With my hands submerged in the afternoon dish water, I was thinking of nothing in particular.
Home alone, or was I?
Fingers pressed against my left shoulder.
I froze.
The sliding glass door in the kitchen was open. Yet, I was aware no one else was present.
Standing there. I couldn’t move. Not sure if it was possible. A mirror above the sink didn’t compel me to look. Turning left wasn’t a choice to comprehend.
I stood there frozen. Absorbing the experience as my hands found the bottom of the sink.
I could sense each finger from his right hand. Who was this stranger in my house?
Captivated and paralyzed as I stood there, I felt the presence of a 14-year-old boy. He was around my height, standing one foot back of me to the left. When I understood the message, the hand was removed.
I finished the dishes and sat in the living room. A little shaken. Grasping on to what just happened.
Did this explain the weird experiences? From a missing screwdriver and a nail punch. Or the felt-tip check marks across my Kimball organ. And one morning, the TV tray was set up sitting in the doorway. Things I put straight. Only to find them moved the next time I entered the room. Even the sound of footsteps in the hallway alerted the cats.
My house was haunted.
I talked to someone that experienced something similar. She suggested I tell them they could go now.
It was worth a try.
One afternoon, standing in the living room, I closed my eyes and out loud I said. “It’s okay, you can go now. It’s okay, you can go now.”
Never again did I hear footsteps in the hallway or experience things being moved.
Several years later, my daughter met someone that lived in the house 10 years earlier than us. They stayed 6 months and were so glad to move out of there. They dreaded going into the garage. And had encountered strange things happening in the house.
In 2007, I discovered a lady that lived in the neighborhood in the mid-50s. She told of a 14-year-old boy murdered by his father with a screwdriver in the garage of our house. Nobody ever asked her. She just made a statement. With that information, everything made sense. Which explains the reason we never found our screwdriver. The nail punch reappeared in the toolbox over a year after it vanished, although we cleaned the garage and emptied the toolbox, looking for it.
Maybe the boy’s spirit sought my help to heal from the trauma. The experience has changed my perspective on life. The mystery of what lies beyond our existence, we will one day discover.
Question: Have you ever lived in a haunted house?