21stcenturyhousewife

I live in a historical Queen Anne Victorian house that was built in 1893.  I wasn’t sure if I really believed in ghosts before moving into my house.  I never said ghosts were not real, I just wasn’t sure they were.  After living in my house for over six years I’m pretty convinced ghosts are real.

We moved into our house in November 2002.  I pretty much began hearing things right away.  Being a big old house I dismissed most of it as just creaking noises and such.  Then things began to happen that were not so easy to dismiss.

The first major incident took place when I was home alone late one night.  I heard the back door open and close and footsteps climbing the back staircase.  My first thought was not about ghosts, but that someone had just walked into my house.  I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and the phone and started up the stairs to check out the house.  Of course I found nothing and thought maybe I was just hearing things.

One night I was expecting my husband to arrive home shortly when I heard the back door open and shut and what sounded like someone running up the back staircase.  It was not unusual for him to arrive home and have to use the washroom after having over an hour commute from where he parked the truck at.  After a few minutes I walked into the kitchen and began to call to him up the stairs when the back door opened and he walked in.  I started to question him about when he had went back outside because I hadn’t heard him come back down the stairs or heard the door open and close again.  He looked at me like I had lost my mind.  When I explained that I had heard him come home and go upstairs about five minutes earlier he told me he had just now gotten home and walked in the door.  At first I thought he was playing a trick on me, but he insisted he had seriously just gotten home and walked in the door for the first time.  I said well either you’re lying or we have a ghost and he said we have a ghost then.  He was only joking, but I was serious.

After this incident I confessed to my husband about the other sounds and he of course made fun of me.  He teased that I was afraid to be alone in the big house all by myself.  I positively denied these false accusations until I finally gave up and suggested the whole matter be dropped.  The sounds of opening and closing doors and footsteps up the back staircase happened occasionally as did instances of lights being on or off when I was certain that I hadn’t done it.  Knowing the back door was locked and that no one was in the house, except for maybe some ghosts, I was no longer alarmed by any of the strange things happening and didn’t ever bring them up to my husband.

One day I came home as my husband was stepping off the back staircase into the kitchen.  He was completely pale and looked as if he was about to pass out.  I thought he was sick and asked what was wrong and remarked about the fact that he looked liked someone who had just seen a ghost.  He said he hadn’t seen one but was sure he had had one walk past him.  He had heard the back door open and close and footsteps up the back staircase and thought it was me and went upstairs to see me.  After not finding me and noticing my car was not in the driveway he headed back downstairs and felt cold air and all the hair on the back of his neck stand up.  I teased him as he had done to me.  He was very serious in telling me it was not a joke and he was freaked out.  Isn’t it funny how when the tables are turned it is no longer a laughing matter? Well at least the ghosts had finally showed up when he was around and at last he believed me.

Most of the encounters were uneventful and caused no real disruption or interference to our daily lives.  We didn’t see anything nor were any objects thrown across the room, so we weren’t scared of the possibility that we were living with ghosts.  Then the most real up close encounter happened to my husband.

Years ago before we had our son we smoked in the house.  My husband was in his office smoking a cigarette and playing on the computer.  He had fallen asleep with the cigarette still lit.  He was roused by the sound of a woman calling out his name.  In his half asleep state he assumed it was me.  As he was waking up and turning to look towards the direction of the sound he saw a young woman in an old fashion white dress with lace.  He described the dress in such great detail I was almost convinced he had actually seen this apparition and had not just been dreaming.  I was more inclined to believe it was a dream though since neither of us had seen or experienced anything so vivid with our ghosts.

I wanted to know more about our house, who lived in it and more importantly who died in it.  I had a name because we found an old easel and canvas stretchers in the attic that had the original owner’s name and the address of our house written on it.  I started online and eventually visited the library and our local historical museum to gather all the information I could.  Luckily the original owners were society people so there were quite a number of stories about them in the old newspapers.  I printed all the stories I could find from the newspapers the library had on microfilm.  I found two extremely interesting articles that really got me thinking about our ghostly encounters.

The son of the original owners was not married and still lived at home as an adult.  He died at the hospital at the age of 41 on Christmas Eve.  I realized we heard the footsteps a lot more around the holidays and got to thinking maybe he was coming home for Christmas since he never made it home from the hospital all those years ago.  Even more interesting was a front page story about the daughter’s wedding which had taken place in the home.  It described the event, all the guests from out of town and her wedding dress.  It was exactly the dress my husband had described seeing on the woman who had woken him and prevented our house from possibly catching fire or worse.

So the years passed by and we continued to hear and see things every so often.  Again it wasn’t anything scary or disruptive.  We’d notice the attic light on even though neither of us had been up there.  A day or two later it’d be off and both of us swore we hadn’t done it.  I secretly thought my forgetful husband probably had turned it on or off and forgotten even though I was certain it wasn’t him causing the footsteps on the stairs.

When our son was born we immediately noticed he would stare off in one direction or another and wondered if maybe he saw the ghosts.  As he got older he would up look off into space as if he was watching someone and would start giggling or babbling and we’d joke that he was talking to or playing with the ghosts again.  Right now I am sitting here typing this and listening to my son through the baby monitor.  He sounds like he is carrying on a conversation.  I don’t mean he is just talking or babbling like he often does.  I mean it sounds like when he is talking with someone.  He talks and then pauses and then talks again as if responding back to someone.  Now most of what he says is still in baby gibberish, but there is a definite difference in the way he talks when he is babbling on and on to keep himself awake and when he is having a conversation, so I’m pretty convinced he could be talking to a ghost right now.  I’m about ready to go tell the ghost it is M’s nap time and to let him go to sleep.

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