Ghost Stories

[ER]

Tis the season. True, false, made up on the spot, tell us one.


I cannot vouch with absolute certainty that this story is completely true, and I did post it here a long time ago, but it was told to me by a friend who is typically quite honest if a bit ADD around the edges.

She says that back in the early 1970s, her aunt, then a young wife and mother, supplemented the family’s income with freelance graphic design work. One of her clients was a funeral home in the east of our fair city, and she created some brochures for them and went to collect a check for her services. She took along her little boy, then three, and figured since there were no funerals in effect, it was okay to do so.

At first all was well. The funeral director was a friendly, avuncular man who went to get the check. He took several minutes and the little boy got restless and wanted to walk around, so his mom took him into the hall, which led toward a nicely-furnished room where funerals were held, empty at the time.

Immediately the little boy asked, “Who’re all those people?”

“People?” his mother asked him. “What people?”

“All those people standing there. They’re real old.”

This creeped the woman out big time, since as far as she could see she and her son were the sole occupants of the room. She picked the boy up and walked toward the office, and her son looked over her shoulder and craned his neck, exactly like he was looking at something.

“They’re talking to me,” he said.

She took him outside and it wasn’t until she was in the sunshine that her creepy feeling passed. The director found them in the parking lot and she felt too embarrassed to mention her son’s experience but wrote it all down when she got home. To this day she feels like he saw spirits inside a funeral home.

[316zombie]

the original part of my house was built in 1909, it includes the kitchen, the bathroom, the music room, our bedroom and the dining room. the original owners, an old couple, both died there within a couple of days of each other in 1919,a few days before the house caught fire.
   they had birds in cages in the dining room, and in what is our music room.  we , and our cats over the years, can hear the birds , i believe the cats see them too. and every morning at 4am, i hear the people talking, and smell potatoes and bacon frying in the kitchen, for about 10 minutes. it's muffled, but i can hear laughter, they obviously enjoyed life.
  sometimes i get up and go in the kitchen... i can't see them, but i can FEEL them occasionally. i feel a hand on mine pushing it away from the light switch, or pushing it away from the fridge door. i guess they don't like the electric stuff. nice folks though, i think. they let us live here.

[Paquita]

Oh I'm so glad you posted this!  My family has had a bunch of spooky/ghost stories whirling around being half-told and referenced at gatherings all my life, so I have tasked myself this fall season to try to get as many versions of the stories and document them for a mini family book that I hope to complete, print and give out for Christmas.  My family members aren't the best wordsmiths or the most forthcoming when asked for information, so I am finding this project a little daunting because I have to turn a couple of sentences and my recollections and eavesdroppings into chilling tales.   

Here is the start of one of them, maybe you can let me know what you think?  I plan to add some more paragraphs when I squeeze a couple other incidents from this project out of my uncle and cousin because I know they have them:


Lister House Restoration

From 1992 To 1996 Ken, John and anyone else that could help took on the project to clean out and fix up the old homestead on Lister Ave.  It had been uninhabited for a while and needed a big overhaul.  Old papers and mementos were tucked away if salvageable, but most of the interior of house had to be demolished and rebuilt.  Many that worked on the project will tell you that at times the house took on an otherworldly feeling.  Christopher has noted the whoosh of memories that overcame him as he walked into different rooms and the occasional aroma of perfume that he remembered from times long ago.

While working on the house, Ken recalls the numerous times someone would mention being hungry and Aunt Caroline, alive at the time and living about a mile away, would suddenly pop over with doughnuts, or they would be running low on supplies and she’d sneak in and hand them some money. They always seemed to know what you needed and when without anyone having to reach out to them - you could even mention a name, while talking, and then within minutes, that person would be there checking in, saying hello.  It got to the point that they starting joking that the elder family members were hiding out in the basement, ready and waiting for their cue to dash out.

It wasn’t just the living that were popping about the old Lister house.  John recalled one memorable day working at the house.  He was in the middle bedroom of the 2nd floor, painting the ceiling, Ken was on the 1st floor working.  John heard the bedroom door open and shut.  He looked over and saw Al come in and start checking things out.  There was nothing unusual about that, people often came in and out at all hours of the day and night to check the place out.  Then he remembered that Al couldn’t be there, as this was the first time they had been back to the house since his funeral.   John, a bit in shock at the thought looked back to get another look at who was in the room with him and Al was gone.  Of course he asked Ken if he had been upstairs, reaching for evidence that he could have been mistaken about who he saw.  Ken had been downstairs the whole time. Apparently, Al had just made a fleeting visit to a place that seemed to be a doorway to the Otherside.