Basement Blues
Name: Lenore
Email:
Location: Alabama
Title: Basement Blues
Type: Ghost
Date: Wednesday, February 16, 2000
Time: 01:55 PM
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Basement Blues
To begin with, all my life I have seen and sensed many unexplainable things.
I've been told I was psychic, sensitive to the paranormal, a witch,
over-imaginative, and just plain off my rocker. ( Everyone is entitled to an
opinion. :} ) Judging by family lore, my paternal grandmother seems to be where
I have inherited this particular "ability". Anyway, the experience I'm going to
relate happened about 6 years ago. This is lengthy, but hopefully worth reading.
Take it as you will.
I was 21 and newly married. My husband (now ex) and I moved into the basement
apartment of his father's house. Living in the house were my husband, his father
and myself. Prior to my marriage, the basement had been occupied by my husband's
uncle, the uncle's girlfriend, and the girlfriend's cat. Being the considerate
people that they were, they decided that the newlyweds needed the privacy of the
basement more. Everything was great in the move, the only problem we had was
removing the cat from downstairs. It acted insane, clawing and biting and trying
to climb up the concrete walls. This was a formerly sweet-natured, passive cat
who had been banished to the basement back room a few months before for soiling
the carpet. It stayed there during the day while everyone worked. We did finally
manage to remove the animal, but it never acted "right" again. My ex and his dad
worked odd shifts, and I was in college, so I ended up being alone in the house
often. From the first week, I started to hear things. I'd hear footsteps
upstairs or someone calling me, and be certain that my husband or father-in-law
had come home, only to go upstairs and find that I was still alone. I felt
watched constantly, especially in the back room and in the bathroom.
The back bedroom was always cold in the area right next to the adjoining bath.
My father-in-law explained that it was because the room connected directly into
the unfinished portion of the basement. That connecting door never seemed to
want to stay closed for me, either. I would shut and lock it, leave, and when I
returned, it would be open ------ just a crack. It was the same with the
covering on that horrible little window in the bathroom. That window looked out
on the unfinished basement (why, I don't know?stupid architecture), and I had
nailed up a bit of fabric to cover it over, but it never stayed covered. That
was creepy, but not nearly so creepy as the many times I would look in the
bathroom mirror and catch a glimpse of someone standing behind me in my
peripheral vision, only to turn, and find no one there. I tried talking to my
husband about it, but he just thought I was being paranoid. HE never noticed
that stuff.
My dog, Annie, that I'd had for 8 years, was killed during that time. She only
lived in the basement for a week (having remained at my mother's home until my
husband and I got settled in). From the time she got there, she would stand in
the middle of the room with her hackles up growling at the air. I'd open the
outside door for her to use the bathroom, and she'd refuse to come back in,
something completely out of character for her. That basement reeked of misery,
and I seemed to stay sad all the time while I was there. I quit caring about
anything. The funny thing is, considering that I'm an outgoing person, I didn't
want to leave, even long enough to attend school. I would just sit on the sofa,
staring at nothing for hours at a time. I felt a hopelessness that only lifted
when I was forced into an outing. My formerly laid-back husband was slowly
becoming temperamental and violent, and our marriage had deteriorated horribly
by the birth of our daughter. Once she was born, the "watched" feeling became
worse, taking on a malevolent feel. She slept in the room with us, and I would
wake up in the night and see a shadow by her bed that would fade when I looked
directly at it. I would dream that someone was holding me down, suffocating me,
and wake up to the sound of my baby shrieking as though she had been pinched or
otherwise hurt. Things would go missing , the temperatures would fluctuate
wildly from room to room, and no matter how much I scrubbed it off the day
before, the ceiling over the stairs would have a black, slimy mold on it when I
got up in the morning. It got to where all the baby did was scream, day and
night, but only while we were home. As soon as we left, she would stop. We took
her to the doctor numerous times, and we were always told that there was nothing
medically wrong with her. Financial circumstances changed, and we were finally
able to move out. Shortly thereafter, my father-in-law put the house on the
market to be sold. The previous owners' distant cousin showed up as a
prospective buyer, wondering how much my father-in-law wanted for the place.
Coincidentally, she told him that the reason her family had sold the house to
start with, is that they couldn't deal with the memories it held. You see while
they lived there, their adult son had moved back in with them, despondent after
his wife took their young child and ran off. After months of anger and
depression, he committed suicide.
