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!
Subject: The Persistent Clock
From: jcrens@magicnet.net (Jack Crenshaw)
Date: 1996/05/22
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
Awhile back, I wrote about the two haunted houses I've lived in; one my parent's place in Alabama, and the other the _VERY_ haunted (and scary) house in Virginia. Here's a rather cute story that ties them together. It is absolutely true, up to and including the all-but-unbelievable ending.
While we were in the Virginia house, we took possession of some odds & ends of furniture that my mother's aunt had left to her. I had a good time sorting through the stuff, and found what to me, as a 12-year-old kid, were treasures. One was an old morse code practice key, the other was a wind-up mantel clock. I tinkered with the code key and kept it for many years, but this tale involves the clock.
The clock was a rather nice one, that chimed the hours. Being mechanically inclined, I resolved to fix it up and get it working. I took it completely apart, figured out what all the parts were for, cleaned it up and oiled it, and got it going again. I was pretty proud of my work. I had intended to keep the clock in my room (though I never actually finished out a whole night in it , but the clock ticked too loudly, so it ended up staying in the living room.
After a few nights, my sister said, "Jack, that clock has got to go. It's chiming all night long." I said, "Well, it's supposed to." She said, no, I don't mean every hour, it's chiming constantly, and crazy numbers.
I said I didn't believe her, I had fixed it right and verified that it was working. But my father joined in to say that's right, it's chiming constantly.
Now, the way a clock like that works, it's simply not possible for it to chime funny numbers. There's a wheel that controls it, with notches for each hour ... one notch for one o'clock, two for two, etc. A little pawl drops into the notch to enable the chime. The wheel only gets enabled to rotate when the minute hand has completed a whole revolution.
I spent most of the next day working with the clock, trying to make it fail, but unable to do so. By the evening, I had myself thoroughly convinced my father and sister were dreaming. I refused to turn the clock off.
That night, I woke gradually up out of a deep sleep to hear the clock chiming. This was the first time I'd actually heard it ... guess I was sleeping too soundly. Even this time, I came up out of that sleep _VERY_ slowly, gradually becoming aware that I'd been hearing the chimes.
I have no idea how many I heard before I was fully awake, but it was definitely more than once. But once awake, I said, OK, now's my chance to prove them wrong, I'll count the chimes. So I began, "1, 2, 3, ..." and ended with "11, 12 .... 13...The next day, the clock got shut down. I was still very proud of my accomplishment, though, so when we went back to Alabama, the clock came along, and ended up in a place of honor on my mantlepiece. Still not running, though, it would have been much too loud right there in the bedroom.
Everything was fine for several months. Then one night, brightly moonlit, I woke to this seductive-sounding female voice, going, "Jaaaacckkk." I opened my eyes with a start, and they "chanced" to fall right on that clock. I said to myself, "That does it, the clock has to go." Next morning, I took it out to my mother's huge barn, and put it up in the loft with several other antique pieces she was storing there.
Years later, long after I moved away, the barn was torn down. Never knew what happened to most of the furniture.
Even more years later, my mother was in an institution, thanks in part to her dabbling with a Ouija board (gratuitous, frankly biased ouija warning). I and the rest of her family were convinced we had to get her out of that house, so after convincing her, my daughter and I undertook the job of getting everything sold. After the house was sold, we held an antique sale, and had several dealers lined up to come make bids on the pieces. One fellow showed up extra-early, hoping to get first dibs on the best pieces. He asked if anything was up in the attic, and I helped him get up there to find out.
A few minutes later, he came down with THE clock. Somehow it had found its way into the attic. He asked how much we wanted for it, my daughter haggled with him (she had the negotiating job), and we settled on a price. The dealer said, "I'm going to take this out to my car right now, so nobody else gets it by mistake." And he did.
A few hours later the house was crawling with antique dealers. As we were standing there talking to the first dealer, someone walked up and said, "How much do you want for this clock?" The dealer looked puzzled, and said, "How many of those things do you have? It looks just like the one I bought." We assured him that we only had the one. He said, "Didn't I take it out to the car?" We agreed that he had. He went and checked the car, but there was no clock in it.
He took the clock a second time, and said, "OK, now you _WATCH_ me this time, I'm taking the clock out, right." We acknowledged we saw him do it.
About another hour later, another dealer walked up, and said, "Hey, how much do you want for this clock?"
At this point, the first dealer totally wigged out. He said, "I don't know what's going on here, but that's _MY_ clock, and I'm leaving here before it gets out of my car again."
c. Dejanews 1995-1999