Probably the best ghost story ever told...

This is my favorite story from my dad's house, as told in the third person from my mom's personal account...

It was 1998, or somewhere around then, and my mom was home from work while everyone else in the house was at school or work. She had the flu, and spent the day resting in the master bedroom and reading, which was on the third floor of the house.

Sometime in the afternoon, while she was reading her book, she heard the door that connects the garage to the house open and shut. "Its my husband home on his lunch break, he's going to want to have lunch and I feel awful so I will just pretend I'm asleep" she thought. So she put her book aside, and quickly and quietly laid under the covers, shut her eyes, and pretended she was asleep. She heard her husband walk up the stairs and into the bedroom, and she said she could feel him standing there at the end of the bed watching her. He was there for awhile, and then she heard him walk out of the room and back downstairs. "Heh heh heh," she thought, "He fell for it. Now I won't have to eat lunch and he won't feel bad for waking me."

A short while later, the phone rang. "Ah, my husband will get it since he is home." The phone rang again. And again. Before the phone would ring again and get picked up by the answering machine, my mom rolled over and picked up the phone that was beside the bed.

"Hello?" Said mom.
"Hey honey. How are you feeling?" answered the voice on the phone.
(silence)
"Honey? Are you there?" said the voice.
"Who IS this??" said my mom shakily.
"Its your husband, of course! Don't you recognize my voice??"
(pause)
"Wait, where ARE you?" asked my mom.
"At work, honey. I'm on my lunch break so I thought I'd give you a call and see how you were doing." answered my dad.
(pause again)
"Wait... if you are there... THEN WHO WAS JUST HERE?!"

My dad to this day swears he was at work the whole day when this happened, and never came home for lunch, which was a 20 minute drive both ways from work. Needless to say, the incident freaked my mom out a bit, but she said that whoever it was that "visited" had a nice friendly presence, and perhaps was just curious who was home at that time of the day. Nonetheless, once she retired and was home during the day, if she heard doors open or footsteps in the house, she would always pretend she was asleep.

My first "ghostly encounter"

As a young child, growing up in our Victorian-style house in a small town in Nebraska, I never thought twice about ghosts. They were there, I saw them, but I never thought twice about it. I vividly remember a ghost dog coming and visiting my room when I was young, and my mother told me as a teenager that she thought my "imaginary friend" I had was more than just my imagination. But, I never thought it was a big deal. They were there, I was there, they didn't scare me. On a side note, I *was* scared of vampires!

When we moved to Ohio (in the house before my dad's freakin haunted house) the ghost thing went away for a few years. Perhaps it is normal with children that grow up, that as we grow older we become desensitized to such things. Of course, I still didn't like graveyards. But, I don't have any strong recollection of anything paranormal happening between when I was six to when I was ten. Then we moved to dad's house.

Perhaps I had other "ghostly encounters" before this, but looking back I specifically remember this as the first, and perhaps the only poltergeist account I've ever had in dad's house. It was either a year or two after we had moved in, and I was either in 6th or 7th grade. My friend Tiffany and I had full run of the house while my parents were away, and while we were in charge we had to check in with my autistic brother, Alex, every once in awhile. We were running upstairs, and all of a sudden my bedroom door started shaking violently right in front of us, as if someone was trying to get in or out of the room. I remember my friend Tiffany and I just standing there for a few seconds until it stopped, and of course we thought that maybe my brother was in my room, which he had a tendency to do from time to time. Strange thing was there was a hook and eye lock on the outside of the door, which helped prevent my brother from getting into my room when I wasn't in it. And it was still locked.

So we unlocked the door and sure enough, he wasn't in there. Confused we went looking for Alex, and he was asleep in his room. Weird. So we went back into my bedroom to see if maybe a cat or something was in there, even though the force behind the door seemed pretty strong. There was nothing. We even checked to see if the air conditioner or heater was on, or if there was a draft in the room. Nothing again. It was as if some strange force had shaken the door, almost right off of its hinges. As you can imagine, we freaked. We didn't go back into the room until my parents got home, and they couldn't figure out what it was either. Since then, nothing like that has happened.

Perhaps there still IS some random scientific explanation for it, but I don't know. I think it was some spirit's way of saying "I'm here even if you can't see me" or maybe it was even saying "silly girls, go check on your brother." Either way, it was freaky.

Until next time...