My Mom's House 2

As most of you know by now, I and my son JR recently went on vacation to Ohio. Per usual, we stayed with my Mom. Normally when I visit her by myself I sleep in the spare room downstairs; however, due to my step-dad's recent chemo treatments, she thought it was better that we stayed upstairs in the apartment to be as little disturbance to him as possible. I was really psyched, but JR, after the experiences he had the last time he stayed up there, was somewhat apprehensive to say the least.

We had started our trip with an early morning flight, 6am, which meant we had to be at the airport by at least 4:30. When we landed in Cleveland, we spent most of the day with my brother and his family. By the time we got to my Mom's, almost an hour away, we were very tired from our trip. JR went riding around on the 4-wheeler until it was dark, and then we went to bed. We slept very well... The first night!

JR had slept until around 1pm, (but accounting for the time change, for us it was only 10am) and at around 4pm, he told me he was going upstairs to take a nap. I fiddled around for a while and decided to go upstairs too, about a half an hour later. I was in the kitchen, standing by the table when he came down the hallway and saw me. He nearly jumped out of his skin! I asked him what was wrong. He said that the entire time he was laying down, something kept poking him. He said it was just a light little touch in the ribs, stomach, back, chest, and on his face. It freaked him out, and he slept on the couch from that point on. I told him the ghostie probably figured he'd had enough sleep and he needed to get up and moving.

Shortly after he decided to nap in my room, I went to the bathroom. There is a closet between the kitchen and bathroom, and the door was ajar. I asked JR if he'd been in there, he said no, and neither had I. My step-sister had been living there for some time and had just recently moved out, and still had some belongings there so we were trying to respect her by not being nosy. I closed the door and discovered that it was kind of hard to do; it was very sticky and made a squeaky noise as I did so. I think we would have heard it open. I also discovered that the knob was loose (and noisy) and would move if pulled or pushed, and was only there to assist in opening the door since there is no latch.

I then went into his room with my recorder. I noted where I was and why, and also some voices of others who were talking outside in the neighbor's yard. I had taken my notebook with me (thinking "won't Miracles be proud?") and was documenting what had just happened. I glanced at the recorder a few minutes later and the screen was blank, meaning the batteries were dead. So, having a backup, I went to retrieve it and discovered the batteries in it were dead, also. Don'cha know, we had no spares at the time since I had just put fresh batteries in both recorders before I left Las Vegas. I figured I would pick them up when we went to get the disposable cameras. All I got on my recording are the notations I cited and some rustling of paper as I opened my notebook.

The next day JR and I were busy running around visiting the local cemeteries and doing a little shopping. We did the dinner dishes and went upstairs to let my step-dad rest. JR decided to go out and have a cigarette before he hit the couch for the night. So I was sitting on the couch enjoying the silence, and I heard him rummaging around in his room, then I heard him approach the living room. The hallway is squeaky, but at the point where the door separates the two areas there is a very big, deep creak. My step-sister had left a full length mirror, and it was positioned so that I could see down the hallway from the couch. No JR. In fact when I got up to see what could have made the noise, I heard the back door close, and him sneezing as he came up the back stairs. Cool, huh?

The next day was our ghost hunt at Mansfield. Afterward, we had gone back to Cleveland and stayed there until Saturday morning. JR's sister, who still lives in Ohio, came and scooped him up to spend some time with him. I was going to get the whole upstairs to myself, so I decided to spend the night in JR's room. I left a little light on above the sink in the kitchen in case I had to use the bathroom during the night.

I had stayed up rather late because I was going over my recordings from the ghost hunt and making notes. I went out to have my last cigarette of the day. When I got back upstairs, the little light was off. I went in and sure enough, the switch was in the off position. I turned it on again and went to bed.

When I sat down on the bed I said, "Okay, ghosties! Gimme your best shot!" I lay down, and immediately felt pressure in my head. My body felt tingly, and I felt sick to my stomach. I sat straight up and said, "Thank you! That's all I need! All I really wanted was a poke or whisper, so you can stop now, please." I slept through the rest of the night and the only other disturbance was the smell of a skunk who'd sprayed someone/thing. I got up the next morning and turned the little light off.

That evening, as we were getting our things packed up to leave in the morning, I tried to turn the little light on again; however, it didn't work. Before we went to bed for the night, I told my Mom and Step-Dad about the light, that I may have burned the bulb by leaving it on for so long the night before. Frank said the light was on 24/7 the entire time his Mom and Dad had lived there and they never replaced the bulb. But since Sandy had been living there, the light got temperamental, and would work sometimes, sometimes not, even after replacing the bulb. I told them to keep an eye up there in case it decided to come on some night, and I didn't want them thinking the ghosties had done it haha. My Mom gave me one "those" looks, rolled her eyes and said, "We won't!"