Day: October 31, 2014

NEW STEPS FOR THE OLD DECK

Descent: Weekly Photo Challenge — This week, show us your interpretation of descent.

The old stairs had to go. Several treads were broken and several more were soft and showing signs of rot. On this day, the family got together with friends and new steps emerged. It’s all downhill from the deck above.

IN A HALLOWEEN MOOD

Trick or Trick – It’s Halloween, and you just ran out of candy.

We live off the beaten path. Trick-or-treaters don’t come this way. Our street has too few houses to make it worth the effort — and the road is dark. We don’t even bother to buy candy for the holiday anymore.

When local kids, our kids, want to do “Trick of Treat,” they go into town where there is light, sidewalks, and Halloween decorations.

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In the name of saving electricity, there are no streetlights in this part of town. We aren’t really in town, except technically. City water pipes don’t come here. We have a fire house nearby in which some trucks live, but no firemen.

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Not that we have full-time firefighters. We have a fire chief who doubles as the chief of our tiny police department. It’s a quiet town. As in most small towns, volunteers carry the load.

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We haven’t had a serious fire in quite a while and hopefully, won’t. Now that we’ve had some rain, the danger of fire has dropped. Good.

Because Halloween is here — and we want all our little ghouls, ghosts, goblins, superheros and fairy princesses to be safe.

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THINGS THAT WENT BUMP IN OUR NIGHT

From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-legged beasties
And things that go bump in the night
Good Lord, deliver us!
– Traditional Scottish Prayer

I’ve never met a ghoul, and I have questions about long-legged beasties, but I can speak from personal experience about things that go bump in the night. Long ago in a house far away, we had our own ghosts, or at least “night bumpers.”

Brick House HadleyI cannot claim to have seen a ghost, but I lived in a house where we could hear them. It was 1965 when we bought our tidy little brick house. It had been built in 1932. Most of the house was on the ground floor — kitchen, dining room, living room, two bedrooms and the bath. The upper floor had an unfinished attic and a big bedroom. It was a small house. Solid, a short walking distance from the college where my husband worked and where I was finishing my B.A.

The ambiance of the house from the moment we walked into it was cozy. Friendly. It welcomed everyone, made them feel at home. The house had been built by a couple who had lived there for more than 30 years. They had raised children their children and eventually died in that house.

They were not murdered or anything sordid. They merely grew old and passed on in the house they loved. We loved it too.

The house was a bit neglected. Not falling down, but in need of paint and some modernization. Cosmetic fixes. Paint. Floors needed refinishing. The boiler needed updating.

For the first few months, we lived on the ground floor, but we planned to move to the big upstairs bedroom. It was spacious and had windows full of light. We decided to fix it up, give it a coat of paint and redo the floors before settling upstairs.

Shortly after we moved in, our ghosts began to walk. It was startling the first time we heard it. Loud. Clear. Heavy footsteps, like the soles of hard leather shoes or boots. Plus the sharper noise of heels. It turned out everyone — anyone — could hear it. The noise started every night around eight and continued off and on until midnight.

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

Initially, we heard them upstairs and on the stairway. After we painted the stairs, the footsteps retreated to the upper floor. Once we began painting the bedroom, we heard them for a while longer, but only in the attic. Then, one day, our ghosts were gone. They never came back.

Were they watching to see if we cared for their home? Were we all hallucinating? Maybe the couple who had lived there were watching. Making sure we did right by their house.

I suppose we passed muster and they felt it was okay to leave.

Life is full of stuff that can’t be explained rationally and we didn’t try. But I’ll bet anyone who was in our house during the months our ghosts walked never doubted what they heard.

 

Trick or Trick