Living in a Haunted House

Haunted houses; they have a reputation.  Haunted houses are often remote, in some part of a dark forest where there is a perpetual storm and possible secret burials. The houses are occupied by the Munsters, or the Addams Family, or the vampires and witches from Anne Rice's novels and normal people fear to tread the dark, musty halls.

                                            Add a couple "sheet-ghosts" for good measure.

I have always lived in haunted houses. My parent's house was in the woods. It was a Uni-Built that no one else but our family had ever lived in. My parents still live there. It's a very warm, happy place. I learned to be friends with the animals, play outdoors, and a healthy work ethic there.  (I later learned how spoiled I really was as a child because I knew where 80 percent of my food was grown and the people who grew the food.)

                                                    This is a pretty close facsimile.

Strange things happened there. I heard voices. I saw boxes move on their own. I heard footsteps, doors slam, and I investigated. I heard whistling.  No one was ever there.  It happened at night, in broad daylight, when I was alone, or when I was surrounded by people. It simply didn't matter. I was only particularly afraid once or twice.  The whistling was the worst.  I had to ask it to stop aloud...it did, but it didn't want to obey, not really.  My parents never really believed me, even though, sometimes, they heard the same noises I did and were puzzled.  Like the sound of a door slamming, that, upon further investigation was locked with a padlock; they couldn't explain it and since they couldn't explain it, didn't seem worried about it.  But, most of the time, I was the only one to witness the various weird.

My brother has never said whether anything happened to him there, and I never remember to ask.  

I moved into my grandma's 1970 Detroiter. It was a tiny mobile home that was the first home my grandparents owned.  They'd spent their whole lives renting and finally were able to scrimp and save to buy this tiny little piece of land with this tiny little trailer on it.  It was yellow, white and black and bordered a forest/pasture, Mill Creek, which flooded, sometimes over the road, and a swamp. Vicious mosquitoes were our neighbors.

                                              Yep, that's a Detroiter.

Oddly enough, about this time I also moved in with a Detroiter. My future husband, Jon, was from a suburb of Detroit.  Also, because of the first initial of my grandparents', and my last name was on the front door was exactly the Old English script D of the Detroit Tigers...it seemed so strange at the time.  My grandma wanted me to live there when she was no longer able to live on her own.  She died soon after I moved in.  I'd see things like her rocking chair rocking when no one was around; and ornaments on my small Christmas tree move for no reason....Jon saw things too. And, also, heard things. He had the idea that the ghosts didn't like him.  I used to tell him its just Grandma, say hello...but if it had been Grandpa, I suppose Grandpa wouldn't have known who this guy was in "his house" and maybe it would have been creepy. Grandma had gotten to meet Jon a couple times and liked him, as far as I know.

I currently live in a 1949 house near Detroit that pretty much looks like all the other houses that were mass produced after the soldiers came home from WWII.

                                           The whole town looks like this, for miles.

The neighbors are close enough that you can hear their phones ring when I am in my own yard, or sometimes, my own house.  We have the largest trees in the area, and we still have those pesky mosquitoes since South East Michigan is basically an enormous swamp.

We have heard, individually and together, the sounds of happy parties going on inside our house. Muffled voices, muffled bits and pieces of music, happy sounds.

 Lately, though, I have heard the same noise twice, and its quite disconcerting. Knocking.  The dogs, know its not a person. How, I don't know, they just KNOW.  Neither time did they bark or become the least bit excited.  The first time, I was alone, in bed, reading. Jon was at a friend's house.  I jumped up to investigate thinking one of Jon's friends must be outside knocking on the front door or that Jon himself was home and didn't want to bother with his key.  Nope. Nothing. I called Jon, kind of spooked. He didn't think much of it. I am often unsettled by living around so many people when I was always used to living in a place where I knew all my neighbors even if they were miles from my house.

Tonight, Jon and I were both home, sitting on the sofa watching Netflix when the knocking happened.  The dogs, not even Emma, the dog of constant vigilance who also isn't used to living around so many other people, turned a hair; I think she may have yawned. Jon was quite perturbed and did the thing I did the first time I heard the knocking; looked out all the doors and windows. Nothing.  We have never heard other people knock on our neighbor's front doors. Also, this always seems to happen quite late at night...so the odds of that are fairly low. Emma, of Constant Vigilance, always notes all happenings at neighboring houses with a ringing bark anyway.

                                                  Emma, of Constant Vigilance
Just when I forget I've always lived in a haunted house, something always reminds me....that energy has to go somewhere, I suppose. Dead, but not willing to be forgotten.