Smells, Sounds, and Night-Time Visitors

The third true ghost story in my series is not really a ghost story
for me. I was not at all frightened by this set of phenomena. Most
of it happened the year my father died.

Dad died April 19 of that year. I had not been a big believer in
people communicating from beyond the grave. At this point, I'd
had a scary incident happen at a school, but that was it.

The first thing that happened was a lot of hang-up phone calls.
The phone rang, but nobody was there. The caller ID said
"Unknown name." I was not working anywhere at the time, having
taken a year off to have #2 son. I knew it wasn't any students
prank-calling. I assumed it was telemarketing. This happened
4 or 5 times a day, for about two months.

Second thing: #2 son lost his nook. That was his pacifier that they
gave him at the hospital, the big ugly brown thing. He couldn't live
without it. He lost it once before, and after hours of searching, we
were relieved to find it under my husband's nightstand. #2 had a
habit of grabbing the ring part and flipping the nook out of his
mouth. He was inconsolable without it. This time it had been gone
for 2 days. He cried all the time. No other pacifier would do. We
tore the house apart. We searched every room, even where he
never went. Closets, laundry room, bathrooms, basement. No nook.
Then I got up one morning and walked through the laundry room
to go outside and feed the dog, and there it was. Right in the middle
of the tile floor. I almost stepped on it. It had not been there the
previous two days. I only did laundry on the weekends, and had
been there each morning to go out to feed the dog.

Third thing: just after the nook-finding incident, we had an epidemic
of coin-finding. In the house, it was dimes. They were in the kitchen
and laundry room, mainly. Out of the house, it was pennies. We
found some coin about every other day for a couple of weeks.
Then it stopped.

Fourth thing: shorly after the funeral, we had a night where the house
would not be quiet. I stayed up late in the living room every night,
because #2 son was 2 months old, and I could hear him cry better
from the living room. The house popped and cracked, about every
3-5 seconds. It came from the stairs, the kitchen, the living room,
the basement. It had not done this before, and didn't do it after.
At the time, I thought the house was settling. We had built it over
the summer and moved in during November, and it was now late
April. I could not even doze off in the recliner, because these pops
and cracks were loud. Then I heard something in the basement.
"Errrr.....errrrr.......errrr." I went down to check. It was #1 son's
remote control dump truck driving itself. The power switch had
been left on.

The next morning, my mom called, as she did every morning. I
told her I hardly got any sleep. She said, "Me neither. I went to
the cemetery yesterday evening, because the people called and
said they put in your dad's headstone. When I got there, I couldn't
find it. I looked around, and they had put it on the wrong grave.
I have been worried about that all night. I couldn't sleep. I am
going to call them as soon as they're open so they can fix it."

Fifth thing: It was the middle of August, my first day to report
to school for my new teaching job. I put #2 son on his changing
table to get him ready. #1 son was tagging along behind me. We
smelled pipe tobacco. It was what my dad had smoked--a blend
of Kentucky Club and some cherry stuff that he mixed up. I had
gotten that job because at my dad's funeral, I talked to someone
who worked at the school who said, "We have a science opening.
You should apply."

We smelled this pipe tobacco another time in the car, about 2-3
months later. I also smelled coffee and cigarettes in the living room
one morning, neither of which we have in our house, both of which
my dad used to start the day.

Sixth thing: after #2 had graduated from crib to bed, I would go
in to check on him at night and to cover him. He was always
twisted up in the blanket, or had it kicked off the side of his
little car bed. Some nights, the blanket would be spread in a
perfect rectangle. Not a crease or wrinkle, picture perfect. How
did he do that, I would wonder. Then #2 started telling me his
grandpa came to his room at night. He didn't even know his
grandpa...he was only two months old when he died. I asked
him what he did at night. "Nuffin'. He is here to see if everything
is OK."

Seventh thing: a couple years later, I was sitting in the living room
one morning, and heard one of the boys get up for the bathroom.
I heard the seat go up, peeing, then the toilet flush. I thought it was a
little strange, since neither one ever lifted the seat, and neither one
liked to flush. I got up to go see which boy did it, to praise him for
the flushing and seat-lifting. They were both sound asleep in their
beds. Hubby had been gone to work for hours.

Eighth thing: I was in the living room watching TV one afternoon.
Hubby had taken the boys to town. I heard the kitchen door
slam, and footsteps halfway through the kitchen. I got up to see
it they had forgotten something, since they had only been gone
about 20 minutes. No one was there. The truck was gone. It
was just me in the house.

Ninth thing: in December the year Dad died, I was at my mom's
house wrapping gifts until about 11:00 p.m. I had #2 son with me.
I said goodbye, and pulled out on the highway that would take
me by the back of Mom's house. Just as I pulled out, a blue-green
sphere of light about the size of a softball came across the sky,
over my car, and went over her house, landing in the side yard.
The best way to describe it is a ball of light like comes out of
a roman candle, only bigger. This was before I had a cell phone,
so I called her as soon as I got home. "You'd better check your
side yard. I saw a ball of fire go over your house. It might have
been a meteor or something." She looked, but nothing was there.

Now here's two things that happened to my mom right after
Dad died. His alarm went off every morning at the time he
used to get up. What's odd about that? They had not even
slept upstairs for a two weeks, and hadn't used the alarms.
He'd been in a hospital bed in the family room. She said it
scared her the first time. She went to turn it off. They each
had an old-fashioned plug-in alarm clock on their side of
the bed. It was his going off. She said, "Well, I thought that
when I walked around to get clothes I might have jarred
the floor, and that made the alarm set itself." After a few
days of it going off, she unplugged it.

Mom took the truck and both cars to get them inspected
so she could get the licenses. It was an all-day project for
her. Dad usually did it. When she got home with the last
one, the porchlights on the outside of the garage went off
and came back on as she pulled into the driveway. She
said it was like a wink. The lights had not done that before,
or since then.

Now that you think I am completely nuts...I will prove it
to you tomorrow, with the tale of the haunted gym.