My husband and I for sometime had two children and were living in a two bedroom duplex. We decided that we needed our own house with more room. We built a beautiful house on an amazing piece of land. When we were building there was an unusual amount of bees in the attic and then it was flies. I noticed, but we were at this point (during the actual building part to save money) living with my in-laws. So I was all like, it’s fine I will name them and they can be our pets. I guess I didn’t let my over-reacting brain do any of the thinking at the time, or perhaps, yester-self was driving the boat full speed ahead. It just never occurred to me (because after I had children I had to give up watching any horror movies all together…my kids were kind of creepy in the middle of the night) that these were all omens about the entity that already resided on this property.

We finally get to move into our home and for the first week my husband took off from work to get settled. It is the BEST feeling owning your own place. We were like the Tanners in Full House (shit, that mom died…we weren’t like them at all) We were like a nice family before the nineties because the nineties were sort of obsessed with Dad’s being single and raising kids with their best friend and brother in law. I remember doing the dishes and I had a dish washer for the first time. I was like “You need a drink kids, let me get you a new cup each time, because we basically have a maid now!” We would put the kids to bed and cuddle on the couch and be HOMEOWNERS together. We made friends with the neighbors, other HOMEOWNERS like ourselves. We would set up cable and trash pick up and get a new telephone number (again it’s the nineties cell phones didn’t exist. Neither did internet but they are coming very soon) like HOMEOWNERS do. We did all of that HOMEOWNER stuff because did I mention we were HOMEOWNERS now? The first day my husband went to work I missed him, but now I could rearrange the furniture the right way because he didn’t know what the hell he was doing. (But it was nice that he thought he did and I didn’t want to discourage him) I heard the kids talking in the other room and their voices sounded different, like shit was real serious. Now my kids were not ever the serious type, they, all of them, get that from me. My son just turned two and my oldest was four and so serious isn’t really what I expect. I walk into their play room and they both look shit scared. I thought they broke something or stuck their fingers in the outlet again. (remind me to locate that box with the outlet covers)

My son looks at me and says “I don’t want to live here anymore!” (I’m not going back to that little apartment with the weird landlord….story to come in near future….it’s hilarious but was also my real life)

I look at him and ask “Why not little bug?”

“It’s scary here!” He replies. His older sister nods ferociously.

I, being the girl who is older but still the same level of bravery as I had been when I hid from my dolls, swallow hard and didn’t even want to admit that I felt it too. I am the mom who isn’t supposed to be afraid of pretend things that her kids imagine, great now I have to fucking ask him why he is afraid. Or do I? No I do, definitely, NOT! There is no reason to terrify me too. I am going to adult this shit away. “No, it’s not scary. It’s just new and we have to get used to it that’s all.” I look at the shadows in the room and they are completely normal. I breathe deeply and I say “Do you want me to stay in here with you while you play? Will that make you feel better?” The two cherubs nod their heads and so I play with them. Today we played with play-doh…it gets ground into the carpet. (memo to me throw this house ruining mess maker bullshit away when the kids are sleeping. Maybe they will think the monster, they are currently afraid of, ate it and be too afraid to ask where it went. I’m really an excellent mom problem solving and all of that jazz) That night I put them to bed and they do not want to sleep in their own bedrooms alone (to set this up I have to point out that I allowed my kids to pick the exact paint for their rooms. I brought them to the store they chose the swatches and I bought gallons of their paint. My oldest daughter chose a forrest green that was dark and made the nighttime endless… like light would never set foot in that room, like ever. My son chose this neon bright, uber bright blue for his bedroom and their bathroom was fluorescent yellow (it was a shared bathroom for all of us but they agreed on the yellow and I wasn’t looking for togetherness to end so I just got it…who cares, whatever it’s just paint! Don’t be like me and allow your toddlers and preschoolers to make big decisions it isn’t a good idea.) My son had a huge double window in his room and the light never goes away in his bright ass room. They decide his room is safest and they want to sleep in there together. I don’t care because I also want to go to bed at some point and this whole trying to keep them in their own rooms is exhausting. I sit in the room with them because I will keep them safe. (Little do they know that I am not really the super hero type…i never got to play that role…i will screech…and i will assist from the blue spot on the rug…but i will not be the hero)

As we are in the room my son says “The ghost in my closet is scaring me!” (fuck now it’s scaring me too)

Right, I’m the adult. Say something parental. “There is no ghost in your closet, that’s just your imagination!” I smile because I am kicking ass at being a mom. Until….

“Well, the imagination in my closet is scaring me and I don’t like the way he looks at me!” I do not run screaming from the room sacrificing my children to the scary whatever in my son’s closet

…I deserve a medal, truly I do!

I say “Yup, you all can sleep with mommy tonight!” and I hastily grab the children and whisk them out of that scary room and that fucking whatever is in the closet.

My husband gets home that night and asks “Why are the kids in our bed?”

“Because they are a little afraid of the Haunted House we built!” I say (rationally and calmly I might add) maybe with a hint of scared out of my fucking wits.

“What are you talking about?” he says looking for food that isn’t hot dogs and mac and cheese which is what the kids want for dinner whenever dad isn’t home. (No wonder I have to work out all of the time I’m literally eating cellulite and it’s not even that good.)

“The kids were playing in the play room and they got all weird about it and I had to go in there and sit with them all day….we need to throw out the play-doh by the way. That stuff is absolute garbage and destroying my new carpet. I went in there and I could sense it too, once they told me what they felt, I was all like, yup this place is creepy! I tried to be all like, no it’s all going to be okay because I thought we just needed to get used to this place because it’s all new to us and has different sounds and lighting and all of that. Remember when we were building, though, and we had all of those bees and then flies and OH MY GOD remember when we had the bats in here…”

“It was a bird! One bird was in our house because we had no windows. We didn’t have bats at all!”

“What about the eyes that your son saw in his closet? How are you going to rationalize that your beautiful baby boy saw a demon in his fucking closet?”

“He’s two, Becki, he probably was imagining things.” He keeps looking for food as I am making my case for having the house exorcised before things get worst….I don’t want one of my kids getting sucked into the tv…because I’m not brave like that mom on poltergeist…I’m going to be like “well we tried to be good parents and HOMEOWNERS it wasn’t for us” and I’m going to move the fuck out of here as quick as I can to a nice new house and raise ferrets or something safe like that.

“Do we have any food in this house?” he asks

“So we can lure the monster out of the closet? Do you think that’ll work?” I look at him with hope in my heart.

“You’re insane. No, not…..ugh! Becki, you can’t be getting the kids all frightened with your insanity. There is no monster, demon or anything else in the closet. You need to calm the fuck down.” He looks through the fridge again for a morsel of food.

“Can we at least have a specialist come and check it out?” I ask

“What? What kind of specialist? What are you talking about?” I get up to cook him a burger so that I can coax him to be on my side.

“I don’t know, You went to church. Who did they recommend?” I ask

“I don’t think you know what they do at church!!!!” He’s happier now that I am cooking him food. “I will go upstairs and look in his closet, if I see anything then I will find a specialist tomorrow.”

I am glad that he is taking this seriously. I immediately calm down (more than I already was) He says that there wasn’t anything in there and he put the kids to bed.

“Where the demon can get them? Why don’t you love our children, honey?”

He grimaces and says “I think that the move has freaked you out a little bit. I looked all over up there and it was fine. It looks like a normal house.”

I sleep that night but not well. My oldest sleep walks for the first time and it scares the absolute shit out of me. She walks into my room with her eyes open but the balls are looking into the back of her head and she has this enormous smile on her face and she sticks her face right in mine and says some sort of ridiculous bullshit like “I am glad that rainbows make puppies and I get to pet them with my balloon hands!”

I am not proud of this, but I almost punched her right in her fucking possessed face…but then I was like I don’t think satan would want to pet puppies with his balloon hands and so I gently say “I think you are sleeping honey….go back to bed.” And like a fucking robot she does. (I told you that they were creepy at night time)

I get little sleep and when my husband’s alarm goes off I say “Don’t leave use here alone in this house. It’s not safe.”

“Goodbye Becki! Maybe go outside or go visit with your sister. Don’t sit here making yourself and the kids all worried.” He kisses me and leaves.

He doesn’t love me! He’s a damn liar! Now I have to face this stupid haunted house alone with my poor children. That day was better. We went for a walk and we did go visit my sister. I don’t mention the haunted part because I don’t want her to think that I’m crazy. My son says “I have an imagination in my closet.” and my sister says “That’s nice!” because she doesn’t know the house of horrors that I just built. She doesn’t know that I am probably going to die or lose one of my children to that Fucking closet!!!!

I eventually get more comfortable with this house except when I am completely alone.
Also my badass protective black lab Zoe has taken to barking at a corner of the house. I tell my husband about it and he said that she is just getting old. Old my ass she sees the ghost too. You can’t explain everything away with rational thought Honey. Life doesn’t work that way.

We bought our son a remote control train for Christmas and he loves it. He plays with it all day. In fact I hear him playing with it in the middle of the night. One night I hear him giggling and playing with his train set, except when I go to get him back in bed, I notice that he is already in mine and so is my daughter and that is all of the children that I own. Well who the fuck is playing with the train? Zoe is sleeping at the bottom of my bed and my husband is on the couch in our bedroom because our bed is crowded with knees and elbows.

“Hey!” I try to whisper loudly, “Hey, wake up! Do you hear that?” I see movement out of the corner of my eye and there in my doorway is a little boy with deformed hands looking at me and he smiles and says “I like my train!”

I scream so loudly and terrify that poor little boy away. My children wake up and cry, my husband wakes up and takes this karate stance, which is funny because to my knowledge he doesn’t even know karate. He turns on the light and I am in my bed with crying children and obviously my other ghost child is frightened as well.

I look at my husband and try to tell him to go make sure that the little boy is ok.

“You just had a bad dream.” he says.

“It wasn’t a dream, just go see if you can find him. I scared him. He hurt his hands and now I’ve scared him.” I start moving about the room and I go into my son’s room and the train is just sitting there on the tracks.

“Maybe you should go get some rest.” My husband tells me.

I call to the little boy “I’m sorry for scaring you. I’m glad you like the trains.”

That train goes off at various and assorted times throughout the next few months. My husband tries to find the source of the problem. He even goes as far as taking the batteries out of the damned thing. We were downstairs on a weekend and that train goes off. My husband looks as pale as a ghost and says “I took the batteries out! That should’ve worked. ” NOT WITH GHOSTS THOUGH!

I nodded and say “Go see if it is the little boy. See if you can see him.”

My husband sneaks upstairs to catch a peek of the ghost boy and never does admit that he saw him. The next day my husband tells me that at engineering school they have an assignment to fix a defected product “I was thinking that train would be perfect for it. We are going to take it apart and find out why it keeps going off even without batteries.”

I nod my head because at this point it freaks me out that damned battery-less train going off all hours of the day and night. I am also sad because it makes my new ghost boy happy and he deserves to be happy.

A few months later my husband comes home with a piece of furniture that belonged to his dead uncle. It wreaks of cigarettes and he puts it up in our bedroom. I want nothing to do with this old filthy smelly piece of junk. My husband is already super attached to it. I think it’s horrible and I don’t want it in our bedroom. MY son was asleep in his own bed but he has the stomach bug…poor guy. My daughter doesn’t ever sleep in her bedroom because it is dark as fuck in there. So she is sleeping on the couch in our bedroom.

My husband and I are talking about why I hate that smoke casket that he brought home and why it definitely is NOT staying in my bedroom where it will suck the fucking air out of….when a door slams and my daughter starts screaming. We both jump up and run upstairs. I in the lead because I’m pissed about that large cigar box my husband brought home to pretend like it’s a antique piece of furniture. I’m pretty certain it’s where good air goes to die… I try to open the door and it won’t budge. My daughter is screaming, the door opens for a second so that I get a glimpse of what was going on. She was standing on my bed screaming…the oscillating fan was spinning around in circles and then the door slams shut in my face and locks again. My husband runs through the bright AF bathroom that is attached to our bedroom as well and he picks up my daughter and brings her out of the bedroom. He looks nervous but trying to downplay the entire fear fest we just lived through and says “You can’t lock yourself in there silly.”

She looked at me and said “I didn’t!”

“I believe you. That was scary huh!” I turn to my husband and say “Get that fucking haunted coffin out of my fucking house, TONIGHT!” I grab my daughter and I take her to her room where we both sleep soundly for the night.

We live in this house long after this episode and that was the last time this dramatic frightful nonsense happens. My friend or maybe it was my sister say it’s because I showed the spirits who the boss of my house was. Up until that night I was afraid, but that night I was angry and I put my foot down. We saw the little boy every once in a while but he was nice. That other menacing spirit did not ever mess with us after I used my angry outside voice.

We only stayed in that house for two years before my husband got a new job and we had to move. I was sad saying goodbye to that house and to my other little ghost boy. That house went on the market quite a few times after we left. I don’t know whether it’s still haunted or if the spirits eventually settled down. My new home is peaceful and I never once was afraid to be alone in it.

Oh and as for the train set I recently asked my husband if he ever figured out what was wrong with it and his response was “I didn’t have a project for that. I brought it to work and threw it in the trash compactor. That fucking thing scared the hell out of me.”

I knew I wasn’t crazy!!!

Moral of my story: If you are building a house and it has a plague of bees and then flies, don’t let that shit go, have a specialist come and check it out. Luckily there are billions of sources to choose from now…back then I was on my own. If you do think there is a spirit there tell it to get the fuck out…show it who the boss is. Another moral don’t let your kids pick out paint….give them pre-approved choices because we had to paint all of the rooms again before selling. Apparently it wasn’t “MARKETABLE”. And lastly I was not crazy after all!

Until next time when I talk about repainting my youngest daughter’s room and the treasures that were found. 🙂