Ghost Collecting…

Have I ever mentioned that Hannah has an odd little habit of finding ghosts?

It started when she was a baby, about a year old. I was rocking her to sleep one night and her little blue eyes fixated on the blank wall above my head. I asked her what she was looking at and she kept saying “baby.”   She repeated “baby…  baby…”  Pointing and smiling.  Soon after that, I began to hear her whispering to herself when I passed her room. If I went in she would immediately stop talking.

Then one night about six months later, we were cudding  in bed and she looked up at the ceiling and said “There is a boy up there…”

She began talking about a little boy more and more often. And to top it all off, my friend Suzie Q lived upstairs and her daughter was constantly talking about a little boy too!  She said that she would sometimes catch her daughter talking to the imaginary little boy.

***I should mention that we lived in a reconverted mill that had been built in 1812, and I think it sort of makes sense that the kids were seeing little kid ghosties, seeing as how some factories used child labor back then.

After that, we moved to another apartment, next door to Mich. One night, after I put two year old Hannah to sleep, I heard her giggling. I told her to get to sleep and she said “I can’t Momma, the ghost is tickling my feet…”

This became her favorite excuse for not going to bed.

I thought she was telling tales, until one night when Mich and I were sitting on the roof talking with Hannah before I put her down for the night.

The subject turned to ghosts and Mich told me a story about an experience she had in her apartment. Her boyfriend was laying down taking a nap, and Mich grabbed his foot as she walked past, waking him up.

He jumped and yelled “Why did you do that?”

And Mich came out of the kitchen, where she had been making dinner for the past half hour.

That was the first of many encounters Mich had with the ghost.  She would wake up in the night to find a face looming over her bed.  She worked in the shop downstairs from us, and sometimes she would see shapes zoom by on the video camera they had.   I told Mich about Hannah’s bedtime tales and we decided to ask her what the ghost’s name was.

She said “Louis” right away. We don’t know anyone named Louis, so it was kind of surprising for her to pop out that name.  The biggest surprise though, was Mich’s reaction to that name… That was the name of her old landlord!

I wonder if he had a foot fetish?

Mich hasn’t heard or felt hide nor hair of Louis since we moved out.  Most of the places we’ve lived have had a presence…  We joke and say it is just Louis, tagging along wherever we go…

In the first apartment James and I had together, I had a little moment of my own.  I was in the living room one night with the door shut, watching a movie after Hannah had gone to bed.  James was at work, and the couple we shared our apartment with were out for the evening.  It was so quiet and then I heard the kitchen door open and JT came in, stomping across the kitchen floor in his boots.  He clomped right up to the living room door and stopped.  I could hear him breathing on the other side.

(Jt was a heavy walker and a heavy breather)

I called out to him, and asked if he wanted to come in and watch tv with me.

Silence.

I didn’t hear anything else so I assumed he was in a bad mood and had gone into his room.

About an hour later JT and Leah came home…  Which freaked me out a little because there couldn’t have been anyone at the door at all.

The next place we lived, Hannah had an imaginary friend.  Named Teeko.  I went in one night to check on her, and she was still awake and talking to herself.

“Hannah, who are you talking to?”

“I made a new imaginary friend, Momma.”

(Now, she has one named Peaches, who has been around for about two years. So this is nothing new)

“Oh really, what’s his name?”

“His name is Teeko and he is two years old.”

“Teeko huh?” I thought that was kind of a weird name. “What  is Teeko like?” Peaches has purple skin and pink hair, so I was expecting something along those lines.

“He has black hair and his skin is a little darker than mine.”

Hmm…

“Is he from around here?”

“He’s been here a long time.  He is going to sleep in my bed tonight.”

“Well, that’s nice.”

According to our friends, that place was THICK with spirits.  They told us stories about the many spirits that supposedly lived there-various Native American spirits, a Quaker Woman who watched over their children, weird noises and bumps in the night, etc.  It was out in the woods- and they said that late at night you could sometimes hear drums…  I was skeptical, until 3 o’clock one morning, I woke up and heard beating drums myself.  Very faintly.  I thought at first it was my heart, but then it stopped…  And started again.  I woke up the huz.  Asked him if he heard it too.  He said “the drums?” So I knew it wasn’t in my head.

Another night we heard a huge CRASH!!!  Like the china hutch had fallen over.  It sounded like glass had smashed everywhere!  We jumped up and ran out of our room- as did everyone else in the house.  We searched but everything was intact and the house was peaceful and quiet…  Nothing had fallen.

I used to hate being alone there…  I always felt like I was being watched.  It was such an unsettling place, that house.

When we moved up to Maine a few years ago, we were staying in a HUGE house.  It had sixteen rooms and ten foot high ceilings-spread over three floors.  It was an old manor house that had been named North Hall.  I remember that there was a cold spot on the stairs.  Which was really weird because there was a giant radiator right against the staircase and heat rises… But even in the middle of the summer there was always a cold spot.  Twice Hannah saw ghosts on those stairs.  She also says she saw the head of an old man in the bathroom sink.  I never saw anything there.  But I heard things.  Every night that the huz worked late, I would lay in bed and listen to the attic creak.  It creaked in a very specific way.  It sounded as if someone was walking back and forth in the room above me, right over my bed.  Back and forth, back and forth.  And it would always stop right when he finally came home.  We checked the attic and it was clean.  No animal droppings and everything was sealed up tight.

But I never SAW anything…  The closest I came to seeing anything was a night when James was again working late and the kids were asleep upstairs.  The living room door was shut tight and I could see little shadows running back and forth, blocking out the light from the front hall that came under the door as it ran past.  I thought it was the dog, but she was laying on the floor beside my feet.  She was staring at the door too.

Back and forth, back and forth, and as I watched I started getting a little weirded out and then the huz came home and it went away.

We don’t have anything here with us now.  There have been one or two little “what was that” moments but I guess this apartment is kinda boring.  LOL.

*the pic isn’t mine-found it googling “ghost images”