Fact is Creepier than Fiction

Written for the Heather Hubler Write me a letter Challenge. Find all the details, below.

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Hi Sis!

Long time no write to. Sorry about that! Things have been a little strange since I moved to Savannah. Shadows take on new meaning in this town and I'm pretty sure my house is haunted. You wouldn't believe the things I've seen since the first night we stayed in the new house. (Pictured above)

I got up in the middle of the first night. While that's usually a bladder thing, it wasn't that night. Fraught with strange dreams, I decided to have some herb tea and as I put the kettle on, I swear I thought I saw someone standing in the dark corner of the kitchen. (That's actually happened so much since then that I had lights installed over the bay window to keep shadows from appearing.) Naturally, I jumped, and when I looked, there was nothing there.

Chewy was still a little guy at the time and had gotten up with me, as he's always been prone to stay on my six whenever I'm up and about. With my back to the stove, I took a sip from my tea, hot and yummy. I put the cup down on my right hand side to bend down and smoochie face with the Chewster, and when I stood up, my cup was gone.

Now, I know I'm not crazy. It was right there! I moved from leaning on the stove, and turned around to see if I had lost all my marbles.

No cup.

I looked down at Chewy. He had resigned to lying next to my feet, (middle of the night, remember?) and was ignoring me. I took a deep breath and as I did, my eye kind of wandered out to my chair in the family room, and the cup was sitting on my tv table. Because it was late, and I was tired, I assumed that this was a cup from sometime before that I missed when I picked up the dishes before bed. There was no way that was the tea I just made... right?

Guess what? It friggin' was! I went to get it and it absolutely was the cup with the chip in it that I had just used for my tea... but it was ice cold! I looked around the family room, confused. I had to heat the darn thing up in the microwave. I finally got into my chair and went to sleep after a while; not because I was tired, but with one big hairy dog and two purring cats on top of me, I couldn't resist sleep.

Mike was still working as the night manager at Wendy's then and I was home alone at night a lot. When we bought the place, we knew that Ms. Anne Oglesby had passed away in the house. She went peacefully in her sleep. There's no way we could have afforded the place if her nephew hadn't just been ready to get rid of it.

One of these days I'm going to have to send you some pics of the house. We have this long hallway that does kind of a weird "L" to get to the foyer from the back of the house. As I was leaving my room heading toward the front of the house, I had the strange sensation one night that someone was following me. I know it's irrational and there was no reason for it, but it was almost like there was something "electrical" in the air. As I arrived at the foyer, Merlin, (Chewy's dad, the black Pomeranian), was sitting underneath the fire alarm with his ears perked and his head tipped to one side.

I thought that was weird. I was going to say something to him, but he started this low growling that worked my spooky nerves and I elected to try and calm him. He proceeded to ignore me and start barking at the alarm... which I'm sure we can agree is just plain nuts. The alarm system wasn't even connected to anything any more. The alarm company told me when I called about it that it had been disengaged in the early 2000's and couldn't go off. Irritated, I kind of fussed at him to hush, then the unthinkable happened! The damn thing started going off!

Listen, we had only been in the house about six months at the time and didn't know many of the neighbors yet, so I was petrified the police would come. I tried hitting the "cancel" button, but it didn't work. I tried everything I could think of before trying to pull it off the wall. Once I got it loose, I realized it was still wired to something. I quickly darted out to the tool box in the kitchen, (remodeling), and grabbed a pair of tin snips. I disconnected the wires and taped them off, all the while the alarm was screaming and Merlin was going nuts barking. The other dogs were hiding under the couch. LOL!

I taped up the last wire, and realized that the alarm sound was actually coming from the alarm cover in my hand! No big deal. I know they have batteries in them in case burglars disengage them, so I took it out to the kitchen, (keep in mind that Merlin was following me around barking the whole time), and I had to use a small screw driver to take the back off of it. I popped the battery out. Guess what? How about this thing kept screaming! I lost it. I opened the junk draw, pulled out a ball-peen hammer and smashed the crap out of it. It took a while to stop going off, but about the seventh or eighth whack? It stopped.

I know it sounds crazy, but I couldn't shake the feeling that Ms. Anne woke up in her house and saw me in the hallway, so she hit the alarm because she thought I was an intruder. Which makes sense in a weird way. I mean at that time, we hadn't changed much in the house and a bunch of her stuff was still here.

A few weeks later, Merlin positioned himself under the smoke alarm on the family room ceiling and before I could even get in there to him, he started scream-barking and it went off. Look, I don't know how long those stinkin' batteries were in that thing, but they were pretty corroded. Just another household item to die under the ball-peen.

As we got the house situated, wall paper down, appliances replaced, walls painted and everything sparkled up a bit, (it's still a shit sandwich, just not a soggy one), the activity died down to small things.

We've had items move or turn up somewhere weird, doors open and close themselves, the sound of rummaging in a room and then it stops when we walk in, etc. We've had dogs barking at spots on the wall, or anything from the bunch of them greeting invisible visitors rocking in our old rocking chair to trying to run up the walls. It's been crazy. Then everything seemingly flatlined until that incident with the shadow figure and Chewy. (For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, the story is linked at the bottom of this letter.

Anyway, that's what it's been like in Savannah. I took a ghost tour with our company the other night and no one got any kind of activity, photographed or otherwise. I guess I should charge admission to my house. Lord knows they'd have a better chance of catching activity here than a lot of those other places on the tour. LOL!

I guess I've worn your eyes out long enough.

Mom says "hi". I got up this morning and had coffee with my neighbor Kathy. She said the transition with her move was difficult at first, but she's figuring how to navigate the new neighborhood well enough that she can at least find her way to my house. She brought Mr. Whaley over this afternoon for a visit, which was nice since I haven't seen him since the funeral four months ago. I wish real people would come visit, it would be a lot better than all these dead ones!

Anyway, I guess on that note, I'm going to close. Thanks for throwing down the gauntlet. This was fun!

Love you!

~V

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PS> Everything in this letter was true up until the words "Mom says "hi"." Mom passed in December, but I've seen her more than once at the fence admiring the morning glories when the sun comes up. My neighbors Kathy and Mr. Whaley have both passed in the last year. I've seen Mr. Whaley sitting on his rocker, which the new owners left on the front porch. And Kathy has been in her yard reading on her bench more than a few times, but she disappears when I look directly at her. Probably my imagination, but any of you who have read my work, know that I write better non-fiction, so I didn't bother writing much fiction with this one. Besides, Non-fiction is waaaay creepier! LOL!

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If you're interested in learning more about the shadow figure my Dog, Chewy flushed out, you can read about it by clicking the link below.