Haunted House: The Lady and The Poltergeist

Things That Go Bump in the Night

The Lady was a presence. The Poltergeist was a menace. We would be asleep in our beds when suddenly the downstairs lights would come on and the television would be blaring at full volume. Talk about a rude awakening. We all run down the stairs and stand stock still in shock. We’d look at one another not knowing what to do, so we’d turn off the lights and the television and go back to bed.

Come on. Could we be any more like the stupid people in the horror movies? To this day I can’t explain it. Everyone who knows our story says there is no way they would have stayed there. They ask repeatedly how we could have stayed. Don’t know. Must have been in the script.

Many other haunted house “B” movie things took place:

• This is so cliché, but we actually had a ball roll down the stairs when no living creature was upstairs
• Our dog was upstairs alone one day when she suddenly ran at top speed down the stairs and jumped up into my lap shaking and panting. I went to the bottom of the staircase and shouted up “Leave My Dog Alone!”
• Our dog was no longer terrorized upstairs but when downstairs she would stand at the base of the staircase, look up for an extended period of time tilting her head to one side then the other
• The games in the closet at the top of the stairs would fall off the shelf with the Ouija Board flipping out the door to the top stair landing
• As in the movie “Poltergeist” my daughter reported her headboard or her entire bed shaking
• When home alone after school she would sometimes hear low mumblings or deep pitched laughter
• Though we never saw anything moving, a person with “vision” reported seeing things flying around my daughter’s room
• One night my husband went bowling. My daughter and I sat in the living room with one light on waiting for the bus to pick her up for a school ball game. As soon as her bus had come and gone the lone light went out. I was terrified! I ran from room to room and turned on every light in the house. They stayed on until I was no longer the only human in the house.

There came a turning point. No one knows what brought it about, but the Poltergeist seemed to finally accept our living there in the haunted house with it. It was always a bit eerie being alone there due to the previous action, but things tapered off until nothing happened other than on Halloween. Seems our menacing Poltergeist was a prankster as well. It pulled off all the things one expects in a “B” movie, then, when it settles in with us, it acted silly on the ghostly night of Halloween. What a ham!

We’ve long since moved on from the haunted house and each other. I’ve never asked any subsequent resident if they experienced a Poltergeist there. I feel it is still there and whatever does or doesn’t happen is between them. In spite of it all, I have fond memories – of that time, the haunted house and the Poltergeist.