My Parents’ House

July 4th weekend 2021 my father suddenly dropped dead. And when I say he dropped dead, I literally mean he dropped dead. July 2, 2021 he was at home with my mother and he collapsed, and that was it. When the ambulance arrived he was sort of hanging on……but not really, and he was pronounced dead when he arrived at the hospital 2 blocks from the house. I’m not going to get into why he dropped dead because the story is about the house he and my mother lived in……But I had to mention his death because his death caused my mom to have to live alone, which she did for about 6 months before she decided that she wanted to sell the house and move in with us. I was kind of surprised she wanted to get rid of the house because I thought she loved the house, and she and my dad lived there for years.

At first, my husband was pushing to sell our house and move into my parents’ house, but I refused. My parents’ house is a really nice house, but there are odd things about it. It is a turn of the century house in a historical part of town, so I am sure some interesting things happened in that house before my parents owned it. The people my parents bought it from only lived there for two years before they sold it, and they seemed desperate to get out of there. My parents never questioned it.

When I was growing up strange things happened in the house and my parents didn’t really believe that odd things happened to me and that I experienced odd things in the house. I used to hear footsteps up and down the hallway in the middle of the night. The end of my bed would sometimes feel as if someone was sitting there but no one was there. My bedroom was next to the garage and the lock on the garage constantly swung back and forth and no one was there, and it was not windy. I often saw a man in the garage that no one else saw. Once my dad did believe me and he went out into the garage with his rifle to confront the guy, but no one was there. My dog did not like my room, and he would not hang out with me if I was in my room. He would bark in the doorway. Later on, when my husband and I were house sitting while my parents were out of town, and our dogs were with us, the dogs started barking at nothing in the hallway and did not want to be in that part of the house. When my son was three years old he told me he was talking to a lady in the hallway. He pulled me into the hallway and I smelled my grandmother’s perfume. My son said that the lady was laughing and she was really nice. I grabbed a family photo with my grandmother and her sisters and other family in it, and showed it to my son. I asked him if the nice lady was in the photo and he pointed to my grandmother. And when I told my son that is his great grandmother, my son told me that he knew that because the lady told him…..

Even being in that house as adult I still felt some kind of presence and got a weird vibe but my parents dismissed me. My son has never liked the house, and even at 18 was uncomfortable in the house. My husband said he didn’t notice anything and has always laughed about the stories I told, and I am not sure he believes the stories. But after my dad died I felt that the vibe of the house changed so I started to think that because my parents didn’t get along that maaaaybe that was some of the reason that the house felt off, and now that my dad was gone and my mom was not arguing with him all the time, the vibe changed. Because when all the things were going on when I was a teenager we had the house blessed by a priest with holy water, and a medium came to the house and told whoever was in the house to leave, and actually, all the weird things stopped……until my son saw my grandmother, but that was sweet not creepy or scary.

So my mom put the house on the market and there were offers immediately. My mom seemed anxious to get out of there and I thought it was odd, but sometimes my mom is strange so I just chalked it up to that. My mom had refused to even go into the bedroom that she had shared with my dad, and again, and I also had the thought that it was because she didn’t want to be in there without him. And my mom didn’t want to talk about it. She spent weekends at our house until the house sold, and stated that our house was so warm and inviting, and that there was a warm glow in the house that was comforting. But I already knew that because that is exactly why I really worked to make sure we were the ones who bought the house. A house’s vibe is so important to me.

So moving day comes around for my mom, and everything was ready to go. The movers showed up and my mom just wanted to get out of there, and she just took off and drove to our house leaving me to manage all of her things. I thought it was odd, but again, my mom can be odd. And honestly I was relieved because it gave me the opportunity to get rid of some of the junky things my mom tried to keep. We added onto the house so she could move in, but there just wasn’t room for absolutely everything. When the house was empty, and the movers were ready to go, I told them to go on ahead and since my husband and mom were already at our house, I could stay behind for a little bit to say my goodbyes to the house where I grew up. I also wanted to see what the vibe of the house was with all of the things out of it, and with just me in the house.

So there I was, in my parents’ big house all alone. I walked room to room imagining what it was like when my parents were newly married and were moving in, so excited to own their first and only home. And when I walked to the back of the house where I had felt scared in the past, I only felt a sense of calm. I went into my parents’ room and sat on the floor, and it felt nice. There was not a bad vibe. I sat on the floor in my old room and it also had a good vibe. I went into one of the bedrooms that had been my grandmother’s room (my dad’s mom) for awhile and that room still felt strange. I decided to open the closet door and hidden behind the door was a large, antique mirror that has belonged to my grandmother. I thought is was odd that it had been left behind. I pulled it from the closet and attached to the back were some great old family photos that I had never seen before. There were even a few photos of my grandmother and I together when I was little that I don’t remember. I put the photos in my purse and immediately the vibe in the room changed and I started smelling cigarette smoke, and as I am remembering this the hair is standing up on the back of my neck. My grandmother did smoke. The smell was getting so strong that I said out loud, “Grandma, I can’t stand the smell of the smoke,” and the smoke cleared up. I took the mirror to my truck and put in the back seat, and then I went back in the house. Now when I walked room to room this time, the air felt light and bright, and the house felt happy. Maybe part of the bad vibe was because my grandmother wanted me to find the mirror and the pictures??!! Because my husband, the movers, and my son claim they looked in that closet and didn’t see the mirror.

So I said goodbye to the house standing there in the very middle of the house, and it felt ok. Funnily enough my son told me that my mom told him that she wanted out of the house because a lot of weird things were happening in the house after my dad died, and she felt as if she was being watched. My hair is standing up again……..My mom told my son that she no longer felt welcome in the house, and I am wondering if my grandmother, as in my dad’s mom, was hanging out and the vibe was bad because my mom and grandmother did not like each other at all. Who knows! But all I know is that a few weeks later the new owner asked to see me because he found more pictures in the house and he wanted to hand them to me rather than mail them. When I was in the house to get the pictures, the vibe was still good, and the new owner told me that the house felt happy to him. The new owner ironically writes horror stories and screenplays for films, and when I told him the story of the house (he asked about the history) he told me that he wouldn’t mind if the house acted up because it would give him material to write. How ironic. And by the way, my mom refused to admit to me that weird things happened in the house when she lived there alone. I find that funny.