Haunted house update...and it's a big one

I had what you might call an interesting weekend. It began thusly: a good friend of mine was going to stop by with his new girlfriend (let's call her Jodie). Nothing terribly abnormal about that. Except that the closer they got to my place, the more anxious the girlfriend became. She said, "Hey, I used to live on this street...which house is it?" My friend pointed and replied, "That one." She said, "Oh, no." Turns out, she used to live here as a teenager. And boy did she have some stories to tell.

Funny, when her folks dropped by earlier this summer and I asked them specifically if anything strange had ever happened when they lived here, they said no, not at all. Their daughter had a different tale to tell. She proceeded to spend the better part of an hour recounting the paranormal activity she witnessed. One of the first things she told us was that the main reason they moved was because of this activity. And I'm not talking about creepy feelings of being watched or the occasional tap or moan.

I didn't record my conversation with her so I'll recount as much as I can remember. The story that affected me the most was the one with the children. Jodie used to babysit a bunch of kids at a time. She called it "nannying." Anyway, there were ten kids here and she would periodically count heads. When the kids were in the backyard playing, she would stand in the kitchen window to check on them and to count heads. On one occasion, she counted eleven instead of ten. She went outside, upset because the kids knew they weren't supposed to have any friends over who were not part of the group. When she got out there, she counted ten heads. This happened many other times and when she finally did spot the eleventh child, it was a girl, about six or seven years old wearing a old fashioned white dress and had short, dark hair. This is exactly who my son saw in the backyard in the middle of the night earlier this year.

A few months after moving in here, my roommate/partner started having fainting spells. Medical check ups found nothing wrong. Turns out one of Jodie's sisters also experienced inexplicable fainting spells when living here. Other members of her family would become violently ill for no reason at all. One night, Jodie's mom had had a few and was pretty happy. Jodie says she was always, always, a "happy drunk." Well, Jodie got her mom into the bedroom to get some sleep and then...her mom just went out of her mind. Cursing, raging, saying horrible things to her children. Care to guess which room was the bedroom? My son's room.

My other favorite story involes the fireplace. They hadn't had a fire in the fireplace for three days and Jodie went to clean out the ash. She scooped the cold ash into a plastic bag and took it out to the garbage. The garbage and recycle bins stood side by side next to the porch (just to the left of the wicker chairs). Many hours later, Jodie's uncle stopped by. He witnessed a plume of flame erupt from the garbage bin and then both bins proceeded to melt into the ground. He explained it away by saying Jodie put hot ash in the garbage. He couldn't explain why the plastic bag she carried the ash to garbage in didn't melt. And Jodie said there was no doubt the ash was three days old and cold.

Jodie's father had an office in the basement. He made it very clear to his children that they were not to go into his office for any reason. One day, he found a child's muddy foot and handprints all over the place. He was upset and chastised the kids and sternly reminded them to never go in there. The next day he came home and found the same thing. Even more upset, he decided to put on a door with a lock. And so the next day? The same thing. A little child's muddy hand and footprints. By the way, Jodie said none of her siblings ever went in there before the door was added much less after. Remember the dirty handprint my son found on his wall?

Turns out Jodie's bedroom is now my bedroom. She asked me if I expreience extreme cold in the room. I do, but not so badly that I think it strange. She said the wall behind her bed would frost over. I've been in the crawlspace behind that wall. It's very well insulated. And then the nightmares. Jodie would have nightmares every night she slept in that room. She swapped her queen bed for a full because she would frequently feel someone sit down on the opposite side of the mattress. And then, like me, she'd hear someone walk up the stairs to her room when no one was there.

This is just a taste of what went on while Jodie lived in the house. I called Chelsea (my psychic) and she was going to come over the next night to meet Jodie and have another look at the house, but she had car trouble in North Dakota and couldn't make it. I'm not going to read too much into that, although it seems a little bit too convenient. I really do have a hard time with coincidences sometimes.

Needless to say, my partner and I were more than a little unsettled by what Jodie had to say. If she's making it all up, she needs to get herself to Hollywood because she's the best actor on the face of the planet. So what do I think of it? Well, I'm not moving, that's for sure. I do think I need to do some digging into the history of this place. Something happened at some point involving a little girl.

I will, of course, keep you posted.