It always gets worse around Halloween. The nights are growing longer and spooks and goblins are getting a lot of play on TV. I wish the family wouldn’t go out and leave me here with my vivid imagination. The thing is, it might not be my imagination.
I’m not actually convinced I am alone. There are too many weird sounds in this big house. Right now I can hear at least three or four people moving around up in the attic. Well maybe not people, but something….
There! If you were here you’d have heard that! You’d know it’s not the house creaking in the wind. Those would be random noises and these have a definite tempo, almost rhythmical. Is somebody or some thing dancing up there ?
Even as a young boy I was able to see and hear things that others couldn’t. I think it has something to do with being Irish. Grandma Kate taught us kids about Banshees, female Irish ghosts who scream in the night. I’m sure I spotted them hovering over the barn as we blew horns to scare them away one New Year’s Eve.
As I reached manhood and husbandhood and fatherhood I had to explain these phenomena to a jittery wife and frightened children, inventing excuses to convince them the so called weird sounds were actually normal and easily explained.
“That’s only the groans of an old house cooling off at night,” I’d say. Or I’d blame the pitter patter on a couple of squirrels who’d got between the roof beams to store acorns. But I didn’t really believe that. I could hear what sounded like voices. Talking squirrels ?
Sometimes they’d beg me to investigate, “just to be sure” and I would laugh and reply, “Well, if it makes you feel better…” During one of these investigations I almost fainted when our cat leaped out at me in a pitch black cellar. They only half believed my blood curdling scream was a joke. There’s no question about the groaning in the back room now, but I can’t be as precise about what I saw in the living room
The “things” I see are not as clearly defined as the things I hear. My sightings are almost aways brief and peripheral, quick glances out of the corner of my eye. I can only say that “something” long and purple raced across the room and hid behind the couch. It either had a large head or was carrying an umbrella. If you’re that curious you can come here, unaccompanied, and take a look.
I had a dog once. I thought his company would do me good. But he heard twice as much as I did and he was always sniffing at the air to identify a “presence.” He ran away one night during a lightning storm and I never saw him again, although sometimes I hear him gnawing a bone in a backroom closet. That can’t be him behind the couch. He was short and white and never carried an umbrella.
As I write this the noises are increasing. Beneath me in the cellar there are a lot of whispering sounds and the pacing in the attic has increased. Now I can distinguish some actual words like, “Freddy Krueger.” Who’s Freddy Krueger?
Imagine That 