Halloween is coming up and the Vagabond thought he would share some happenings posted on the Facebook group “Welcome to Haunted Etowah County.” It is located on the Internet at: https://www.facebook.com/
Submitted by Shelia Freeman:
I will share with you some things that have happened in our family/homes. I live in a home that was built in 1939. I moved here about nine years ago and we have had a number of unusual happenings.
The first unusual thing I can remember, we had been here probably less than a year. My grandson Monty, who must have been about 4 or 5 years old, was standing in the second hall from the front door. He was just standing there looking and staring into the front foyer. Then he raised his little hand and waved. Then he got a startled look on his face and ran screaming from the hall. For years he would not go in that area without someone with him. He never would tell us what he saw.
The second unusual happening occurred when my daughter Christy Bishop had just moved back home for a while. She was using the downstairs bedroom next to the room that Monty had his “experience” in. The morning after her first night, she asked, “Mother why did you come in my room and kick my bed?”
Of course I had not kicked her bed and told her so.
“Well, I thought it was you,” she said. “Someone kicked my bed and told me to get out.”
Christy said she was too scared to move. The room was pitch black. She could not see anything but did feel like someone was standing beside the bed inches from her face. Christy even spoke to whatever it was, because she wanted it to be her mommy and not something else.
In the third unusual happenings in our home, I have a moderately large basement, which currently serves as my music studio. In the past, I had a bedroom “suite” set up as a little getaway.
One night I was sleeping there and I felt someone get into the bed with me. Well you know how when someone gets into bed with you, you automatically just kind of scoot over. I scooted over, and then my eyes flew wide open when I remembered I was the only one in the house. I never mentioned that to anyone.
A short time later my youngest son moved back home to go back to college. This was now his space. Not long after he moved in he told me of a similar experience. I had not mentioned it to him before. It was the same room I felt what seemed to be a small dog jump onto my bed and walk around.
The 4th happenings in our home: When I bought my home, my Mother moved in with me. We took the 2 largest bedrooms upstairs that were connected by a bathroom and made her a bedroom and sitting room. A few years before she passed away she complained of someone knocking at her sitting room door. No one would be there.
Then we were talking one day and she told me she had seen a little girl or young woman. She described her as having long dark hair in ringlets; wearing knickers. She had been moved by the sadness in her eyes. She (my Mother) said that she had the saddest eyes she had ever seen. She stood there a few seconds then disappeared.
Mother said she was probably the one knocking at the door and when she didn’t respond she just let herself in. Did not scare my Mother at all. A few months ago I was talking to a neighbor and they were saying that someone had seen a girl in a house down the street. They described the girl just as my Mother had… Guess she visits around. I mentioned my grandson’s experience earlier and I think maybe he saw the same thing my Mother did.
The fifth happenings in our Home: I mentioned in an earlier post that my basement has been converted into a music studio. One evening after band practice we were sitting in the basement talking to some friends. I heard someone walking upstairs. I ask if anyone heard that and no one did. We sat there a few more minutes and it happened again. Sounded like someone with heavy shoes walking across the living room floor that was just above us. I got excited and thought someone was in the house. A friend named Brent ran up the stairs as soon as he heard it; searched and no one was to be found. The doors were locked.
Just a short little share: Both my daughter and mother experienced this waking; at the same hour several times in one week. A gentleman’s voice telling them it is “3:30, time to get up”. Both told me about it and neither one had told the other. It was kind of spooky. Just one of the many things that have happened in our family.
My maternal Grandfather who died when my Mother was 8 years old was what my mother called an “herb Doctor” which I always thought he used natural remedies to help sick people. She also said her grandmother told her that he could see and hear “dead people”. The grandmother also told her that he once told her to put her right hand on his left shoulder and she could see what he saw. Needless to say my Grandmother would not do it. So the story goes.
I have dealt in antiques off and on most of my life. I have read of people who claim that furniture holds spirits/records of surroundings of that piece.
I don’t know about that but I did have a few experiences with unexplainable things. I had an obsession with antique frames containing pencil drawings. They were always of very sad looking faces.
I guess it was the custom not to smile a few decades/centuries ago. Anyway, I purchased a frame/drawing of 3 people dressed as one would in the late 19 or early 20th century.
It was of an older man and an older woman with what appeared to be younger woman of mixed heritage either African American or Indian. I couldn’t tell. I had the drawing hanging in my living room.
Occasionally I would walk through the living room and a very foul smell would be hanging in the air. I couldn’t make out where it was coming from. It was not always there. So after a couple of weeks I decided to “sniff it out”. I sniffed and sniffed throughout the living room until my nose finally landed at the drawing.
I am going “Oh my gosh, is there a dead rat inside this thing?” I took it apart and only found some water stains. Nothing that would have had an odor. It came and went. I thought I was loosing my mind. I put it in my antique shop in Ashville.
My daughter was helping me one day and she said “Mother what is that awful smell?” I said oh it is just that picture. She refused to believe it until she followed her nose and found I was telling the truth.
One time there was a smell of roses that came through that picture. Very strange. I finally gave it to a relative that was intrigued with it. She said it never smelled again after she took it to her house.
I spoke earlier of my maternal grandfather. Whatever he possessed, we seem to have just a tiny bit of it in our family. When I was a child we did not have a telephone in our home. My Father didn’t want one. He said he had one at his business and did not want to be bothered at home…that was my dad
So many, many times my mother has gotten up very early and started preparing a huge Sunday dinner. Remember I was an only child so there were only 3 of us in the house.
I would ask her, mother, why are you fixing so much dinner?” Many time she would tell me, “Oh Uncle or Aunt or so and so is coming by today and I want to have something for them to eat.
I would then ask “how do you know?” Did you get a letter? Did they call you at the store? And she would tell me “no”, I just know they are coming… and they always did!
Frances Noojin Phillips
When my sister and I were in junior high, we shared a bedroom. I was sleeping on the outside part of the bed.
I felt something like an arm softly lay across me. I whispered in my sister’s ear “call Mother”.
She could feel something shaking the bed by then. She whispered, “you call her”. I whispered, “I’m scared to”.
Then “the ghost” started moving across the bed. I yelled “Mother!” and when I did she started yelling “Mother!” and we were “Mother, Mother, Mother, Mother!”
Mother comes running, turns on the light and it turns out the neighbor’s cat is in the bed with us.
One night we heard this scratching on the window screen.
We could see a shadow on the screen as something went across because the streetlight was behind it. Same situation with the “call Mother”.
I thought if I called her I would be the one that what or whoever it was would come after me. Then when the “Mother, Mother, Mother duet started, here comes our dear Mother running again.
We’re both talking together telling her somebody was out there scratching on the screen. She goes to the front door, turns on the porch light, goes outside our window and shakes the shrubbery limb to prove to us what it was.
Those mysterious sounds you sometimes hear at night that are really scary at the time might turn out to be a little humorous if you ever do find out the true source.
One night when everybody was gone from the house but me, I heard what I thought was the click of the outside door that’s made when a door is closed quietly.
First I’ll tell you to not get curious and try to open one of those beans that grow on the Wisteria after the glorious blooms go away.
They don’t open until they’re good and ready. You can’t even get them to open with a hammer, knife and screwdriver.
Anyway…. that night I got my ball bat and cautiously crept through the house, checked the door, saw the TV and everything was still there…and the cars outside. I couldn’t find where anything had fallen off the walls, so I went on back to bed and finally went to sleep, leaving myself in the Good Lord’s hands.
Next day when I was cleaning up in the kitchen, I saw some little round, flat disc-type, smooth, brown things lying on the floor. I picked them up and started looking all over the cabinets to see if some part of the wood had turned loose.
Then my eyes spotted the empty Wisteria bean hulls on the cabinet. That clickety click sound in the night….. Yep!
Next week: more strange happenings.