The Ghost Chronicles: Tales from The Burrow

burrow house chapter I

(taken from Burrow House post, September 25, 2008)

A funny thing happened at my house today.  And by funny I mean creepy, bizarre, and weird.

So, I'm sitting in our family room on the 2nd floor.  Alone.  Actually working on a project.  Blissfully.  And I hear a series of crashes.  Each sounds like it's coming from a different place in the house.  Now, the dog is outside.  No sign of the cat.  So I jump up to investigate.  As I run past my daughter's room, the door slams.  I stop.  I stand there.  And then in my brilliance, I kick the door open.  Hard.  It flies open, but instead of smashing into the table that rests behind the door, it kind of hits something much softer.  Crap.  NOT how I want to spend my alone time.

At this point, I run to let my ferocious (yeah right) hound in the house, dialing the police as I sprint into the kitchen. Do you know what they told me?  GET THE HELL OUT OF THE HOUSE!!!  So after I let the dog in, I double locked the back door, walked past the stairs that any self respecting robber would have to use to come get the silver, I headed out the front door.

About 3 minutes later, 5 police cars swarm my house.  Eight officers scour every inch of every room. (damn, why do these things always happen when my house is in shambles!?!)

Know what they found?  Nothing.  Nada. Zip.  Every window locked and sealed with storm windows.  Every door locked.  No possible way someone could have gotten out of the house without leaving a clue.  No sign of anything that would explain the smashing I heard.  And get this. The only thing that seems to be missing is a tiny picture of my son as a baby that was in a little frame on the refridgerator.

Now I feel like the loony lady in the neighborhood.  You know, the one with the unkempt house and a wild imagination.  What do I say to the force of police standing in my front hall, wondering why they jumped up and left their lunches?  "Uuuuhhhh...Sorry guys."

But the thing is, I know what I heard.  And I know a door just slammed in my face.  WTF!!!

As the officers are leaving, one of them says to me, "Do you believe in paranormal activity?"

Holy crap!  The police just told me I have a ghost.  Do you think that's code for "Coo-coo lady, keep your hand on your gun." ?  A ghost?  That's just nuts people.  Really?

in the beginning

Growing up, I lived in a house that was built around 1910.  It was my grandparents' house.  They had bought the place from the estate of the original owner when they came back to the states after WWII. The elderly woman that had built the house of her dreams spent her life there, and died there. That was in about 1952.  Four generations of my family lived in that house at some point.

As a child, I suffered from terrible nightmares.  Horrible nightmares.  Realistic, terrifying nightmares.  I woke often in the night with cold sweats and a pounding heart.

When I would awaken, the most comforting thing for me was the little woman who would be sitting at the foot of my bed smiling down kindly on me.  Reassuring me.  She was very small.  Her face was quite defined, her hair pulled tightly into a bun on the top of her head.  The rest of her, however, was a blue-grey blur.  Like a photo that's slightly out of focus.

This was a given for me.  Part of my nightly life until I was about 11 or 12.  It never even occurred to me to mention it to my mother.

Until I was around 20, that is.  When I told my mother about the "woman who watched over me" her response was, "Was she very tiny with her hair pulled tightly into a bun on the top of her head?"

Turns out, she watched over my mother too.

Growing up with a ghost, you might think that my first response to the happenings in my current house would be that there was paranormal activity afoot.  But not so. I'm still in denial.  Which is part of the reason I've decided to start keeping track of the "instances" that we are experiencing.