 15 years old then. Despite all of their remodeling you could still find here and there a drawer-pull or a light fixture that had that 1950’s Bauhaus faith-in-technology optimism look about it. I use to think the 50’s was an ugly decade but I’ve changed my mind thanks to the 70’s.
It may not have had the history or charm of a Victorian but it had a lot of warmth and good memories none-the-less. Maybe it’s because we lived there longer than anywhere else. My father was a career Army officer, so we rarely stayed anywhere longer than 3 years. Often dad was out of the country for a year or more at a time. As a result we used to say, “I’m going over to mom’s house,” even though it was dad’s too. I don’t know who had it harder; dad fighting through 3 wars or mom who lived through 3 wars and 4 kids.
There were a few not so good memories as well. Things that most families go through. Adolescence . . . that time most people just want to forget, some family deaths and illnesses, but nothing directly related to the house. No one ever died it it, naturally or otherwise. There were only the usual stresses and strains of living. Maybe that was enough.
During my first years in college I stayed in a room that my dad built in the basement. It was a good bedroom, cool and dark, making sleep pretty wonderful . . . except on a few occasions.
Somewhere between a deep REM sleep and a rapid heartbeat wakefulness something happened. In the dark of early morning I was awakened by the feeling that something was in my room. As far as what it looked like, it was indistinct. There was just an overwhelming sense of something very big and very dark, blacker than black in my basement room that night.
Fear came with it, in abundance. The ‘fight or flight’ reflex kicked in big time. The trouble was I could do neither. This darkness moved silently towards me from the foot of the bed, sliding over and falling upon me in such a way that I was trapped under the covers, unable to move, hardly able to breath. It’s weight was pressing down and smothering me. Awake and completely paralyzed in a claustrophobic panic I couldn’t do anything but feel the terror grow & grow.
I’ve heard stories of people involved in traumatic events like a violent crime where it seemed to go on forever but in reality it only lasted seconds. I don’t know how long it lasted but it was long enough to give me the message that ‘it’ was here and in charge. Moments passed and ‘it’ was gone as though it had never been there.
I didn’t tell anyone about this. Dreams can play funny games and after all it is better to think it was a dream. I remember being disappointed when I was little because I could find no toys under my bed after I’d dreamed about them, they seemed so real. I wanted to be disappointed by this ‘dream’.
A few months later mom & dad had gone out of town so I decided to sleep in mom’s bed to be near the phone. I’d stayed up late watching movies in the den we had in the basement. All the lights were turned out except for a small lamp by the chair I was in. Our dog Schatzie was with me but sound asleep on the couch. Around 11:30 Schatzie woke up, got off the couch and walked over to the bottom of the stairs. The hackles on her back stood up as she peered into the darkness at the top of the stairs and growled menacingly.
That scared the hell out of me but I managed to muster the courage to turn on all the lights in the house as I searched in vain for whatever it was she was growling at. After a while I finished watching my movie and went to bed.
Once again early in the morning I was awakened only this time it was kids talking, yelling and just playing it up having a good time. My irritation at being awakened from a sound sleep turned cold when I looked out the window and realized there was no one there. So intense and long lasting were the feelings impressed upon me that I really couldn’t be sure it was a dream. My worry crawled back to sleep with me.
‘You know how you shake the sheets when you make the bed?” asked mom as she poured some cream into her coffee one breakfast. “No, you probably don’t!” she added sarcastically, “But you know what I mean.”
Muscles in my scalp contracted and my neck tingled as she proceeded to reveal to me the most recent haunting experience in her bedroom.
Mom has always been a light sleeper ever since her surgery years ago after a spot was discovered on an x-ray of her lungs. Because of her restlessness dad slept in an adjoining bedroom. So one night she was laying in bed asleep, or trying to sleep, when her breath was taken by someone or something grabbing one end of the bedsheets and shaking them.
Other things have bumped her in the night since then. Over the years she has been awakened by her sheets being pulled on or flipped, someone sitting on the bed beside her and sometimes by a voice softly saying disquieting things. I suggested maybe it would be nice to have a priest bless the house. Mom’s response was, “It never hurt me so why bother?”
I told her that it may not have tried to dismember her, but anything that gave her a weight-lifter’s blood pressure and the pulse of a sprinter while she was trying to sleep wasn’t exactly looking out for her welfare.
I didn’t tell her of my experiences until a few years later. I had been invited to dinner and during the course of the meal my dad said, “Have your mom tell you what happened in her room last night.”
Shadowy thoughts of “These are only dreams” melted like salt strewn ice as mom told me of a large black form virtually smothering her as it held her down under the covers.
October 26th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
When I was younger, probably 7 or 8, my parents built a house on some acreage. From the very beginning we all had strange encounters both during the day and at night. While it was being built and years after it was finished. Sometimes we were alone in the house and other times things would happen while a few of use were together. We had a dog that also had a very similar reaction to a few of the events and once wouldn’t go within 5 feet of the storageroom (our version of a basement or attack) during a particularly unnerving event, and this was not shrinking violet of a dog either, and he had been in and out of that storage room on more than one occasion before and after.
When I was young I was frightened by the house, when I was a teenager I always felt as though I was being watched but when I had to move back in after my first marriage fell apart the house seemed to comfort me.
I miss the house now that it has been torn down and townhouses cover the fields where I played and grew up.
A part of me wonders though what goes on in the townhouses that cover the area of the house I grew up in.
October 26th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
I’m curious Laura, what kind of things happened?
October 28th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
One example I will tell you about is when the house was first being built. We lived in a temporary trailer but my youngest brother and I played around the building site all the time. Once the second floor was put in and the roof was on and the windows put in, but before the finish work was completed in the house, my brother and I were playing in the yard and happened to look up to one of the upstairs windows. My brother said, ” hey mom is in the house and upstairs looking out the window at us.”, I looked up and sure enough there was someone (not my mother) looking at us through the window. I knew this was not my mother because she was away at the store and my brother and I were alone and the doors to the house were lock both front and back to keep the two of us from getting ourselves into trouble playing in there. The thing in the window looked a lot like a woman with dark hair but you really could not make out clear features to be able to tell precisely who or what it was. When my mother did get home we told her about the person at the window and she freaked out and called my dad to come home and check out the inside of the house to see if anyone had somehow broken in. My dad found no one in the house at all, the only thing he found were some dirty feet prints by the particular window in which we has seen this person. He did not however find any feet print leading up to the window.
October 28th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
I had chills reading that, what a classic haunting story.
I worked with a woman named Susan who told me of a time when she was a girl living at home. Her grandmother had been living with them a short time but died. The family moved shortly after that.
A few weeks later they ran into a friend who told them she had been looking for her but since she didn’t know they had moved she’d gone to their old house to visit. An old woman in a flowered dress came to the door but didn’t say anything. When the friend asked if Susan was home, the old woman only shook her head and shut the door.
Susan showed her a photo of her grandmother and her friend confirmed it was her.
October 28th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
These stories remnd me of my own ghost story.
when I was a kid we lived in a split level ranch out in the ‘burbs. it was new construction when we moved in so no prior tenets. but there was something about the place that always felt odd.
my dad being a good ’70’s suburban dad finished the basement and made it into a rec room. one weekend as I was coming up the stairs I felt a fist hit me in the face. it knocked me back. I saw stars and everything. after I blinked the stars away I ran up the stairs and out the front door.
years later, after we moved, my Mom told me she never felt comfortable in that house. my brothers think I’m nuts when I tried to talk to the about the old house. but I always think about that place this time of year.
October 28th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
Thanks for your story John. Did anyone else in your family have something happen to them?
October 28th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Here is one more for you. This event happened to my Mother and oldest Sister.
They were home alone in the middle of the day, my sister was probably around 16 or 17 and my mom about my age now. They happened to be watching television and doing laundry, when they heard something upstairs run from one end of the house to the other. Now this happened to run from the bedroom on one end to the storageroom on the other end of the house. Needless to say my mom and sisters jumped up and ran outside, probably hitting the door at approximately the same time and both trying to see who could get through first and leave the last through for the boogeyman upstairs. Since no one else was home at the time and my mother refused to allow animals to live in the house they didn’t know what to do. And that being the age of no cell phones, the only phone was inside the house to call the police. What they came up with was to take our dog Levi, who was one of the bravest dogs I have ever know and no slouch when it came time to give a tresspasser a good bite or two, into the house so they could get to the phone. Well this particular time the dog was not particularly thrilled to come into the house and his hackles went up immediately, but he came in none the less. My mom decided that instead of calling the police she would have the dog check out the house first. They walked the dog to the stairs and started up and practically had to pull him up the stairs since he was growling and showing his teeth but not wanting to progress further up the stairs. When they finally got him to the second floor they walked him towards the storageroom. My mom and sister said he growled and whined and barked and spun around a couple of times going through the room that lead to the door to the storageroom, but once they got him to the storageroom door he refused to go any further. He started barking and growling and backing up but as he retreated he would not take his eyes off the storageroom door. When my mom and sister finally turned to leave with Levi he was ever so happy to accomodate them and was the first down the stairs and back out the door. My mom and sister wouldn’t go back into the house or let my brother, myself or brother sister in the house until my dad got home and checked the entire house with a loaded gun. There was nothing in the house or the storageroom.
I have to tell you a little about Levi the dog. This dog was one tough dog and we had to have signs posted all up and down the driveway to the house to not get out of your car under any circumstances. There was a huge sign that said “BAD DOG BLOW HORN AND DO NOT GET OUT OF YOUR CAR UNLESS SOMEONE COMES OUT TO GREAT YOU, IF NO ONE COMES OUT COME BACK LATER OR CALL TO MAKE AN APPOINTMENT.” Theses were of course the days before lawsuits were all the rage and Levi had a bite record recorded with the local Police Dept of 28 bites, mostly because some people (0kay stupid men), though the sign was a joke, the joke however was on Levi’s side you see because Levi never barked at anyone that came onto the property, he didn’t bark when you got out of the car and didn’t bark to let you know you had just screwed up big time. Levi just looked like a coonhound mutt cross that was too lazy to get up out of the shade to bother with you. But by the time you had closed the door to your car and started walking to the house Levi had you by the seat of your pants or the calf of your leg. We came home many, many time to find guys sitting on the hood of their cars or delivery trucks waiting to be rescued. Levi was a good dog, he was a true watch dog and to this day I have never come across another dog like him, he was truely one in a lifetime kind of dog.
October 28th, 2007 at 8:13 pm
Here’s one more from the pink house.
My sister and I had stayed up late watching movies and talking when we heard something big fall over in the garage. I was working as a dispatcher for the police department and had bought a pistol, so I quickly grabbed it and we headed upstairs to see what was going on.
We made our way to the dining room which had a door that led to the garage. I left the lights turned off so as not to alert whoever or whatever it was in the garage.
With my gun in my right hand I reached out with my left and slowly turned the doorknob. My sister was hiding behind me and my plan was to jerk the door open and turn the light on as fast as I could.
I jerked the doorknob hard and the door opened a few inches before something pulled from the other side and it slammed shut. It took a second or two before I realized the security chain was latched and that’s what caused the door to slam.
I unlatched the door, turned the light on and found a rather large possum calmly walking away. . .
October 29th, 2007 at 7:20 am
That made me laugh, which is hard to do sometimes. Thanks.