More Tales From The Home Place

I have already written about the old home place and some of the strange and unusual things that has happened there. I will now share a few more stories with you. Although they were frightening at the time, now they don't seem so bad.

This incident happened when I was about fourteen or fifteen, so it would make it happening in 1968 or 69. It was a Saturday morning and the only ones home were Mom, Dad, my older sister and me. My sister was taking Mom and Dad "trading"[that's what we called grocery shopping] and I was asked if I wanted to go along. I turned the trip down, opting to stay home and listen to records and enjoy some "me time". Things didn't exactly go as planned.

I watched them pull out of the driveway and drive out of sight. I was alone at last. Now I could listen to the records as loud as I wished without someone yelling to turn it down. I fixed me a glass of Kool-Aid, loaded the record player [now I'm showing my age] and was just fixing to kick back when I heard a thunderous crash coming from the living room. I thought "What the heck was that?" and ran to the living room to see what had happened.

When I got to the living room and saw nothing out of place, I went upstairs to check. Nothing wrong there either. I went back downstairs and as I stepped into the living room I heard another booming crash coming from the end of the house I was just in! I was getting a bit unnerved but I still made a mad dash back to the dining room to check for the noise. I made the same check in all the rooms on that end of the house and came up empty again.

I sat down in the dining room, took a sip of Kool-Aid and was about to ponder on it, when it crashed in the living room again. I ran to the living room and as soon as I got there, there was a crash in the dining room. I said to myself, "Self, to hell with this. It's time to get outta Dodge." I made a quick, make that a very quick, run through the house locking the doors and I waited at the end of the driveway until they got home.

My Dad had a special way of knocking on the door if he came home after dark. He would tap on the door with the butt of his pocketknife, that way we would know that it was him. Everyone in the family recognized his "trademark" knock. Dad passed away in the fall of 1972 of heart failure.

At our house Christmas was a big deal, and the whole family gathered on Christmas Eve. The old home place was filled to the brim with family members in about every room. Me, my brother Earl, and several others were sitting in the living room talking about one thing and then the other. Our conversations were interrupted by that familiar knock. Earl jumps up and runs to open the door, with all of us hoping against hope to see Daddy standing there, only to be greeted by cold December air.

Was it Dad knocking on the door? I don't know. Was it somebody's idea of a joke? I don't know that either, all I can say is I like to think it was him.