Loud Crash

     As I said in an earlier post; strange happenings in this house are more common in November and December. Most of November was quiet, but that changed today. The wife was a work, so as soon as I returned home from church, I changed clothes and pulled out the old christmas tree. The tree is a 12 footer, so it takes me 3 or 4 days to decorate it (ain't as young as I usta be). I closed the door between the parlour and front hall because our dog, who is really just a pup as yet, runs up our front staircase and then cries because he's afraid to come back down. Not wanting to run after him all afternoon, I closed the hallway door. So I'm up the ladder putting lights on the tree, I'm alone in the house, the pup is taking a nap under the tree, when a horrendous crash sounds from the hall. I rush off the ladder, open the door to the hall and investigate. Everything is in its place. I then go outside and check the side of the house in case something fell of it or crashed into it. Everything appears in good order. I come back inside, go up the stairs retrieve the pup, return to the parlour and the tree, closing once again the hallway door. I don't think this is the house settling; sounded more like it was falling in. The mysterious sounds are nothing new, but they are so real, so loud, that you always check it out anyway.

Mirror, mirror on the wall

          As this house was built almost 150 years ago, it did not originally have bathroon facilities. So the baths in this house were added on; none too well, I fear. There is an upstairs bath and a downstairs bath. They were added where one the brick wings of the house juts out from the main portion. In other words, two walls of the bath are built against solid brick walls. The upstairs bath has a mirror on the north wall which is a against a brick wall. The downstairs bath does not have a mirror on that wall. No mirror will stay on that wall. When we first moved in we placed a mirror over the sink on the north wall. After a few days the mirror would be found lying at the foot of the rear stairs several feet from where it was on the wall. The mirror had to make a 90 degree turn as it fell to land in that area. After three attempts, we gave up. No mirror adorns that wall anymore in the downstairs bath.

Address Book

      My wife keeps a book with all the addresses and phone numbers of our friends and family. She kept it in a stand in the den. The stand is an old shoe makers bench with a single drawer. Suddenly the book was gone. We searched the house over, no book. This was a major catastrophe as far as my wife was concerned. Some addresses could be easily found in other sources; but many would take some time to locate. The book was gone for months. My wife was in the process of making a new one and trying to find out addresses. Then one afternoon, my wife asked me to check the front porch for the weekly Advertiser. As I walked from the parlour to the front hall, I saw a black book lying in the middle of the floor six or seven foot in front of the front door. It was the missing address book. The front door fits quite snug in the door facing. There are no other places the book could have come from and the front door was locked, as it usually is, with a deadbolt lock.  That was about 5 years ago. Strangly, that book has again disappeared. It will be interesting to see if it reappears and where. So far its been gone about 6 months .

Remarks?

     If the following events happened frequently, I'd question my mental facilties. But as they have only occured  three times over 27 years; perhaps some other factor is at play.  Twice, while alone in the house, I have heard my name called quite distinctly. The sound came from the room I was in; not from far away, such as someone hailing me from another part of the house. Both times I answered thinking someone had entered the room; before quickly realising no one else was in the house, much less the room I was in.. The other time was a phrase. Again, I was alone in the house, I was on the second floor, when out of nowhere a voice said,"I am not allowed to help you". Help me what? Again a mystery..

Purple glass and old chair parts

     When glass is quite old and has lain for long periods, it takes on a purple color. Especially in the deserts of the west, collecters take great pride in finding purpled glass artifacts. This isn't the old west, by any means, but on several occasions, my wife and I have found purpled glass fragments lying on the sidewalk to leads from our driveway to the western rear entrance to the house. Strangely, pieces or parts of old wooden chairs are also amoung the glass. I far as I know, we do not have, other than these fragments, any naturally purpled glass in or around the house. The find is always first thing in the morning as we are preparing to leave the house for the first time that day. The fragments are thick and odd shaped like they came from some larger artifact that was three dimensional; not like flat windowglass. The wooden chair parts appear to be from chairs that were spendled. The wood is usually painted black, sometimes several coats of paint in various colors are evident.

Halloween

          Strange as it may seem, in all the years we've lived in this house; nothing strange has ever occured on ,or even within days of ,Halloween. The ghostly aspects of the house are most likely to occur around election day and through December; but the unexplained can occur most any time. Though this house is in a very small village, the population more than doubles on "Beggars Night", which can be either the night before Halloween, or Halloween night (depending on the whim of the local council). This year I had about 400 trick or treaters. This didn't include parents, grandparents, and friends of the little spooks and goblins. The local firestation was overflowing, following "Trick or Treat", at the Halloween party.