Things That Go Bump in the Night: Our Friendly Ghosts

Ghosts are such a popular subject that it is difficult to find a single authoritative source. Ghosts have been part of human mythology forever, or at least as long as stories have been told around campfires and maybe even before campfires.

I do not believe that any religion specifically excludes the possibility of ghosts. Many religions and cultures have specialized and complex rituals and customs intended to expel, propitiate, avoid, or otherwise manage the spirits of the dead. The common denominator is that ghosts or wraiths are the spirits of the dead that linger. They may be malevolent or benevolent. The nature of ghosts varies by mythology, religion and culture, sometimes on a case-by-case basis. Even today …

I cannot claim to have seen a ghost, but I lived in a house in which not only I, but everyone heard our ghosts. I married when I was 18. It was 1965. Back then, buying a house was not the daunting challenge it is today. For $20,300, we bought a tidy little brick house built in 1932. It was two stories, with only 1 bathroom on the first floor. Small but solid, it was walking distance from the college where my husband worked and I was still finishing my degree.

1971 on the front steps of the house on Bedford Avenue

Everybody noticed the ambiance of the house from the moment they walked into it. It was an extraordinarily friendly house. It welcomed everyone in and made them feel instantly at home. It had been owned and lived in from the day it was built by a couple who had also died  in it before we bought the house. They were not murdered or anything sordid. They simply grew old and passed away in the home they had always loved.

We loved it too. My son wouldn’t appear on the scene for another 4 years, but it was the right house in which to raise babies. You could feel it.

The house was friendly but also a bit neglected. Not falling down neglected, but in need of paint and improvements to its infrastructure. It still had its original heating system, converted from a coal burner to an oil furnace. Not efficient, but oil was cheap; we didn’t worry about it.

When we first moved in, we lived on the first floor because that’s where the bathroom was. The upstairs had been the attic, but converted to a big bedroom. We planned to move up there, but we wanted to fix it first. Mostly, we wanted to paint. The entire interior of the house was a sort of pale salmon. It wasn’t hideous, but it wasn’t a color we would choose and it was all high gloss paint, stuff that you might use in a kitchen or bath, but seemed odd for an entire house.

We painted the downstairs first. Every night, we heard our ghosts walking. It was not subtle. You could hear the sound of heavy, loud footsteps upstairs, sharp, like the soles of hard leather shoes or boots. Anyone on the first floor head it. The walking started around eight in the evening, continued for a few minutes, then would stop and start randomly until sometime before midnight. It never lasted beyond midnight, nor started before eight.

We called them “The Old Man” and “The Old Woman.” They wore different shoes. Her shoes had a sharp sound, like high heels on a hardwood floor. His were clunkier, like maybe work boots. Both of them had died in the house, so they were the likely candidates for ghosthood, especially since no one else lived in the house until us.

At first, we also heard them on the steps, but after Jeff painted the walls of the stairway, they retreated and we only heard them in the attic and bedroom.

The day Jeff started painting the bedroom, we continued to hear them for a while in the attic and then, one day, they were gone, never to return.

Were they watching to see if we properly cared for and loved their home? I thought so. Benevolent ghosts? Were we all hallucinating? It was the 1960s, so anything is possible, but I think it was the couple who had lived there watching to make sure we did right by the house. We did and I guess they felt it was okay to depart.

Life is full of strangeness. If anyone has bumped into a long-legged beastie, please tell me about it. I’m just dying to know.