The night seemed darker than usual. Not even a sliver of light found its way through the black curtain of night. My sister had always said she felt like eyes were looking at her. The stairs creaked from the bottom of the steps to the top. The sound of footsteps sent a resounding crackle through the house. It always sounded eerie, but that dark night, the sounds were magnified.
It didn’t help matters that the new parsonage was built on a potter’s grave. There was also a graveyard in the woods beside our house. It also didn’t help matters that a ghostly white horse was seen on a foggy night roaming through the church graveyard across the road. A few days after it was seen, the horse died after a story circulated that a curse had been cast on it. It is possible the horse got religion before his demise. He did attend church service a time or two when he stuck his head in the opened window on a Sunday morning and snorted a bit. I just thought it was Mr. Norman snoring in the back.
On that particular dark night, Daddy and Mama were in a meeting at the church. My sister, sister-in-law, niece and I were at the house. All of a sudden there was a loud banging noise. We all looked out the window just in time to see a shadowy light float through the back yard. It was gone a quickly as it came. The whole house creaked and groaned. Our imaginations ran unchecked. Someone or something was in the house. We all crept into the kitchen, opened the drawer and chose our weapons – knives and whatever else we thought would be good protection. We hurried up the stairs, ran into Mama and Daddy’s room, and closed the door. Someone grabbed a chair and put it in front of the door, the top of the chair lodged under the doorknob. We must have looked like crazed lunatics with our feet firmly planted and our weapons ready to be wielded when the door came crashing down.
The situation demanded action. We called the church phone. Nothing. We called again. Someone finally answered. We all talked at once. Someone needed to come to our rescue. It seemed forever until we heard Daddy come in the house. We didn’t open the door until we were sure he was the one on the other side. He searched every room, nook and cranny, but found no evidence of anyone being in the house with us. There was only the lingering feeling of eyes watching us and the sounds of footsteps that could be heard anytime of the day or night.
It was concluded that a light from a car created the shadowy light figure across the yard at the very same moment that an acorn fell from a tree and hit the trash can lid. Just a side note – that was the only time in the four years we lived there that we saw such a light – and that must have been one gigantic acorn to make a noise that loud.
On another dark night years later, some of us girls went on a ghost tour in Asheville, North Carolina. We heard stories of some of the places that are supposedly visited by spirits. At one house, we heard stories of the man who rocked invisibly in the chairs on the porch and walked around the yard. I decided to take a photo of the house. I looked through the lens of my camera and made sure there was no glare from the window of the trolley. I snapped a photo without the flash and thought nothing more about it. No one mentioned seeing anything unusual. When we got back to our room, I hooked up my camera to the computer to look at the photos of the day. I said, “Ummmm, girls, come over here!” We all looked in amazement. There in the photo was a shadowy ghostly figure walking down the sidewalk.
Just sayin’ – sometimes there are things we cannot explain. All I can tell you is, “Don’t let the spooks get you!”
