Ghost Stories

In the Summer of 1997, my job required me to relocate for a couple of years. Before I started, they gave me time to get things settled and ready, and Steph and I traveled to where we would be living. We checked out a few rental properties and finally found a nice older home and decided that this would be the perfect place. The house had been built during World War II and had a bomb shelter built underground in the back yard. We signed our contract, took care of all the other business, and got ourselves moved. I started working again, and Steph found a job quickly with a local car dealer and began work as well. After about three weeks, we were finally nearly settled in and things were taking shape.

One evening, as I was almost asleep, I felt someone grab my leg fairly quickly and Steph, being the practical joker she is, naturally got blamed. Still half-asleep and incoherent, I mumbled, "Honey, don't, I'm sleeping." A couple minutes went by and someone grabbed my other leg the same way. This time, I was a bit more coherent and awake enough to remember that Steph would not be home from her seminar until the next day. I got a slight chill when I realized that I was not being hassled by Steph, and I said, "OK, That’s enough now, I need some sleep!" It seemed to work, as I did not feel any more harassment that night.

The next morning while she was waiting for her plane, Steph called to say good morning and that she couldn’t wait to get home. I immediately told her that I needed to apologize to her. "What for?" she asked.

"Well, I felt someone grabbing my legs last night and I blamed you," I explained.

She got very excited when she asked, "Are you telling me that we have a guest?"

"I think so," I told her.

When I picked her up from the airport after our greetings, she said, "So, tell me about our house guest."

"Well, I really don't know too much about them, just yet, other than the fact that he likes to grab your legs while you’re trying to sleep," I told her.

For the next couple of days, the house was quiet until we felt someone kick our bed, again, just as we were both almost asleep. Steph asked, "Honey, was that you?"

"I thought it was you," I replied.

As we sat and wondered what was up, we felt the bed get kicked again. Steph shouted, "Hey, it's late, give it a rest, huh?" Again, this seemed to work, as we did not feel any further kicking.

The next morning, we were talking about the incident and we heard a knock on the front door. I got up to answer it, and when I opened the door, no one was there. At first I thought it was, "Ding Dong Ditch," but as soon as I closed the door, there was another knock. I immediately opened it again and, once again, no one. I said, "I don't want to play this game any more," and the knocking stopped. Later, Steph had gone in and taken a shower and was drying her hair when her dryer stopped working. She looked and it had been unplugged. "Very funny," she said. "Can I please get my hair dried, though?" And her dryer was left alone.

Over the next few months, these types of harmless practical jokes became commonplace. We did as much research on the house as we could, but we could not come up with any answers. We just became accustomed to someone playing jokes on us once in a while (I STILL think some of them were Steph). For the entire three years we lived there, this was some very good entertainment. You never knew what to expect, and if you weren't really in the mood, all you would have to say was, "Enough now" and the pranks would usually stop. We were kind of sad when we had to move back home and give up the house with the fun-loving spirit, and we hope the new tenants that moved in had as much fun living there as we did.