A Diary of Ghostly Encounters

Saturday June 2, 2012

         We moved today.  It was a long drive.  Pastoral is the only word that I could think of as I looked out the car window.  It took us three hours to get to the property.  The house looked good except for that ugly green color.  We’ll have to do something about that.  I think the old barn on the property is creepy.  It’s way older than the house, and it’s starting to fall apart.
         When we got there Eric nearly jumped out of the car and ran inside.  He was so excited.  I’m not as happy about things, having to move away from my friends and all.  That was the worst part, moving away from my friends, but Eric’s my husband and this job is good for him, good for us.  Still, I don’t like not having any friends here.
         When I was walking into the house I thought I saw someone out in the field by that big oak tree.  This place is creepy.
         The movers arrived an hour after we did.  It was a pain in the butt having no chairs to sit on.  I was exhausted too.


Sunday June 3, 2012

         All of our furniture is in place.  That’s nice.  The weirdest thing happened at dinner though.  I was making Eric’s favorite tomato soup on that big, old stove in the kitchen, the one that came with the house.  When the soup was done I turned off the gas burner and picked up the pot.  Eric was telling me how one of the movers used to live around here when he was a kid.  He told Eric that there used to be another house on this spot but it burned down. That’s where the stove came from.  He said people died in the fire.  Before I got the soup to the table the stove turned on again.  It turned on by itself.  I was standing there holding the soup, not knowing what to do, when all of the sudden the flames shot all the way to the ceiling.  I panicked and threw the soup pot at the stove trying to put out the fire.  My hand got caught on one of the handles, and it got pulled into the fire.  I got burned pretty bad.  It got even weirder after that.  When I screamed from the burn the fire just went out by itself.
         I made Eric turn off the gas to the stove.  He’s going to have someone come out tomorrow and check it out.  My hand hurts like hell.


Monday June 4, 2012

         Eric had his first day of work at his new job.  He’s a partner at a law firm in the town nearby.  He gets paid great and his bennies are good too.  We might think about having a baby soon.
         Something weird happened again today, no fires or anything though.  I was taking a walk around four in the afternoon.  Eric was on his way home with dinner.  I walked out by that big oak tree.  When I got close to it I saw some really old grave stones.  The first marker said:  Elizabeth Martin 1952-1982.  The other marker said:  Tabatha Martin  1974-1982.  They died the same year.  I wonder if they died in the fire.  The younger girl was only eight years old.  That’s really sad.
         When I was looking at the graves a little girl startled me.  I didn’t even hear her walk up.  She was a little weird.  I said hello to her and she said hello back.  She seemed nice and all, but when I asked her what her name was she said she was sorry about my hand.  I guess she noticed my bandage.  Then she said she used to live here.  I guess her parents moved to a different house somewhere around here.  She must have walked pretty far though.
         Then I heard Eric pull up on the gravel driveway.  I watched him get out with our dinner, but when I looked back to tell the little girl I had to leave, she was gone.  I don’t know where she went.  I know we’re in the country, but her parents need to keep a better eye on her or something bad might happen to that kid.


Tuesday June 12, 2012

         I know I haven’t written for a while but nothing much has been going on.  Eric’s settled in at work, and we’re trying to get me pregnant now that we decided to go ahead and have a baby.  No dice yet though.
         Today, Eric was out in that old, nasty barn looking around after work.  He came back to the house carrying a weird, wooden box.  He said his foot fell through the floorboard of the barn, and the box was under it.  When we opened the box it was so creepy.
         There was a little doll inside.  It was plastic and beat up looking.  There was also a bunch of pictures drawn with markers and some with crayons.  I wonder if that girl buried in the graveyard made them.  The only other thing inside was a lone white ribbon, like something you might put in your hair.


Thursday June 28, 2012

         I swear I’m going to lose my mind.  I don’t know what the hell is going on inside this house.  For the last few days weird things have been happening.  Sometimes when I’m doing stuff around the house shadows move across the walls in front of me, like someone just walked by.  When I turn around no one’s there, and I swear I hear footsteps upstairs sometimes.  It never happens when Eric’s around.  He thinks I’m crazy.  He says some of the air vents make weird noises, and that’s what I’m hearing.  What about the freaking shadows?


Tuesday July 17, 2012

         Today, Eric finally started to believe me.  It’s been weeks now that I’ve been hearing the footsteps and seeing those shadows.  We were in the living room after dinner cuddling.  We started to get intimate when all of the sudden we heard loud footsteps going up the stairs.  We both heard them, not just me.  I was scared as hell but so happy that Eric might not think his wife is out of her mind.  The footsteps got even louder and sounded like they were going down the upstairs hallway.  Eric told me to stay where I was.  Then he ran up the steps.  I was so scared.  It was dark outside so I wasn’t going out there, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to just sit and wait.  I ran into the kitchen.  I was going to get a big, butcher knife, but when I reached for the drawer I saw a reflection in the kitchen window.  There was a man standing right behind me.  I screamed and turned around, but no one was there.  I turned back and got a knife from the drawer.  This time I made sure I didn’t look at the window.  Then I heard a voice say, “He doesn’t want you here.”  I screamed again and looked at the back door, where the voice came from.  It was the little girl from the graveyard.  Something grabbed my shoulder and I screamed again.  I swung the knife and cut Eric’s face.  Oh God!  I almost killed him.  I tried to show him the girl but she was gone.
         Eric didn’t find anything upstairs.  He was a lot less nervous about things than I was.  I won’t sleep at all tonight.  What if I am going crazy?


Wednesday August 15, 2012

         I’ve spent the last month ignoring sounds and shadows and making sure I don’t look at any dark windows or mirrors when Eric’s not around.  This is bull, living like this.  I decided to contact the previous owners.  They can’t live far away.  I searched on the internet for the name of the previous owner.  His name is Reginald Berkley.  I found his number on ‘whitepages.com.’  I figured he lived around here and that the little girl was his daughter.
         When I got him on the phone he was nervous about talking to me.  He said he didn’t have a daughter.  I already knew he didn’t live around here from his area code.  He wasn’t even in the same state.  He told me he saw and heard weird things too.  He said he finally moved out when something pushed him down the stairs.  He broke his arm in the fall.  I thanked Reginald for the information and hung up.  The little girl said she used to live here, but if she wasn’t Reginald Berkeley’s daughter, when did she live here?



Thursday August 16, 2012

         I haven’t used that crazy oven alone since that first night.  Eric had it checked out, but the guy said there was nothing wrong with it.  I don’t care what he says.  I’m not using it by myself  anymore.  I made Eric buy a big fire extinguisher in case it happens again.
         Anyway, today was Eric’s birthday, so I decided to grill him his favorite meal on the fire pit in the backyard, a great big ribeye steak.  I was expecting him home soon, and I had just put the steak on the grill.  That’s when things got weird again.  The hair on the back of my neck stood up when I looked out by that big oak tree.  That strange little girl was holding one hand on the tree walking around and around it.
         The girl was creeping me out as much as the rest of stuff happening around her, but for some reason I felt like I needed to talk to her.  I was relieved that she hadn’t run away by the time I walked out to the tree.  I walked real slow so I wouldn’t scare her, but I think I was more afraid than she could ever have been.
         We both said hello, and I asked her what her name was.  She said I could call her Tabby.  I made a joke about a cat, but she didn’t laugh.  When I asked her where she lived she asked me not to tell her daddy where she was.  She seemed afraid after that.  I didn’t mean to scare her.  Then she said I reminded her of her mommy because my hair is yellow.  Tabby must have inherited her mother’s hair.
          When I asked her where she lived she started to cry.  When I asked her what was wrong she said she did something bad and that if she told me I wouldn’t like her.  I told her that wasn’t true, but I don’t know if she believed me.  She wouldn’t stop crying and things got even weirder.  She said she liked to read before she went to sleep, that she used a candle to see her books with.  She said she wasn’t supposed to stay up late like that, but she loved to read.  She said if she used a candle for light no one would notice she was awake.  Then she said something bad happened and she started crying harder.
         That was when I noticed the fire pit.  I’ve never seen it burn like that.  The flames were as tall as the house.  Just like the stove.  By the time I’d run over to it, the flames had died down again.  JUST LIKE THE STOVE.  The Steak was toast.  When I looked back, Tabby was gone.



         
Wednesday September 5, 2012

         I think I am crazy now.  I’ve seen Tabby just a few times since the fire pit incident.  All she talks about is her mother.  When I mention anything else, she either refuses to talk or starts to cry.  I can’t believe I’m considering what I’m considering.
         Today, Eric brought home some information he’d printed out at work.  It was from an old newspaper article.  He used some of his resources to get more information about the house that had burned down on our property.  It said that in 1982 the house burned down and that two people had died in the fire.  A woman named Elizabeth Martin and her daughter Tabatha.  The little girl was only eight.  I guess those are the two graves in the little cemetery by the oak tree.
         The article also said that the woman’s husband, Anthony Martin, started the fire on purpose.  He was caught later and admitted that he and his wife were having trouble.  He’d told the police that if he couldn’t have his family he’d rather they be dead, the sick bastard.  The article said he’d hung himself in his jail cell.
         The freaky thing is, there was a picture of Anthony Martin in the article.  I would recognize that face anywhere.  It was the man in the reflection standing behind me at the sink that night.  There was also a grainy picture of Elizabeth and Tabatha in the article.  The picture isn’t great, but it’s too similar to be a coincidence, and her name, Tabatha…  Tabby.  I think it’s the same little girl I’ve been talking to.  Have I been talking to a dead girl?
         If it is her, I think that she thinks she started the fire somehow.  Maybe with her reading candle or something.  Every time anyone mentions anything about that house burning down something around here bursts into freaking flames and then goes right out again.  Maybe when Tabby gets upset it causes the fires because that was how she died.  I wonder if I should try to tell her the fire wasn’t her fault.


Tuesday October 2, 2012

          I haven’t written for a while.  Tonight, everything went crazy.  The newspaper article Eric had brought me said that Elizabeth and Tabatha had died on October 2, 1982.  I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Tabby in weeks. I really wanted to talk to her.  I needed to tell her that the fire wasn’t her fault, if not for her sake then for the sake of my sanity.  I still hadn’t convinced myself that she was a ghost or that she wasn’t.
         I went in the kitchen  right after dark.  Eric was away on business, and I must have been out of my mind fooling around with this stuff by myself.  I just thought Eric would think I was crazy.  I hadn’t shared any ideas about ghosts with him yet.
         I went into the kitchen and made sure I didn’t look at any dark panes of glass.  I got the wooden box out from under the kitchen sink where Eric had put it.  I got out the drawings and the doll.  I left the white ribbon in the box.  I didn’t know what it was yet.
         I took the doll in my hand and called to Tabby like she was in the other room or something.  For a long time nothing happened.  I shouted that I had something to tell her.  That’s when everything went crazy.
         All of the sudden the cabinet doors started opening and slamming shut like crazy.  The lights dimmed and then got really bright.  They flickered a few times, and then a wooden chair slid across the room and shattered to pieces against the stove.
         I just stood there screaming and trying to cover my face when I heard Tabby’s voice.
         “He’s mad at you!”
         I knelt down in front of the little girl and thought that maybe if she knew the truth, that all of this might go away somehow.  I knew that I had to do something.  I tried to shout over the slamming doors.  I tried to tell Tabby that her father burned the house not her, but the louder I shouted the louder the commotion in the kitchen got.
         “He’s here and he’s mad at you!  What did you do?”  Tabby seemed more frightened than I was.
         “Who!”  I shouted to her.
         “He wants to hurt me!  Where’s my mommy?”  Tabby was in tears, and it was breaking my heart.  I told her to run but she just shouted something about ‘the fire’ and how she couldn’t get out.  I was starting to cry myself when the shadow moved across the wall.  That’s when I turned and saw him.
         It was Anthony Martin.  I could see the mark around his neck where he’d hung himself.  His face was pale and lifeless, like a person looks in a casket.  He was looking at Tabby and walking toward us.  I shouted at him to stay away.  When he kept coming I picked up the wooden box and threw it at him.  I wasn’t strong enough to even get the box half way there much less do any damage.  It clattered across the kitchen floor and overturned spilling the white ribbon in front of him.
         For some reason when he saw the ribbon he stopped and got a perplexed look on his face.  I guess he gathered up his mettle again and started toward us.  That’s when the ribbon started to sparkle and glow.  It floated up in the air and started swirling around like there was wind or something that I couldn’t feel.  The ribbon floated up to eye level and then glowed so bright that I couldn’t see anything.  The light faded, and then standing there in front of me was a woman in a white dress.  The white ribbon was tied in her hair.  She was facing Tabby and me.  Anthony Martin’s ghost stopped again.  He was standing there with his mouth agape.  The woman had to be Elizabeth Martin.  Any doubt I had about that was lost when Tabby shouted, “Mommy!”
         Elizabeth smiled warmly at Tabatha and put a finger to her lips in a very motherly shushing gesture.  She turned to face her husband.  He seemed astounded.  Then her smile faded ever so slightly.  Her glow intensified and orbs of light began circling her body.  Her feet weren’t even touching the floor.  She just drifted toward him.  The man looked like he wanted to run away.  He was looking around the room in apparent fright, but he didn’t move, or couldn’t.  The orbs of light started streaming toward him, encircling him.  He opened his mouth in what looked like a scream of agony, but no sound came out.  The lights engulfed him more and more, until I couldn’t see him any longer through the glow.  After a moment the light faded and was gone altogether, along with Anthony Martin.
         Elizabeth’s glowing form turned back toward us and smiled to us both.  Suddenly remembering what I was trying to do in the first place I quickly blurted it out.  I told Tabby that she didn’t start the fire.  Her father did, and she had nothing to be sorry about or afraid of.
         “Really?” she said looking from me to her mother.  Elizabeth, having drifted back to face us again, nodded her head in agreement and opened her arms to her daughter.  In that moment Tabatha took on the same glow as her mother and floated up into her arms.  I thought they looked just like angels as mother and daughter were reunited.  I thought about all of the pain and sadness they had suffered, and I began to cry.
         Elizabeth and Tabby started to fade away and I cried even harder.  Tabby sounded so at peace and so happy when she spoke to me.  She said she couldn’t come see me anymore, but I could talk to her anytime I wanted and she would listen.  She said goodbye and they were gone.  The only clue that they were ever there was the white ribbon, laying motionless on the kitchen floor.



Wednesday October 3, 2012

         Eric came back from his business trip today.  He isn’t buying my story about how the kitchen chair got broken, but I wasn’t about to tell him what really happened.  I’m pretty sure I won’t be seeing anymore scary shadows or reflections in windows.  I went out to the little cemetery hoping to see Tabby today.  I didn’t, but I left the little doll on Tabby’s gravestone and the white ribbon on her mother’s.  I talked to Tabby for a while like she was right there with me.  In a way I think she was.
         After dinner, Eric told me that we could move back to the city if things here were too stressful for me.  Bless his heart, he didn’t have any idea what was wrong with me, but he was willing to put what I wanted first.  I always came first.  It didn’t matter though.  I told him I wanted to stay and that everything would be alright now.  I wasn’t going to leave now, now that I had friends here.

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