A Ghost Nearly Got Me in Trouble

Fate Magazine 2001-06-01
By: Sharon Rice

The last house my mother owned was haunted. I was a teenager when we moved in, and I saw and heard a lot of things that indicated we weren’t alone.

The dominant ghost was a tall man wearing a vest with a watch fob. He had a white shirt with a stiffly starched collar. I dubbed him Allen. Allen stared at me and woke me up many nights. He never spoke. One night he woke me up and I said, “Allen, why don’t you go to sleep?�?He looked surprised and left.

The woman next door said her husband built our house, as well as her own, in 1910. Allen wore clothes of that era, but of course I didn’t tell the lady about our ghost. Later I found out that a baby had been born in my room. Allen may have thought I was that child. At any rate, Allen seemed bound to protect me. He could see the relationship between my father and me was strained, to say the least.

I was afraid of my father. There were two doors to our bathroom-without locks. My father liked to enter the bathroom while I occupied it and he wouldn’t leave.

Once I was sitting in the kitchen talking to my mother when we heard a door slam. After a few minutes, my father came to the kitchen, wild-eyed and red in the face. “I told you not to slam the door in my face,�?he said to me. I told him I hadn’t slammed a door. “Yes, you did,�?he answered, “and it’s going to cost you.�?I was so grateful my mother came to my aid that time, saying I had been sitting with her. (Allen had slammed the door by the room so hard it knocked paint off.)

I got married a few years later. At first my husband scoffed about Allen. When we were visiting Mother one night, my husband woke me, saying, “There’s something in the dining room.�?It was Allen running around and around the large dining table.

“What’s he doing? Look at him go!�?After awhile, he changed direction and ran the other way. I didn’t know spirits needed to exercise.

It was a shame for Allen to be housebound. After my divorce I tried to exorcise him. I visited Mother, and Allen woke me that night. I told him he couldn’t just stay there; it was not good for him. Since I didn’t live there anymore, I wouldn’t need protection from my father. I said he “should go to the light.�?Although Allen never spoke to me, he was listening intently and looking at me closely as I talked. I didn’t see Allen anymore, but I considered him a friend. We had moved into the house in 1964 and my attempted “exorcism�?took place in the 1980s.

Another spirit could occasionally be seen in Mother’s house whom I called “Pantry Lady.�?Although Mother didn’t see Allen, she sometimes caught a glimpse of Pantry Lady, an old woman, ducking back into the small pantry. She was so shy I thought she may have been fey in life.

After Mother’s death I became half owner of her home, which mysteriously burned. I had to go to the courthouse to prove ownership. The house was across a park, in perfect view of the courthouse workers. As I left, a clerk sang out, “Are you going to sell it?�?/P>

To which my boyfriend of the hour said, “Well, it’s haunted, anyway.�?BR>This actually improved the sale of the burned house.