Phantom dog

This has occurred so often lately that I hesitate to post it. Perhaps my mind is simply playing tricks on me. It seems I'm frequently tripping over phantom dogs. This house is not especially light even in the middle of a sunny afternoon. The nature of this old pre-civil war structure is simply dark. I was upstairs, it was growing late and the sun was low in the sky so the upstairs main hall was receiving light only from its southernmost end. The rest of the hall was gloomy but not yet dark. I had just left the master bedroom, having changed my clothes, and headed down the hall toward the rear stairs. I almost rear ended a dog, schnauzer by appearance, who ran ahead of me down the hall and literally disappeared when it reached the lit end of the hall. Caught totally off guard I thought it was my little male schnauzer before realizing my dogs were both blocked from coming upstairs except at night. This schnauzer disappeared in the lit portion of the hall which would not have happened to a real dog. When I went down the rear stairs the gate was still up and both of my dogs were in the kitchen. It seems that dogs have replaced footsteps as the most common phenomena that we encounter here. I wonder what will be next. I really wish I could get a photograph of one of these "dogs", but it happens so fast and I never have a camera handy; but I'd probably still not react fast enough as the episodes are over in a matter of seconds.By the time I realize something strange has occurred it is over.

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.                                                                  

Computer chair moves on own

Its been a pretty quiet month. We have had considerable rain and  the weather has waxed between hot and very cool so much that a person doesn't have time to get accustomed to this weather. Today I encounted a rather strange occurance that could be totally mundane or maybe not. I was at home most of this morning; my wife was running her store in a neighboring town. Both of my schnauzers were taking a nap in the dining room on their pillows near the heat registers (no heat in them today, too warm outside). I had just come through the diningroom from the kitchen and made the righthand turn into the library where the computer is located. I had planned to see what, if any, E mails had accumulated. So as I rounded the doorway into the library the computer chair moved as if someone had just gotten up out of it and the right armrest made a definite tilt to the right, The armrest on the right side of the chair is not on very tight and it moves or wobbles when you use it for support in leaving. The movements were not great or exaggerated but the change in attitude of the swivel desk chair was evident. It got my attention  but it need not necessarily been paranormal. Though I have no concrete idea why the chair moved in that fashion just as I entered the room. But as I have said before, if something unusual occurs here I will report it.                           

Strange "Illusion"

 More than one strange item today. After my wife and I closed up the store we headed home. We both drive and I got home a few minutes before my wife. I unlocked the rear, western, kitchen door and was greeted by my dogs. I walked through the kitchen into the short downstairs hallway where the backstairs go up to the second floor. As I stood in the hall, taking off my coat and hanging  it up I looked into the Dining room to the door that leads into the parlour. My house, like most old houses, has large interior doors that are just short of one half inch off the floor. I'm  sure that if you have ever seen doors that do not hug the floor or carpet you  realise that anything beyond that door moving close to the door is evident as moving shadows on the other side of the door, As I watched, I saw definite movement in shadows under that door. This gives you a real start. Moving forward quickly, I opened the door. Much to my relief nothing was there. But what made the movement and shadows I saw under the door?  It was possibily an illusion; but it can still give you a start and what created the illusion to begin with.                     

I say things are quiet and then things happen. I had to open the wife's store today because she needed to go to a big town and pick up needed merchandise. The store opens at 11:00 am so I was there at 10:30 am. I unlocked the door and went in; before I could even turn on the lights I heard a very small child run flatfooted on our hardwood floors. The child ran the entire length of the store. I turned on the lights and there was noone in the store but me. It sounded like a child because young children tend to run flat footed and make a slapping noise as they go. Someone suggest that maybe it was a mouse. I suppose it could have been if the mouse weighed 20 or thirty pounds, wore hard soled shoes and ran flatfooted. Somehow I doubt it.