This story a part of the True Ghost Stories page on Obiwan's UFO-Free Paranormal Page. Please do not copy or distribute without permission from Obiwan and/or the original author!
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 12:16:15 +0000
From: ELIZABETH (erzabet@hotmail.com)
To: obiwan@netcom.com
Subject: Ghost Story submission
The following is a somewhat remarkable tale that my grandparents experienced. I've taken some creative liberty with the story only in the sense that, although I experienced none of this first-hand, I've written in the first-person. I am, however, reporting the events as my grandmother reported them to me, and whenever on the listening end I questioned her extensively: "Are you SURE?," or, "Couldn't it have been XYZ and you PERCEIVED ABC?" I'm a sucker for "true" ghost stories, and it helps when some care is taken in composing them.
I did submit this story to the crown.net Archive X site last week, but it's not certain that this site is still being maintained. Thanks to that site, however, I found yours.
So why does it feel so good to some of us to tell these tales? I'm no skeptic--I was raised to believe spirits were everywhere. My family was great for spinning spontaneous yarns, some based on factual accounts, others couched in Native American folklore (my grandma's side decends from the Chippewa). I myself have witnessed strange phenomena, and my first reaction is to try and find a logical explanation. This I do not to find comfort from fear, but to add strength to the occurance by ruling out all known scientific facts.
I'll post my own (though rather unremarkable) tales sometime soon (mostly for my own edification), but this one chilled me. I wish I could say that I saw something while visiting the house described below, but I cannot. Just simply felt those unseen eyes following me... Here 'tis.
My husband and I moved to Fresno, California, in 1990, purchasing a cozy three bedroom home in a quit and well-kept neighborhood. The house had been built in 1985, yet after only five years, we were the third family to have lived there. Rather than having to ask why this was so, our realtor (who was also a friend of ours) came clean with us. She was giving us one more look at the place when she paused in the livingroom.
"The couple who had this home built was young. This was their first house together. They had a pool table right here in the middle of the formal livingroom. By all accounts they were happy, and doing well in every way. But then they hadn't even been here for two years, and it was around Christmas, when the husband stood at the end of the pool table and fired a shotgun into his mouth. You can imagine... And he never even left a note to explain why."
Without thinking about it, my husband and I reached for one another's hands.
Our friend went on. "I'm telling you this simply because I want to give you a choice and I don't want you to hear the news from your neighbors. Some people are uneasy about... These matters."
I knew about the stigma attached to places where suicide has been committed, but hearing the story, I felt mostly a loss for this young couple, especially the wife. Here my husband and I stood, gray and content, looking back on many happy, successful years, and they would never have that together. I squeezed my husband's hand, not able to imagine what the pain would be like if I lost him. The story did not shy me away from this house, but drew me to it. I knew then that we would buy it and transform it into the warm and welcoming home for friends and family that it was originally meant to be.
So we settled in and started our new life, pleased with our decisions, and always, always blessed with the company of our friends, children, and grandchildren. As far as strange occurances go, every now and then some small item would turn up missing, only to reappear in some unlikely place. We blamed this on the move, on being forgetful, or on our smaller grandchildren.
Then one morning--we'd been in the house about two months--I got out of the shower, wrapped a towel around myself, and suddenly got the urge to play the piano which was in the formal livingroom. The doors locked, the blinds shut, I had no worries about being caught half naked. I sat on the bench and played for about five minutes. Once finished, I replaced the cover over the keys. It was absolutely quiet. Then, from the kitchen, loud and clear, I heard an unmistakable whistle, the type that construction crews are fabled to blast at passing young women. Embarrassed and somewhat shaken, I investigated. But I knew from the start I would find no one there.
I suppose that this event "broke the ice," so to speak, for from then on, on the few occassions I was alone in the house, I never felt alone. Often I'd hear a breath or a soft whisper in my ear, or have the sensation that someone was passing me in the hallway. My husband, and two of my grown daughters, had the feeling of always being watched, as did I.
The days before Thanksgiving found me cleaning from floor to ceiling preparing for a houseful of company. On the afternoon before the holiday, I cleaned the spare bathroom and asked my husband not to walk on the neatly vacuumed rug until after the guests arrived. A few minutes after I said this, I heard him call me from the hallway: "Hey, honey, look at this."
My husband stood at the bathroom, door, pointing inside as I approached. It took me a moment to see what had caught his attention. On the carpet in front of the toilet were the indentations of a man's footprints. They were slightly spread apart and facing toward the bowl. There were no other footprints in that bathroom, nor had the carpet been disturbed other than that. What's more, the toilet was on the far side on the bathroom, about fifteen feet from the door. Unless my husband could fly, or his feet had suddenly grown two sizes, I knew we had a ghost.
We decided to spend Christmas at a cabin in the Sierra foothills (in no way due to our "visitor"). Before leaving, we did a careful walk-through of our house, making sure all windows and doors were bolted and the burglar alarm was set. And off we were to enjoy the rest of our happy, if uneventful, holidays. We were gone for over a week, and despite the chilly air, the first thing I did when we returned was go through the house opening drapes and windows to get rid of the stuffiness. As I pulled open the drapes on the sliding door in the familyroom, the sun reflecting on the glass drew my eye to the mark of a hand print. It belonged to a man. I ran my finger across a small portion of it, and it smudged. It was on the inside of the glass.
Like a typically obsessive neat-freak, I had cleaned the house the day before we left (so that we could come home to perfect order!), including washing the glass in this door. Since our departure, my husband was the only man who'd been inside the house; furthermore, his hand was smaller than the print. Nobody had a key to our home, nothing had been disturbed during our absence. Had there been a break-in, the alarm would have sounded, and we would have been notified by our security company. There was no logical explanation, and I wanted there to be.
After seeing the hand print, the only thing I could imagine was the spirit of this young man staring sadly through the glass at the outside world, trapped inside this home where he had, without explanation or reason, taken his own life. The thought of this saddened me to the point where I called our priest to come and bless the house, and to commend this man's spirit to the world beyond.
The service was beautiful and brought a stronger feeling of peace to our home and to my heart. More than anything, though, I hoped our "locked-in" guest had found peace and freedom.
Perhaps he had. The week after our priest's visit, I awoke in the middle of the night for no particular reason--there was absolute quiet both in and outside of our bedroom. As I shifted to my other side, I caught a glimpse of the bedroom door, and saw standing in it the form of a man. My husband snored at my side, and at any rate, the pitch black silhouette did not match his shape. I knew what I was looking at was not made of flesh and blood. I could not believe my eyes, but I was not scared. I watched, unblinking. The figure faced me, unmoving. The name "David" drifted through my mind. I spent roughly the next thirty seconds trying to identify his features, but he lacked detail, seemed only to be a shadow. Finally, without noise, he faded into the darkness behind him. Somehow I sensed he was leaving forever, and for some reason felt compelled to say good-bye to us.
I appreciated him for that, since good-byes seemed to be difficult for him while he lived.
END
FROM: Elizabeth
Please reach me at the following e-mail address:
erzabet@hotmail.com