We bought our
house in Ohio in 2000, not that long ago it seems.
We've had nothing but good times
since we moved in.
The
history of the house was not that old.
The house was built in 1980.
We're only the second owners.
The couple who bought this house
when it was built came from
Cleveland, and it was their retirement home.
It sits elevated from the river, on
a large hill that provides a lovely overlook of the river. You can
walk down the hill to the river and sit on the bank, very peaceful
and lovey.
It's a wooded lot; it makes
the perfect cabin in the woods.
It
is a drive to town; not that far but far enough to make it rural.
It was in a lovely resort area and
was to be the retirement home of their dreams.
The
builder was a crook, as that story is told.
He built many homes in this area
on speculation, in the real estate boom of the early 1980s. He
abandoned the project during the housing crash, leaving many homes
incomplete. Many of them had been bought while the homes were
still in the building phases, and many owners were left holding the
mortgages and deeds to incomplete homes while the builder went on
permanent vacation in Florida.
A couple of companies who were
providing supplies for these homes also were left holding large
debts and it resulted in one or two going bankrupt.
Back
to the couple who bought this house.
He was an immigrant, who worked as
a carpenter all his life in Cleveland. She was a housewife, a
mother, who was diabetic and now had some serious medical issues
because of it. But she seemed to be quite happy about it all.
She was the one we bought the
house from.
She was a lovely lady, very
pleasant and she remembered the house fondly.
Their
house was not finished when the builder took off. The husband went
to work finishing the floors and putting in the kitchen.
It is a custom kitchen, with a lot
of cabinets and counters, all Formica finish, as was the style of
the day.
Same with the bathroom; he
installed it all and finished it.
He also helped his son start to
finish the lower level, which was not even half done when we saw
the house for the first time. Neighbors are quick with stories
about these two.
It seems they were well liked, and
some neighbors remained in touch with her.
They
lived there from 1980 to about 1998.
The son was supposed to move in,
back in 1993 or so, but suffered an accident, and ended up staying
in Cleveland where he could be taken care of.
It was a very tragic story that
becomes worse. In 1995, the husband was taken ill with cancer.
He passed away that year.
That
left this poor woman alone in the woods.
She was legally blind and
diabetic. You need a car to get anywhere. The driveway is over 300
feet long, just to get to the road and the mailbox.
As we
were told by her second son and by her at the closing on the house,
she lived there for about two and a half years after her husband
died.
She then had a bad accident that
left her unable to walk, and her second son finally came to take
her back to Cleveland, where she lived at the time with her two
sons.
When
we bought the house, the bedroom had a chain lock on the inside.
She must have been that scared
when she lived there alone, to have a lock like that on the bedroom
door.
There was what appeared to be a
burn mark on the kitchen rug.
(Yea, the kitchen had this nylon
rug.) It appears she had a hot grease spill that burned the rug.
For those two plus years, she had
it hard.
There
were many things that went wrong with the house that she obviously
could not fix on her own.
Some of the appliances had broken;
the house was not cleaned or maintained.
The back deck, which was never
painted, and appeared to be made of materials that were not
treated, was in bad repair.
The
house remained empty for the next two and a half years.
She could not part with it.
Too many good memories for her.
She refused to sell.
Till about three months before we
saw the house.
As we
drove up, we could not see the house.
The property was overgrown, and
from the driveway, all you could see were trees and bushes that hid
the house. As I said, the driveway was 300 feet long. The property,
about 4 plus acres, and it was a jungle.
You could not get to the river;
trees had come down, even one on the house, which they had to fix
before it went on the market.
At that point, the son finally
talked mom into selling the house.
I am
a witch.
Most of you know that.
When I saw the house, the natural
state of the property, I thought - wow, this is fabulous.
And I also thought – wow, what a
mess.
I’m a city girl.
While I like natural, I also don’t
like clean up.
But the price of the house was
more than reasonable, and we decided to purchase the house.
Now,
there is nothing scary so far.
Unless you count the cleanup. It
took us a couple of years to get the house to where we wanted it.
But we are happy with the efforts
we have put into it.
The reason I went into this is
that you need the history to understand what happens next.
The
first night we are in the house, I do a cleansing.
Witches do that.
Salt on the floors to remove the
energies of the previous owners, to give the house a neutral
feeling.
Yes, I could feel the old owner
here.
The husband was still here.
He never left. I could understand
that.
He put the last years of his life
into that house, and I am sure he loved it enough that he could not
part from it.
I did
a formal cleaning the next few days, washing down the house,
cleaning it, we did some painting.
But we could feel the husband
there, wandering around, brooding.
Yea, he was brooding. I could tell
he was not happy someone else was in the house.
He
wandered around the house, making the floorboard’s creek.
He took to turning lights on and
off.
We originally thought it was a
short and called the electrician.
Well, ok, there was a dead
chipmunk in the circuit breaker panel when the electrician opened
it up, but that only explained why some circuits didn’t work.
It did not explain the lights
going on and off.
You
could hear him wander around on the deck.
We didn’t go out on it much; the
boards bounced
and was no longer able to stand up to much weight.
But he wandered around the house,
upstairs and downstairs.
I got
fed up with it when I got up one night and
bumped
into him in the bathroom.
Damn, scared the living daylights
out of me.
I was half asleep and didn’t
expect to find him in the bathroom. Enough was enough.
I decided right then and there to
banish
him.
This
was our house now.
He didn’t like the wallpaper
coming down in the kitchen and messed with the lights in there for
weeks afterwards.
He didn’t like my taking the lock
off the bedroom door and messed with the lights there as well.
Mind you, he was not malicious,
just a pain in the butt.
Annoying.
I didn’t mind him around, but I
also was tired of bumping into him all the time and the lights
going on and off at all times of the day and night.
Got to the point where I would
yell Cut it out, old man and give
it a rest and the lights would
return to normal for a bit.
Now
back to the bathroom.
Enough was enough and the next day
I sat and had a talk
with him.
This was our house now.
He had to deal with it.
His reply was that he was staying.
Damn, a very strong-willed spirit.
OK, can we compromise?
If we’re home, he is outside.
When we leave, we don’t care where
he goes, as long as he does not touch anything.
Stop messing with the lights. I am
a light sleeper, and we work.
Lights on and off disturbs my
sleep.
You worked once, how would you
like to go to work tired every day.
Besides, we are fixing the place
up, he should be happy we are taking care of it after all this
time.
Compromise, and it can work.
Well,
he kept it for the most part.
He did spook a few of our guests,
who spent time in the downstairs guest room.
I figure he was roaming the lower
level while we slept.
One guest ran into him during a
nightly visit to the lower bathroom. She was, of course, startled,
but being a witch, she also told him to go wander somewhere else,
she wanted her privacy.
He
seemed to wander off.
A couple of our witchy friends ran
into him as well. We did not make it a point to discuss him till
AFTER they would encounter him.
No sense upsetting our guests.
Most of them shrugged it off
anyway, they were used to it. Or laughed and were delighted we had
a spirit in the house.
Well,
we had come to a kind of understanding of a kind.
However, the lights in the lower
level always seemed to remind us there was someone else wandering
around.
We adjusted.
Several
years come and go, we have settled into our home and become used to
the little reminders that he is here.
We peacefully co-exist.
He messes with the lights in the
lower level, and I don’t run into him in the bathroom anymore.
We
had a wicked winter one year. January was filled with heavy
snowstorms.
Lots and lots of snow measured in
feet, snowing several days at a time. There was always fresh powder
and it was bitter cold that year. We had the fireplaces going all
the time just to heat the house. The furnace couldn’t keep up. One
of the worst winters we had there.
I am
an early riser, usually up just before the sun to put more wood on
the fires.
That’s how hubby and I did it.
He is the night owl and he stacks
the wood before he goes to bed.
I am the early bird; I start up
the fires in the morning.
It
was an early Sunday morning in mid-January, and it had stopped
snowing after a particularly bad storm. It was promising to be a
beautiful morning. The sun had just started to lighten the winter
sky. I put the wood in the fireplaces and decided to get the
laundry done.
Down the stairs I go, over to the
laundry room.
As I am taking the clothes out of
the dryer, I hear a woman’s voice calling down the stairs.
It was not loud, I couldn’t quite
make out what she said, but it startled me.
Who would be over this early in
the morning?
What’s wrong?
I walk over to the stairs and call
up the stairs.
No answer.
I’m
hearing things.
Okay, back to the laundry.
Just as I get to the dryer, again,
a woman’s voice calls down the stairs again.
OK, someone is here.
Back to the stairs, and I’m
calling up the stairs who’s here?
No answer.
As I get to the top landing, I
hear only my husband snoring in the bedroom.
I checked around the house.
No one is here.
The front door is locked.
OK,
this is weird, but what’s going on?
I wandered past the back door to
the deck, and now I see two people wandering down the back end of
the property to the river.
OK, who are these people and what
are they doing wandering around the place in this cold and in the
deep snow no less.
I watched them for a minute in the
light of the rising sun trying to see who they are.
They appeared to be two older
people.
I wonder if that’s a neighbor.
I don’t recognize them, and that
snow is no place for anyone to be walking down that hill.
Damn, these people around here
don’t have a lick of sense sometimes.
I got
dressed and put on boots, grabbed a coat and went out the back
door.
I stood for a second to see how
far they got, and I don’t see anyone. I started to look for their
tracks in the snow, to see where they went. There were none.
Only my own tracks to the edge of
the hill going down to the river.
There were no footprints down the
hill.
I
stopped for a second.
This was weird.
The property is not that big that
they could have gotten that far in the few minutes it took me to
get dressed.
And what’s with the
no footprints thing.
This was totally weird.
Almost
spooky.
I spoke to the
husband when he woke up.
He thought it was a play of light,
maybe a deer or two wandering through the property.
But the no prints were very
puzzling. We let it go for the time being.
It
was a while before we found out.
Once everyone could get out of
their houses we ran into a neighbor.
Did you hear that the woman who
owned your house passed away? When, I asked.
Oh, Sunday passed two weeks ago,
she says to me.
Sunday, early in the morning.
She was in the hospital for a week
before she passed.
That
was the Sunday morning after that bad snowstorm. The morning I was
up at sunrise.
The calling down the stairs.
A woman’s voice.
The husband that had been
wandering around the lower level.
Strange, but the lower level had
been very quiet, but then again, I only go down there to do laundry
and clean.
However, it had been quiet.
She
came back for him.
It would make sense that she would
call down the stairs for him.
So, that’s why he stayed here. He
had been waiting for her all this time.
And
they took a final walk down to the river together.
Duh! Silly me.
Why hadn’t I figured that out.
I
still have an image of the two of them walking hand in hand in the
snow down to the river at sunrise in my memory.
Something that still amazes me.
A
love like that is rare.
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