My goodness... It has been almost a year since my father has passed away. His antics have slowed down in number, but not in the intensity. We are still in the renovation stage of the house and I am sure that this is still causing him unrest. The first major change of the house was to pour a new garage floor. In order to do this, we had to remove my father's work bench that he had built. It was about 20 feet long and solid wood. I tried to take it out in one piece, but he had built it so solid, that I eventually had to chain saw it out. About 20 minutes AFTER I had chain sawed it out (not during the process!), I heard water running. Not a drip, not a full pressure flow, but a steady stream of water running. I went to investigate and found that one of the pipes to the outside water tap had burst and was leaking. Now this may not seem too out of the ordinary, except that that water service was turned completely off at the source! A full 3 gallons of water came out of that pipe that could only hold a few cup fulls. After about 1/2 hour, it stopped completely with no adjustment to the shut off valve. If you have read my other stories, it does appear that my father has a thing for playing with water!
During the last year, most of the experiences have been "normal". Knocking on the walls, banging on the pipes (when no one was using the plumbing) cigarette smoke, etc. This was the case until about 2 weeks ago.
2 weeks ago, I started the major renovation of the basement bathroom. I used several power tools all day (sander, drill, vacuum, etc). At the end of the day, I decided to watch some television downstairs. At 11:30 at night, I heard three distinct bangs on the fireplace chimney. This scared me... And I ran to the bedroom to get under the covers. Apparently our renter also heard these bangs and thought we had started working again. The next day, I started work again with all the power tools. Again at night, I decided to watch television downstairs. At exactly 11:30...three distinct bangs on the fireplace chimney... This time I knew that it was not an intruder, so I decided to finish watching my show... Bad decision! After my show, I went to bed. At 2:30 in the morning, both my dogs were jumping around on the bed. I thought "Great, they need to go outside to do their business!" As I got them up and walked out into the family room, I heard a "crunch". Then, "crunch, crunch,crunch, crunch...etc". It was the sound of footsteps in the snow outside. They went on for at least 30 seconds, and the sound went from the east side of the house, right over to the west side... 60 feet. Again, I was terrified. I suspected that there was a trespasser at on the property. I waited until they stopped and went outside.
The dogs were very anxious to go out, but I made them stay. As soon as I was able to determine that there was no one out there, I let the dogs out. They just bolted. They ran out the door, and ran towards the barn. They ran and ran and ran... Round and round and round. I have never seen them with so much energy, let alone at 2:30 in the morning. I went out with them and let them run...until..."THUD". An extremely large sound came from the west side of the house. It sounded like a mature tree had fallen onto the ground. That was enough. I scooped the small dog up in my arms and called the other dog as I ran to the house. I locked the door, shut off the lights, and ran to bed. Of course, in the morning I had to go investigate. There were no footprints of any sort in the front lawn (which is about 250 feet long) and no fallen trees.
I had presumed that after my many talks with my father that these antics would stop, but apparently not so. I am now at the point that I will take any suggestions as to how I can help my father rest. I do not want to banish him from the home he loved so much, but I really would like to be able to enjoy the home that is now mine without the fear of these activities getting any worse.
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