My Sister's Visitor
In August of 2006, my sister called me to tell me that she was FINALLY closing on her very own house and would be able to move in at the end of the week. My husband Steve and I were very excited for her. The house was an older place; built in the mid 1950's, it needed a little sprucing up, and Michelle was looking forward to doing the work on her own.
After about a month, she was doing very well with her redecoration, and I decided to stop by on Saturday afternoon and see if she could use a little help. We worked for a couple of hours and decided that we could use a break and a cup of coffee. While we sat and chit-chatted, she said, "Steph, I know how you and Steve love this sort of thing, so, I have got to tell you this."
She proceeded to tell me that two days ago while she was working in the kitchen, she caught a very strong scent of Shalimar Perfume and that she thought she had seen a woman standing by the refrigerator. She said that she just thought it was due to the fact that she was tired, and had even forgotten about it until yesterday, when she again smelled Shalimar and thought she heard a woman's voice in her living room. She went out and called hello but received no answer. I told her this was great, and that I had to call Steve.
I immediately called Steve and told him, "Honey, Michelle has a ghost!" Needless to say, he could not get there fast enough. We all worked on the painting until that evening without so much as a whiff of anything, and we did not hear anything all afternoon, either. We sat up late that night and talked and decided to spend the night—still nothing.
The following morning, however, was different. I awoke to the aroma of coffee brewing and bacon cooking and assumed that Michelle had awakened earlier and was busy making breakfast. Thinking that I would be a good guest, and an even better sister, I thought that the least I could do was get up and help. I told Steve that I would be in the kitchen helping Michelle and went out. As I walked to the kitchen, I could hear humming and thought that Michelle was in a great mood, being a new home owner, AND having her first houseguests. Imagine my surprise when I got to the kitchen and it was EMPTY! I stood there for a moment and gathered my thoughts, and Michelle came up behind me and said, "Steph, did you need some help with breakfast?" Needless to say, when she called my name, she scared the willies out of me!
I asked her, "What do you mean?" and she replied, "Aren't you cooking breakfast? It sure does smell good." I told her, "I thought it was you cooking, so I came out to see if you needed any help." We looked at each other for a moment and smiled and ran into the guest room and shouted, "Steve, did you smell that? Tell me you smelled that!” He said, "I sure did, I was just going to come out and see if you needed me to run and get some orange juice or anything." We had to tell him that each of us thought it was the other and how we both startled each other and he said he was sorry to have missed that part. We talked nearly all day about the incident and how great it was to have a family member with their very own haunted house.
That was, unfortunately, the last incident at Michelle's house. She has not smelled perfume, coffee, or bacon and she has not seen anything since that morning. The visitor was never malicious or nasty in any way, but rather seemed very hospitable. The only explanation we can come up with is that she must have been a traveling spirit that was just passing through. If this is the case, I am certainly glad that we got to meet her, so to speak.
