The Ghost of Barclay Road

When my parents first moved to Oregon, they bought a house from a recently widowed woman. She needed a smaller place. But apparently, her husband had no intention of leaving his house to strangers. By the time I joined them a year later, they were aware that they were not alone. Things would be found in odd places, out of place, for no reason. One morning I got up to find that every single glass lampshade had been turned upside down. (They were dusty, but there were no fingerprints or marks in the dust at all.) Things would go bump in the night. Chandeliers would swing. Doors would rattle.

One time I was standing in the hall talking with my dad. There was a sliding door to the laudry room, which was tiny, from which there was another door to the garage. There was a cat flap from the garage to the outside. We had 2 cats, and sometimes they'd get stuck in the laudry room. Suddenly, the sliding door to the laundry room started rattling violently. I jumped, and my dad said, "It's just one of the cats." When he opened the door, there was no one there.

Whenever I was the only one home, I never felt alone. I felt OK in my bedroom, but I avoided the kitchen and living room at night. Sometimes I felt like someone was standing very close behind me, and it gave me the creeps. It was a family joke, we'd tease each other about being scared in that place. I never told my boyfriend about it. He found out for himself one night...But I'll tell you about that in a minute.

Our ghost went from playful to menacing. One night my mom had just climbed back into bed after using the bathroom. Suddenly, someone very close to her ear said, "SHHHHHHHHHHH!" She jumped up, thinking my dad was playing with her, but he was sound asleep. She made the sign of the cross and didn't close her eyes the rest of the night.

One night my boyfriend spent the night on the living room couch. (My parents were home.) In the middle of the night, his pillow was violently wrenched from under his head, as he heard someone say, "Get out of my house!" Disoriented, he thought it was my dad gone nuts, but there was no one there. Everyone was asleep. When he told me about that the next morning, I told him about our ghost. He said, "I prefer the ghost in my mom's trailer. She just ignores us and goes on about her business in the kitchen, like we're not even there."

By: mariad@fdfirm.com

Uh, haunting the kitchen! I won't be doing that, I'll haunt tubs of hot water with bubbles and comfy spots in front of fireplace.