by Paige Zeller

Created on: December 14, 2009

The main part of my grandmother's house was built in 1805. It was a strange, low-ceiling colonial, the stairways steep and narrow, built for small people and the retention of heat. The floorboards, which had been ripped up by my grandfather in an overzealous search for a dead skunk, creaked constantly as did the broad-beam rafters. The old glass in the windows, some of which had started to disfigure with time, would rattle when it was windy. Even without being haunted the house had a certain eerie quality to it.

Like most houses built before the ubiquitous use of hospitals, people had been born and had died in the house for generations. According to my grandmother, when one of my ancestors, known as “The Devil” Ives because of how he had treated his slaves and neighbors, died the family heard hooves ride around the house four times and then stop. When they went out to look for a rider, there was no one there. My grandmother, who was an agnostic and a skeptic, told me that the legend was that it was the Devil himself taking my great-great-great grandfather's soul.

Although I never thought the Devil was going to get me, there was something supernatural in that house. When I was a little girl, I would stay there on weekends and during the summer. I would sleep in my aunt's old room, which had a life of its own. My father and aunt knew about it, but didn't want to frighten me, so they never said anything. After my father would tuck me in at night, if I didn't get to sleep immediately, I would start to get the feeling that something was watching me. Being a child and somewhat afraid of the dark, I would try to convince myself that it was just my imagination, but, as I grew older and less afraid of the dark, the feeling never lessened. It was then that I realized that I was not the only spirit in that room.

The one time I actually saw the spirits it was very unexpected. My aunt's room had a window on one side that looked into another bedroom. That window had originally looked out on the backyard, but an addition had been added to the house during the Antebellum period. One day, when I was about ten-years-old, I was running into the room from the hallway and I looked directly into the window. Being midday, with light diffused throughout both rooms and the hallway, a reflection came off the window. I stopped dead in my tracks because, for just a moment, the reflection in the mirror was not my own, but that of two other little girls. It may have only lasted a second, but that vision and the feeling that accompanied it is etched in my mind forever.

Even though I never saw another materialized version of the spirits, I could feel them whenever I walked into that room because I knew the specific feeling of it: it's similar to the feeling you get when a child is hiding behind something. As there was nothing I could do about the spirits, and they were harmless, I just learned to ignore the feeling. When I told my father about the incident years later, he laughed and said it was the same way my aunt had dealt with it.

After my grandmother died, my aunt modernized the house and sold it. I've always been curious what the spirits thought about the new owners, or if they moved on when my family did. Either way, I hope they find peace one day.

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