The Little Old Lady... (A short scary story)
I was about 6 or 7 when I opened the front door without looking out of the window first.
I’ve since learned my lesson.
Our neighborhood back then was quite ritzy. We lived in a city near Detroit called Grosse Pointe Farms. It was full of rich, hard-working folks. There were mansion-like houses everywhere but my mom, sis, and myself all lived in a very old house from the 1800’s. It apparently used to be a small sewing factory in town waaaaay back in the day. We lived right down the street from a miniature cemetery. Very quaint. Our city had great scenery, great schools, and great opportunities. One of these said opportunities would eventually come knocking on our door. Quite literally. Now when you hear the word “opportunity”, you’re probably thinking, “wow! This 6- or 7-year-old got a job that young?”, but that’s not what I mean. This was more of an opportunity or a chance to become a different, more open minded induvial at an incredibly young age.
It was a Sunday. I had gotten up with my sister and eaten breakfast. My mom worked long hours on her computer back then and would sleep in from time to time. This was one of those times. My sister and I would always race to finish eating because we both wanted to be the first to play our new game system (Super Nintendo). Not to toot my own horn but I’m sure I won that day because I distinctly remember playing early in the morning when my sister and I heard… the knock.
It was faint at first. As if whomever was doing it wasn’t sure of their own strength against the door.
The second knock was a series of slightly harder knocks.
My sister and I froze. Sure, it was early in the morning. The sun was out, it wasn’t dark, but it was unexpected. “Did mom say she was expecting someone”? We asked each other. Impatient and not wanting to stop playing my video game, I got up quickly and opened the door. I had forgotten the rule about this in the moment though. We were supposed to at least look out the window to see if it was someone we knew first.
When I opened the door, it wasn’t anyone any of us knew. It was just a little old lady. Standing on our porch with the brightest smile on her face at seeing a kid answer the door. This was unexpected but quite a relief as well. I mean I couldn’t get in too much trouble for indulging a little old woman. Maybe she just wanted to talk. Standing there, she was about my height at the time. She was very pale and might’ve been wearing powder make-up. Couldn’t tell. She was smiling the whole time though.
“Hi! I was hoping to talk to your mother!”, she rang out in a soft but squeaky voice. “Is she home?”
My sister, at this point, had ran upstairs to fetch my mom who wasn’t in the best of moods because of the way she was just woken up in a panic. She sighed and stared me down, obviously telling me that I was grounded without having to say it. We all know “the look”.
I traded places with my mom. Now she was the one in front of the old lady. They stood on the porch and talked while my sister and I creepily peered through the curtains to eavesdrop. They seemed to be having a great conversation actually. The lady was quiet and petite so we couldn’t hear what she was saying but she was making our mom smile and giggle a bit which was a good sign. Especially for me at the time.
About 5 or 10 minutes passed while they talked, and we saw the lady take our mom’s hand with both of hers and give her a pleasant shake goodbye. What a nice old lady.
Our mom walked back inside with a confused smile on her face. She wasn’t that mad at me after all. In fact, she started telling us about what the lady told her.
She told us that the woman said she used to live on our street. She told her that she had family that used to actually live in our house. It was a long time ago though and they had since moved on, she said.
My mom seemed confused still, however. “I feel like I met that lady before or something”, she said, ominously.
After that drama, I quickly went back to playing Donkey Kong Country- I had bananas to collect.
Days past and our mom just couldn’t leave her meeting with the lady well enough alone. She kept telling us about what that lady said. Kept mentioning the names. “The McCarthy family this, the McCarthy family that”. Obviously, that lady had struck a nerve.
My sister and I didn’t think much of it. We went on with our lives like normal. “Normal” included us making an almost daily trip to the cemetery down the street. There was a black gate we would hop right over and a mound of dirt for any possible new graves to be dug in the future that we would sit on top of and eat some snacks or just talk for a bit.
About 3 days after the old lady had made her impression on our mom’s sanity, we went back to the cemetery. This time we had other plans. We had gone there so many times just to relax but we had never really walked around and looked at the grave sites. So we started trying to read the graves this time. The dates were unbelievable. We were looking at stones and tombs that dated back to the 1700’s! We were excited and having fun at that point. Who would’ve thought learning about dead people could be so amusing? So, we kept looking at each one and reading them aloud to one another. That is until we saw some that made our hearts drop…
Was the old lady really there that day she appeared on our porch? Was she referring to her family “moving on” with perhaps a different meaning? To this day me and my family believe that this lady was a spirit. We believe that she wanted to tell us about her presence and possibly the presence of her sons- in our house. For years after that we couldn’t go to sleep without hearing creaking coming up the steps or the piano downstairs playing gently late at night. Just a note or two at a time. There were times when my sister would be listening to inappropriate music and her radio would stop working until the next day. There were even nights my mom was too scared to sleep because she would feel a heavy weight at the end of her bed. The lady wanted to be known. She wanted to be free. The day that little old lady appeared on our porch, she opened up our minds and from then on, we knew we weren’t alone in our house…
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