But, Wait!

There is MORE! 

  My Third Grade year was a little rough, I guess. I did not realize it until  I looked back three moves in one school year. Let me explain. 

  My mom and dad and us living in the house my dad had, well, things did not always work the way we wanted and my mom packed us girls up and we moved to Las Vegas, sans dad. 

  I remember packing up my room and thinking... Dang, that was an awesome room. I was really sad. It seemed like we left really fast and it was about March or April. My new teacher in E. W. Griffith Elementary was actually really really nice. She was from Australia. Our room was decorated with Pictures of Kangaroos and Koalas you know, our room had an "Outback" theme to it. She was shorter than me, almost, which means she was shorter than 5'4". Yep you got it right. I was TALL. (For all my European or non- American readers, that is 1.62 meters, yes I had to find a converter because I do not know the metric system) 

  Anyway, I had a couple of friends. One friend of mine was Mexican. She seemed really nice. I was invited to her home for a birthday party. I was really excited to go. I bought her a present, and there was all kinds of music and it was a pool party. So, we were told to bring our swim suits. Of course her mom made Enchiladas and we had chips and salsa, it was fun. All the kids in the class came. The girls were to have a sleep over that evening when the boys left at 9:00 pm. All the girls were to go put their swim suits on and the boys too. I went in the bathroom and put mine on. We came out and for some reason, her mother spoke in Spanish about me pointed and me and was really really upset that I was there. To the point that Her mom told me I could not eat at the birthday. I do not know why, I look back and think that this woman had a big problem with white people, because once I thought about it, again. my sisters and I were the only white kids in a neighborhood with many many Blacks and Mexicans. There were three black girls that were nice to me and they laughed when I asked them if they were from Fiji, because I first thought they were from Fiji. They said... Fiji? WHAT IS THAT? So, We laughed and played on the play ground. But I was never invited over to anyone's house. I invited girls to come over all the time, but they always declined. My uncle T moved eventually down the street and around the corner from us and so I would go to my cousins house all the time. 

 My aunts I had two, One R and one named R were also home and my aunt and I shared a room with my older sister and my Guinea Pig. 

 My Grandpa frequently told me, "It is a good thing you are so beautiful because you sure are a brat". My mom would tell him that that was mean and to never say that to my me. My uncles would play the guitar and they were always so nice to have around. I had one uncle who had went on an L.D.S. Mission to Idaho. This is where he met my  aunt and after his Mission he went back to get to know her as a normal kid off his Mission. He married her. My second Uncle,S went on a Mission to Spain. I believe he was in the Madrid area. He might have not been married but barely coming back from his Mission and my third uncle went on a Mission to Sacramento, California. This was most fortuitous. I say this because the Mission covered a lot of Northern California and at the time my Aunt who lived with us in California was living there with her son, and she was not always there. Her son ended up having to be cared for by her ex-husband, his father, who was not a really nice guy and I would even go far as to say he was a drunk. So, my uncle would be able to drop in on him if he was in the area. This area is a small town called Gridley, California.  That city is also the birth place of my own mother. 

  So, my uncle, Ray, was getting off his Mission while my fourth uncle and last uncle was going on a Mission to Indiana. My grandpa worked hard as did my grandma. They worked as gardeners for a man that is very famous in the Vegas area, who would sing live and do Vegas Shows on the Strip while people watched and ate dinner. The Strip in those days ended at "The Frontier Hotel" and further down teh street was "The Flamingo" which is still famous and one of the few that did not get the axe when reconstructing the Strip to what is is today. 

My mom found a job working as an on call babysitter. This means that she qualified for a babysitting license in the State of Nevada and she would work for hotels being a babysitter for people that wanted to come to Vegas to gamble, and needed a babysitter. My mom also got accepted to UNLV. In the Psychology Department. My mom had a teacher in Hawaii she just adored. This Professor of hers renewed her love to study the English Language, and Poetry. But om wanted to be a Child Psychologist or something along those lines. 

 Mom worked her tail off supporting us kids and worked lots of hours. She studied hard and went to school and worked. Us kids were with her family and it was nice for us to all be together. I would sometimes got ot work with Grandma and Grandpa at the house that they were Gardeners for. The famous person that they worked for was really nice and let me play in the swimming pool. He said he sang and so I would ask him to sing me a song. He would sing me a song and I would say... You should sing this song, I mean... Everyone knows it because it is on the radio" he would laugh and say "touché babe". I look back at those conversations and think... Why did I not appreciate this man singing to me? DAAAANG!!! And I think ı might have a picture of me with him tucked away somewhere. but, you know, I was not raised to be that way. I was raised that everyone is normal. That Fame is nothing if you are not a good kind person. I was taught that really it all comes down to is we are all people. That his fame was a job, but really in the whole grand scheme of things, it is what YOU are... Not your occupation. So, I did not understand at the time who he really was. Now, I think... Wow... I was raised to not think of it as a big deal. Mind you he was not always home, but, from time to time he was there. He had a big beautiful house but no one home to share it with. That to me struck me as sad. I would ask him that, if he was lonely. He would smile and tell me to go enjoy his pool. I did. It was so hot in Las Vegas, I loved swimming in the pool. He had a couple of horses, a Loganberry Tree, hardly any neighbors for miles, lots of land and my grandparents were really good at caring for it. My Grandpa built him a shed or two, a nice garage, made his fence surrounding his property, did all kinds of work on his property. My Grandma made him dinners and cleaned his house. My grandma for a gift for him being so kind made him a quilt too. Grandpa took care of his animals. They worked hard for this man and he was a good employee. 

  I think it was a great Summer that year. I look back fondly. 

(Looking for a picture to stick here... Sigh... I lost a file somewhere. My pictures need to be filed better)

  

Do you believe in Hauntings?

I do not know if I do or not. I do not know what to believe sometimes. But, I will say this. What I experienced in that house and what my family did, was real. And I am not exaggerating. I can not lie. And I would be a good Novelist, however, these are true life human experiences that I had, mixed in with different people and things only to protect the identity of those who are living. Especially my mom because she is a very private person. And Me because my mom would be mortified if she knew I was writing these. My mom would think I am finding fault with her and I have said time and time again, my mom is awesome and amazing and I love her. I do not have anything bad to say or think of her. My mom is a doll and my dearest protector. My mom sometimes forgets many things I remember. My dad seems to think my memories of certain events are fictitious and that through out time being an adult, my memory has become just a great story. But, I say, I remember many many things that detail can not make up.  And there are somethings that my mind has chosen to forget. For example. Mrs Widow Stanley. This point in my life, I have forgotten her. But, there in this home lies something very sinister. Dark Shadows. This I can not explain. Let me tell you what happened to me in this home

The first couple of days we moved in, things were hazy for me. You know, boxes, the smell of fresh paint, new beds, old familiar things mixed in with new things. 

 I wanted to explore the house. I felt that there was more than I knew about it. My pet Guinea Pig was furry and a baby still and white. All white. I assumed because she had pink eyes she was a she. My mom was kind about her but really, my mom in retrospect hated anything but Bunnies. Looking back, If I had a bunny with long floppy ears and white with black eyes or brown eyes and furry and floppy my mom would have held the bunny. But Guinea Pigs to her were tail-less rats. And mine squeaked. Which my mom I think she tried and tried to think it was cute. But, remembering her face, I think after wards when trying to hold her, she would shutter. I am smiling right now because my mom hated me having her but was happy to see me with a pet whom I loved. Valentine had a cage. When she was tiny tiny, she did not know that a box could be eaten through. But, The first night I was there, she had eaten a hole in her box, and dad and mom realized I needed something metal to hold my Guinea Pig. We went to the store after school and found a bigger type cage because we did not know how big Valentine would get. we got the biggest Rabbit cage we could find and Dad said if she grows bigger than that, we will have a problem. The cage was so big, I remember thinking my little impish sister could fit in it. I would have tried if I did not get in huge trouble. Mom was very protective of her and getting more so. It seemed the older my little got, the more mean she got, and the more her and I fought. My older sister and I would try to include her in our secrets or games, but things always went awry  when we planned to make amiable games or time with her. In this home, however, my little sister was scared. I mean scared. I thought at first that she was not used to having her own room. She never had in her life before. Danae did, from time to time, but I shared with Chimera all the other times. Chimera was now in Second Grade, and I was in Third. I was nine years old and Chimera was still seven, but turning eight. She started getting night terrors and honestly she had them in the past, but not like these. Mom would try to consul her and they were horrible. However, she had a hard time explaining the dreams too. They were just horrible dreams. Danae allowed her to sleep in her room with her, and sometimes when Danae would be at a friends for the night, she would come into my bed with me and sleep. 

  Every night with out fail, my Guinea Pig would be on my bed. Guinea Pigs do not climb and are more burrowers. I would out my Guinea back in her cage. Lock the cage and she would be out again.  

That was the first strange thing. 

  The next strange thing was my closet. 

Chimera was always afraid of closets at night, and I thought she was joking when she said my closet was creepy to her. Even to the point that she would laugh and laugh and I thought she was playing an impish joke with me. 

 One day I was up stairs in my room alone. I saw a door in the back of my closet. I was curious as to where it went and what it was for. I never saw a door in the back of my closet. I cleaned my room eery other day, got dressed, even organized my closet every Saturday, but how that door never came to my attention before I never understood . I asked my aunt (my uncle's wife) about the door. "There is a door? I did not know there was one."  My uncle Tim did not know either. He was the one that remodeled the home.

I dreamed that night that all of the upper house was in shambles. The Oak wood that was our home flooring was gray and full of rot. I do not remember much of the dream, but I woke up and went to the window. It was rainy outside and as I looked out the window there was a light on the ground. the whole out ofdoors was black as black as ebony yet the light was white, a transparent white. I kept looking at it and the light got a little bigger, and floated up to my window and in the light was a creature. It was scary. I thought it looked like an old woman but I can not say. I ran back to my bed. Again, Valentine was on my bed. How she got there, still I have no idea. I put her back in her cage and locked the cage, and laid under my covers, looking at my closet, and the door that was in the back of the closet was opened. I turned over to my left side and hid deeper in my covers. I was just "fracking" scared. I fell asleep again. Chimera came in my room a couple hours later. She kept kicking Danae and Danae had enough. I was too scared to turn her away and so she slept with me. But was not allowed to touch me with her feet. 

The next day I told my mom about my dream and about everything that I saw. My mom said it was all a bad dream. 

 It was a day where there was no school because I wanted to do some more looking around. I asked m y aunt what was down stairs. In the basement. She was in the kitchen. She needed to get something down there anyway and told me to see for myself. I did. It was about noon time and my Aunt Maren was making Spaghetti and she always canned fruits and vegetables. She wanted some tomatoes which she stored in the cellar and asked me to have a look down stairs and while coming back up to please bring her some tomatoes on the shelf. I obliged and went to the cellar. the stairs to the cellar were wide. Unlike David's mom's cellar that was outside and a hole dug in the ground and scary and creepy this one was inside a house. the stairs were concrete and covered with marble and leading to a basement with pillars that supported the house. All of it had some windows, rectangles that were longer than wider, and so there was day light that would come through, and there were lights down there. Although that day they did not work. No matter I thought, because it was sunny outside and I could still see pretty well. As I got to the bottom of the stairs, rats were all over. They were on the shelves, on the floor crawling all over the walls and they were all over the support columns. They were on the shelves that I had to get to to get the tomatoes and on the floor near the shelves was a dead something. I saw teeth, I saw it was rotting dead, I smelled a strange stench and it was freezing cold down there. I screamed and ran upstairs. 

 To let you all know, I had a speech impediment. I stuttered and stammered horribly.  I could pronounce my letters by the time I was 6, I could read and write beautifully, I could talk but my tongue was just not allowing me to say it as fast as I wanted to nor as fast as I was thinking. I stuttered quite badly. It took me a long time to say what I needed to say. When I ran up those steps screaming all I could spit out was "r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-RATS" My mom was not home, she was going to school. My uncle was at school too. My dad was at work but all us kids and Aunt Maren were home. Aunt Maren KNEW and believed me that there was something terrifying down there and she ran down there. The light worked and nothing was there. Nothing. It was clean, with rows and rows of shelves and a cool cellar for storing our food. But she believed me because she knew the house like I did. 

  My mom and dad were not unbelievers of the house, I think that my mom did not want me scared. My mom has this perpetual positive way of thinking which is a good quality in one, however, she perpetual positive thinking left little room to believe that I saw what I saw. My mom's conclusion was that I told too many ghost stories and that I was letting my imagination go wild. My dad's was too. My dad being in the line of work he was in, thought it was my imagination mixed with stress of a marriage, a new family life and moving twice in one year that made it more stressful for me and so I had a more vivid imagination than my sisters.

  My dad has a son that is close to my age. He would come and visit us on the weekends. We enjoyed him coming. My dad went however this time to go visit him for the weekend and it was on this weekend that something more terrifying happened to me. Again, mom was gone, but maybe either studying in the library and grocery shopping while Aunt Maren again was home but this day my uncle Tim was home. and same with my little sister and baby cousins.  I was in my room again. This time, I was playing with my sister, Chimera. She always seemed braver than I in the day time, and at night she was scared. I was opposite. In this house, at least. We were in my room playing with records on my Mickey Mouse Record player when the door to my closet opened. "Chimera," I said, "Look! I told you I have a door. You did not believe me". 

"Oh heck, what is in thewe, Dee?" "I don't know. Want to come with? I don't want to go alone". 

 "But, why I didn't see it befowe" (Chimera could not pronounce her "R" sound.) "Awe you scawed? I am not." "Then, come with. We will go together" "You go fiwst. It is youw woom." "OK."I took two steps in and she slammed the door behind me laughing. I tried the door, but it felt locked. She locked the door? She was laughing but it was a strange laugh. It was deep. It sounded mean, too. "Let me out" I was stuttering. Badly. Her joke went terribly awry. According to her, she was going to come in with me, but thought it would be funny to try to scare me and she closed the door. She intended to reopen the door, but, it would not open. It took me years to believe that she was intending to come in in the first place. And, yet the strange part is this:  I screamed and yelled and shouted, but no one heard me. And when I was finally let out of the room, my uncle had to use a sledge hammer and  saw and knock out and cut the wall of my closet, because there was no door. The room was about 10 feet by 10 feet and just like in my dream. Everything was gray. There was a candle stick on a small what appeared to be a bed side table. And a window. The window was the same size as mine in my room. It was covered though, or not a lot of light came from it. It was as though this was sealed up a long time ago. 

  By the time my uncle got me out, there was a hole in my closet the size of me to squeeze out of and as soon as I came out of the room both my aunt and uncle engulfed me in their arms. I felt safe. My uncle that night, before I went to bed, patched the hole in my closet and said my room closet will never ever open again. He was right. It did not. Chimera could have never known what was going to happen. And what she saw when I was in the room I do not know, and she does not remember this incident, but, According to my aunt years later, when we talked about it, she did not hear me. I did not come down for dinner and she looked all over for me before Chimera said anything about the door. My aunt felt that she should have gotten in trouble for hiding the fact that I was engulfed in an attic, with out the possibility of escape and she knew it but refused to say anything. Whether she wanted me in there, thought it was a game or was scared that she would get in trouble, I will not know. But, a normal reaction of a child who sees their sister in distress is to run for help. Chimera never did. But then again, Chimera was not a normal child, and this house was not a normal house. 

Years later when I was about 22 or 23 I spend a week with my aunt in Nevada. Far away in time and place from the home. I told her all I remembered. She told me little, but sat and listened and said, "That house was evil, Deej, pure evil." She said that once while she was home alone as my uncle had to work a night shift, she heard something in the Formal Sitting Room. We had long moved out of the house. She said that she heard her silverware clanging. She thought maybe my uncle came home from work early. The house was quiet, but that. She said that she got up to investigate and when she did, her sliver knives were flying (or thrown) towards her and she ducked and ran into her kids room to see if they were OK. She said there were many many scary bad things that happened in that house, spirits hoovering over my cousins, and they were not able to sleep. I said to her that my mom kept telling me that my experiences in that home were only a bad dream. She smiled and said, "Yes, that sounds like your mother".  My mom never believed me nor my aunt, and my sister Danae has no memory of our childhood. I think she would assume forget somethings. I would like to know what she does remember, just for fun sake. I know she has since visited the home because now it is a Museum, and is on the registry of Historical Homes. I understand the haunting(s) stopped, or rather, they did not follow my aunt and uncle and their family. So, I think it is located in just that home.

Maybe some of it were in my dreams, but there are some things that you just can not invent. I did not invent those memories of that home. Sadly, we moved. Although I found the home rather scary, I still liked it. It was an old Victorian style, and I thought it was a pretty home. But, we moved. And with that came another new part in our lives. 

This is not my picture. It is from the webpage: whatliesbeyond4you taken by Chris Matheny.