An Echo of Time

The Rodriguez house had been built long ago by Kevin’s wife’s grandfather. It was a small house in on the poor part of town. But the Ruth’s grandfather had taken good care of it, and so did her father when it became is. Kevin’s wife, Ruth, had grown up in the house. Ruth inherited in the house after her father had passed away.

The Rodriguez family had often felt as though the house was haunted. The children were too scared to be up by themselves at night. Whenever you would be in that house by yourself, especially at night, you would always get a creepy feeling like someone was there with you. Ruth swore that she was a little girl, she saw one of her dolls move on its own. She was so scared, she had to go sleep in her parents’ room for a week.

One hot humid day in August, Kevin Rodriguez was working on his house near the river. A category four hurricane had come through town the week prior, and his house had taken a brutal hit.

All the floors and walls in the house had to be completely replaced because of the flooding. Most of the windows had been destroyed by flying debris, and the roof had a considerable amount of damage. The family was staying at Kevin’s grandfather Billy’s house for the time being.

Kevin was standing on a ladder, putting drywall on the ceiling when he heard footsteps walking through the house. He thought it was his brother-in-law, Greg, coming back from the hardware store. The footsteps grew louder as they moved down the hallway towards the room Kevin was working in. Kevin saw Greg’s shadow approaching with his footsteps and expected to see Greg come into the room.

But then, the footsteps stopped. Kevin walked to hallway and no one was there. The shadow was gone too. “Hello?” He asked, but no one was in the house. An uneasiness crept over his mind. He decided to take a break and get out of the house. He went back to grandpa Billy’s house, where his family was waiting.

When he got to the grandpa’s house, he asked if anyone had been over to the house, but no one could account for the strange footsteps. He told them that he had heard the footsteps. No one seemed surprised or skeptical. The family had their share of strange noises in that house. After that, Kevin didn’t want to work in the house by himself anymore.

The next day he was back, helping Greg tear up the old floors. They were surprised to hear a loud banging at the door. The men both jumped at the sound. Kevin had been feeling a little jumpy since he heard those disembodied footsteps. The door had a small, stained glass window built into it that was hard to see through. He could make out the shadowy figure of a man standing on the other side of the door. Kevin opened the door, but no one was there. He stood out on the porch and looked around, but there was no one around. “What was that?” asked Greg.

“I don’t know,” Kevin said, “There’s nobody here.”

“That’s too weird man. That was loud! It sounded like the damn cops banging on the door.” Greg was visibly shook up.

“Did you see that shadow standing there? It looked a guy was standing there,” Kevin asked.

“Yeah I know I saw it. Are you sure it’s not somebody pranking you?”

“No, there’s nobody here. This is too weird. Let’s get out of here.”

Now both Kevin and Greg felt nervous about being the house, but they had to push on. After all, the house wasn’t going to fix itself. They quit for the day, and spent the rest of the day trying to ease their fears.

The next day, they were in one of the bedrooms painting the walls. Kevin had gone out of the room to get some more paint, leaving Greg alone. As Greg was painting, he heard someone behind him say, “Hello?” He turned around but nobody was there. The voice sounded very familiar. Greg thought it almost sounded like his grandfather’s, but he had died a long time ago.

“Hey, man. Did you say something?” He asked Kevin. But Kevin said he had not said anything. It creeped Greg out, but he decided to shrug it off and keep painting. When he went to pick up his paint brush it was gone. He knew he had been holding it a second ago. He looked all around the house for it, and finally found it in the bathroom. Neither of them had been painting the bathroom that day. Nobody knew how it got there.

Strange occurrences like these proceeded to happen throughout the duration of the renovation. The men working on the house had no choice but to see the work through to completion despite their anxiety. At one point a couple of HVAC technicians got so scared, they left and refused to go back in the house. Kevin had to call a different company to come back and finish the job.

After two weeks, they were finally finished. They had taken the opportunity to make some improvements to the house. It looked even better than it did before the hurricane. They made the bathroom and master bedroom bigger, updated the appliances, and had nice new hardwood floor.

As Kevin was cleaning up everything, he felt someone grab his arm and pull him hard. “What the-“ he started to say, but just then, atoolbox that had been sitting on top of ladder fell down on the ground with a loud crash. It landed right in the spot where he had been standing. Whoever had pulled him out the way saved him from getting seriously hurt.

“Thanks, man. That was a close one. I owe you one,” he said to Greg. He thought Greg had saved him, but there was nobody in the house. He looked around for Greg, but Greg had gone home already. After that day, Kevin told everyone that it was his guardian angel that pulled him out of the way, but deep down he knew it was the same spirit that he had been hearing for weeks. He was grateful to the spirit that had saved him, but he was uneasy at the same time. Something about interacting with the dead felt unnatural to him.

Ever since then, the family has continued to experience strange things in the house. Every once in a while they will hear strange sounds or see things moving on their own. But despite all the strange activity, Kevin is not afraid. He believes that whatever spirit is in the house does not mean to cause them harm.

Based off of the events that Kevin and Greg experienced in this house, most people would naturally assume there was a ghost in the house. There are those skeptics who would try to explain everything away, and would probably say that much of what the men experienced was psychological. But for those who acknowledge the possibility of the paranormal, we may not find those explanations sufficient.

The fact is that Ruth’s grandfather, who built the home, passed away in the house in his bed from a heart attack at the age of 92. One might find themselves tempted to infer from this new information that the spirit that haunts this home is none other than grandpa himself.

However, when Kevin told me about the strange things that happened in the house, one particular story came to my mind. It was a story that Ruth’s father, Herman had told me many years ago. It was Herman’s father, whose name was also Herman, that had built that house. Herman Jr. had heard the story from his father and had eventually passed it along to me.

I remember sitting at the dining room table with Herman Jr. late one night when he told me this story. It was about when his father had built the house. Herman Sr. had built that house about four years before Herman Jr. was born. When he had built that house all those years ago, some strange events took place that were eerily similar to the events Kevin Rodriguez experienced.

According to Herman, the first occurrence happened as he was returning to the house from the hardware store. He was still in the beginning stages of the building process. Many people were always coming and going, doing various jobs around the job site. From the front yard, Herman could hear someone hammering some nails inside the house. Herman entered the house and walked down the hallway to the back bedroom, where the hammering was coming from. But when he got to the room, the sound stopped, and no one was there. He looked around, and discovered that he was the only one in the house at the time.

The second experience Herman reported, haunted him for the rest of his life. He had come to the house to start working and noticed the door was locked. He could hear people working inside in the living room, and he could even see shadowy figures through the small foggy window in the door. He knocked on the door loudly so they could hear him over the loud sounds of their work. One of the shadow figures came towards the door. The door swung open as if someone had opened it, but there was no one there. The shadow figures were gone. Herman was so terrified he turned around and went home. He didn’t go back to the house for the rest of the day.

The next day, Herman was painting the walls in the bathroom when he heard voices coming from the bedroom across the hall. He ignored the voices because he wasn’t the only one working in the house that day, and he assumed it was the other men talking. Billy Rodriguez and Tom Jones were helping him build the house that day. Herman tried to go back to his painting but somehow his paintbrush had disappeared. He was very confused and frustrated. He went to the bedroom to ask the other men if they had another paintbrush, but when he got to the room there was no one there. “Hello?” He asked, but no one responded. He was sure he heard someone talking but he was the only one in the house. Later he found out that Billy and Tom had left to go get lunch, leaving him in the house alone. The voices were not theirs.

The final experience, (there were many other accounts of the paranormal throughout the years in that home, but it would take far too long to write every one of them) took place on the last day of construction. Everyone was relieved and excited to have successfully completed the construction of the new home. The only people in the house at the time were Herman, Tom Jones and Billy Rodriguez. The three men were cleaning up the house and putting all the tools away. Tom Jones was on the top of a ladder putting tools into a toolbox. Next to the ladder, Billy Rodriguez was sweeping the dust off the floor.

Fortunately, Herman was standing close by when he saw something out of the corner of his eye. He noticed that Tom Jones had accidently knocked his toolbox down off the top of the ladder and it was falling straight down towards Billy Rodriguez’s head. Herman reacted quickly, grabbing Billy’s arm, and pulling back out of the way. The toolbox nearly missed Billy’s head and hit the floor with a loud bang.

When I compared the two accounts from Herman and Kevin, I noticed some peculiar parallels between them. It is as if the two stories fit into each other as perfectly as puzzle pieces. Is it just a coincidence that these two men, who have never met each other, shared such similar experiences in this house? To me that explanation seems unlikely. What if time is as we know it is not linear, and it sometimes overlaps itself at certain points? I will not tell you I have the all the answers. The truth is, try as we might, we will never be able to uncover all the mysteries of the universe.

The End