Strange voice

Today, I got home ahead of my wife and went upstairs to change. As I was prepaing to come back downstairs I heard the rear door open, the dogs were barking their welcome bark and I clearly heard a voice say "What are you doing?" I thought it was my wife talking to the dogs. Within seconds I rounded into the kitchen and there was no one there. I went to the door, it was closed. I looked outside, the car my wife drives was not there. In fact she did not arrive until half an hour later. Surely if a neighbor had stepped in (which would have been unusual) and asked What I had been doing they would have stayed for an answer. Also, I was into the kitchen quickly as I was well down the stairs when the question was asked. I think I would have seen anyone leaving. The dogs obviously saw something too as their barks were the welcoming type and certainly not menacing; so what they saw must have appeared friendly to them. But where did the speaker go? Strange.

Disappearing dog

Last night, after taking the dogs out, we all went upstairs to bed. It is still 80 degrees at bedtime and humid to boot. Ordinarily we open a couple doors downstairs so that when we turn on the exhaust fan it can pull from downstairs as well as upstairs. But it was so uncomfortably hot last night that I closed the heavy hall door so the fan would exert all its energy in pulling air through the upstairs. In order to maximize the fans pulling power (Its located in a window in the upstairs bath which is at the opposite end of the hallway from the master bedroom),I also closed all doors to the side bedrooms and western end of the hall. Everything is closed tight; the fan is pulling air only across the master bedroom and down the hall to the upstairs bath window and out. The dogs have both come up with us and even though it was stuffy I still played with them a few minutes before we turned in. I had to get up once during the night for a bathroom run and at that time the older schnauzer followed me down the hall and back to the bedroom. Then this morning when we got up my wife says "Wheres Rowdy?" I look over at his bed and its empty, he's not in the bedroom so I figure he has gone down the hall to the bath for some reason. But he isn't there. He is nowhere upstairs. So I figure he must have forced one of the bedroom doors...nope. The doors are all tightly shut. By this point the younger dog is insistant on going downstairs so I throw on some clothes and open the hall door and standing at the foot of the stairs is the missing Rowdy. How did he get downstairs? I have absolutely no explaination; yet this is the second time he has mysteriously gone downstairs when there is no obvious way he could have accomplished it. I wish dogs could talk.

Neighbors Experience the Strange

Last week we were hit by a tornado that left us with no power for four days and a lot of clean-up. My neighbor lost his signature tree from in front of his house. That tree he had babied and fixed and trimmed for years because it is believed it was planted there prior to the civil war. It did make a marked difference to the front view of his house. He and I were discussing clean up and directing a clean up crew. Having some time to just talk our conversation turned to the weirdness of our respective properties. He is the only other person in this village who will readily discuss the strange happenings in the house. Others who reside in this historic village will sometimes let a tale slip but they are so afraid of ridicule they rarely do. Anyway my neighbor has two boys, both born in the house who are 8 and 12 now. If you recall I had related a couple of things that occured in the house in an earlier post. This, then, is a continuation. He started out with, "At least the boys haven't seen the "ugly man" for a while". The Ugly man I questioned? "Oh I hadn't told you about him?" "For several years at least once or twice during the year the boys would come running into our bedroom all scared because they had seen an ugly man walking down the hall in front of their bedroom". They were always so insistant that my wife and I had to walk them down the hall and show them there was no one present." The elder son discribed the man as unkept, raggedity, beardy, wearing a very shabby uniform of some sort and he had a very dark, mean look on his face. Scared them plenty. He said if just one of them saw the ugly man, he would have thought it was a bad dream or something but both claimed to see him and both were pretty consistant on what he looked like.                      Then he told me something that really blew me away. He said that his wife and him had thought for a long time that the boys had an invisible playmate. They would frequently talk about playing in their bedroom (second floor above a rarely used parlour) when a little boy would come into the bedroom and ask, "Whatcha doin?" Then he'd ask if he could play too".  They liked the boy and he actually joined in their games. Then after a while he'd announce, "Gotta go now", and leave the bedroom. At first, my neighbor said, we thought the kid was a famous invisible playmate, until I realized it would be very unusual for two boys to have the same invisible friend, The boys discribed their friend as between the ages of the brothers, blond, blue-eyed and most pleasant. Then the topper of this whole episode occurred about two years ago. A knock on the front door was answered by the neighbors wife. Standing in the doorway was a little old lady and sitting in front of thouse was big black cadallic. The lady said she, at one time many years ago, stayed in the house and she simply wanted to see if it was still standing and if it had been changed much. The neighbors invited her in and showed her around. She was very happy to see the house was still pretty much as she remembered it. She was traveling from California and on her way to New York State.  After a short visit and as she prepared to leave she said,"Oh before I forget it. I have some old pictures of this house and I thought perhaps you would like them". I can see my neighbors eyes light up on that, he is not only a professional photographer he is also a history buff. They said their good-byes and the lady was off to her New York distination.   Later, as they looked at the old photos which were on tin, glass, and paper, they came to a photo of a woman and young boy on the front steps of the house. Both boys, almost in unison,  said "Thats the boy that comes to play with us". This is my first experience of hearing a serious report of the living actually interacting with the dead. My neighbors think the whole thing is remarkable but I don't think they realize the true ramifications of it. While its true these boys are brothers; it is also a fact that 4 years seperate them. Yet they both see and interact with the same phenomena. My neighbor also had had that confounded murmering that drives you batty, you can't quite make out whats being said and you cannot find the source of the murmering. He has also experienced the voice calling his name when he is totally alone in the house. Two things we have experienced in my house. He also told of hearing floppy slapping footfall down the upstairs hall. He, his wife and both boys were downstairs in the family eroom when that happened. They all heard it but inspection of the upstairs hall showed nothing amiss. It sound, he said, like some one walking in swim fins. Thats another one I have yet to experience here. But like us he has heard someone run up the front stairs. This, he said, happens upon occassion but no one is ever in evidence. He thinks his boys, having grown up with these mysterys, just take them as the norm. There are other pre-civil wars homes in this village, I wish the owners would be more open minded about sharing their experiences with the weird. Those who have, I have reported in earlier posts here. Ever have a chance to own a really old house; it can be quite an experience.