what'sahuntedhouse

I guess it's a morning of deep introspection?

Daughter is a nightmare today. I don't know what's gotten into her. She's knocked down a few lamps (which is horrible! I've got a collection of gorgeous lamps from college and from auctions and abusing my design collection is a huuuuge no-no) and keeps turning the TV off and on (she does not know how to effectively use the device we get the Netflix from, and we have no cable, so there's nothing to watch). It's already so steamy outside, she'd rather be cool indoors. Summers with children are both super-fun and super-annoying. I can't wait until kindergarten starts up…

It's been a hectic few days. Husband's had a lot of work to get done, and there's always like a line of family waiting to see Daughter. Busy, busy weekend. At least I got the lawn mowed. I was alone as I did it, and couldn't help but shiver in the heat when I looked up at the house.

Something about thinking of all these things has made it all worse. Of course that's false, though; ignoring a bully doesn't make him go away, and putting your taxes out of your mind doesn't fill them out and mail them. But dwelling on an issue that you can't control does emphasize it a bit at least. Every tiny sound in the house is amplified, and the large sounds turn into bangs and roars. Last night the dog couldn't sleep downstairs, and the cracks in the plaster of my ceiling appeared to move as I stared at them for way too long in the dark.

Someone has been slowly riding his bike down my street late at night, lighting off leftover fireworks and throwing them in yards and down alleys. Living on the edge of an old town, my neighborhood has never really been particularly safe or classy, and stuff like this happens all the time. The bike asshole is just the most recent annoyance, and the sudden pop of explosions in the night are not helping my sleep or my state of mind.

Husband called me on Friday night while I was out with some of the dudes after his birthday party, asking if it was me who just came in to the house. Seeing as I was at a bar two blocks away, I started gathering my things and getting ready to tab out while staying on the phone with him. I walked him through the house in his ear… and everything was normal. All the doors and windows were locked, but the dog was a mess. Husband swore he had heard the exterior backdoor open and shut, and then the interior one do the same, but he quickly changed his tune with a quick, dismissive laugh.

Daughter is running around, she doesn't have any idea that her eccentricities have been giving me so much pause recently. I thought about asking her the names of some of her buddies this morning, but she clammed right up. I think she has said something like "Loris", but I looked that up, and a Loris is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loris

So that's not helpful.

After I made that post last night, Husband came home and I went to work. I thought about this decision to start cataloging what is going down as I walked to work, and the unseasonable cold of the evening made me shiver. I remembered that once, out of the corner of my eye, I could have sworn I saw someone in my upstairs hallway bent double and rigid, like an "L", running down the hall, and I turned and nothing was there. It looked like a man, and it went very fast, and it was scab-colored all over. Are ghosts not white or transparent?

So I figured I'd get this going sooner rather than later. I'm a dad with a lot of time on his hands, and I have a five year old daughter. I have a degree in graphic design and I have really no use for it, and I work in retail in the downtown in my hometown. I decided to keep a diary of my daughter and the weird things she says, because it is starting to scare me a bit. I don't believe in ghosts, though I read a lot about them when I was younger. I'm not the kind of person that goes into the library to read about paranormal things, and I change the channel when like a ghost hunting show comes on. I'll watch an action movie, definitely not a horror. Point is, it's not in the vernacular of my little household.

But things are weird here. We moved in when she was about two and a half, right around the time she started speaking in complete sentences, and immediately she started talking about people being in the house. My husband and I have parties sometimes, and there were definitely a lot of people coming and going from our house in those early days, but she would talk about people long after we three were all alone. Around that same time, the windows would rattle inexplicably, pipes would groan a lot, and the house would creak, but there would be an underlying sound, like when those sounds were happening, there would be footsteps echoing elsewhere in the home. This place isn't large, so it's a case where you would know if someone else would be in the home.

These days, she talks to people we can't see, she dances around with people who aren't there, and sometimes shrieks in the night because of a presence in her room unknown to the rest of us. And other sounds are becoming more evident, those weird layered noises sounding more like footsteps. 

Look, it's all strange, and I figured I'd start telling people. I know my husband hears these things too, but we don't talk about it. and I really don't want to tell my friends or coworkers about it. So here it is. I'm sure there will be people on tumblr to share this with.