Seems time to tell a ghost story. Or, several tiny ghost stories, all connected to the home in which I lived. New Friend Julie started it over at her blog, so it seems good to continue the notion here, culminating in this Most Spookiest of Days, Halloween.

My house growing up was haunted.

It might’ve been my fault.

I mean, maybe not. When my grandfather died (before I was born), both my grandmother and father heard the mirror in the bathroom break every night for a couple weeks after he had passed. But this ghost was, far as I can tell, not my grandfather.

I had a Ouija board, as referenced earlier.

One day — literally, middle of the day — my Cousin Julie (different from aforementioned New Friend Julie) and I got out the Ouija Board. At the time, I was transitioning from a tiny bedroom on the second floor to the much more open attic space. My parents had cleared out all the mess from the attic — lamps, boxes, picture frames — and paneled the room, and so we sat amidst the half-finished room, confident we would be left alone.

We put our hands on the planchette and waited. And waited. And finally — a twitch.

We began communication with a spirit that identified itself by a specific name, a name I’ll not mention here just in the tiniest off-chance that this ghost is out there, roving across the hills and meadows, looking for me just to speak its name.

We received its name and then –

Well, that’s when the rapping began.

No, I don’t mean knuckles rapping on walls. I mean two black dudes, rapping.

See, unbeknownst to us, that was the day that my parents had scheduled to have carpeting laid in the room. The two carpetmen were these two black guys who were entered the attic stairway. And, yes, they were rapping.

It scared the shit out of us. The board flew up off our laps. Planchette across the room. Hearts pounding. Which means –

We broke contact. They say not to do that.

From that point forward, the house experienced a number of haunting events. For years after.

Thankfully, I had witnesses to most of the events.

Most of the haunting initially had to do with electronic devices. I’d wake up in the middle of the night, and my VCR would turn on and begin rewinding or fast-forwarding or the tape would eject. Or my CD player or Discman would turn on, blaring music. You’d turn the TV off downstairs, walk upstairs, go to the bathroom, wash up, and just as I’d be passing the stairway down, I’d hear the TV snap back on. Not 30 seconds later — but many minutes. Sometimes, my speakers at night would start to hiss and pop or make cracking static.

Other times, it’d be footsteps. We lived in an old house. Hundreds of years old, though obviously modified over the years. (That picture at the top is my house a few years ago, and the picture here is the house after it was demolished by its current owner — childhood’s end, and all that). Given that it was old, the house made a great deal of noise. Creaks and groans and pops. “The house is settling,” they’d say. And it was. But it also mean you could distinguish specific sounds from the sounds of the house settling. It became easy to discern footsteps — the weight of the groan, the sound of heel down, and heel up. It was often I’d hear footsteps come up the attic steps only to stop at my bedroom door. I’d throw the door open, and — nothing. (I actually do have one ghostly memory before the Ouija board “trigger” event — but, I was very young, and it’s hard to trust the mind of a five-year-old, but even still, it’s vivid. I was peeing in the bathroom. Then I swore someone was there with me, and I ran out of the bathroom — failing to tuck Little Wendig back in his pants — and I saw footprints depressing into the carpet behind me. Again, I was five. Who can say? Perhaps some ghostly molester spirit was all into me.)

A friend was sleeping over one night (my bedroom had two beds). He kept telling me that he heard something. People singing. I thought he was crazy. I kept telling him to go to bed. Eventually he made me come over. I still didn’t hear it, until I did — sure enough, the sound of people singing. Children. This was midnight or later.

Another friend was staying over. He wanted to get out the Ouija board. Home Alone was on the TV. Every time he touched the Ouija, the power fluctuated. We had occasional power fluctuations in the house; again, it was old. These were more dramatic. And timed perfectly to the touching of the Ouija board.

One time, in the back room, a picture frame flew off the wall toward our Doberman. She wouldn’t go back into that room for weeks, which was odd — she slept in that room sometimes.

One time, Ideal Reader, Shadowstories Cohort and Superfriend Marty was over. We were eating nachos in the kitchen late at night. Everyone was asleep. A little mail-and-key holder hung on the wall next to the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, and we were in the kitchen. In this mail holder sat a little American flag, the kind a child might wave at a picnic or parade — the size of a handkerchief, no more. The flag started waving. The heat wasn’t on. We didn’t have air conditioning. Windows were closed. Marty went and put his hand near it, feeling no current — and then the flag just stopped. When he then spoke the ghost’s name, the flag waved faster. We left the nachos behind and hauled ass out of there.

When I was older, and out of college (and moved back to PA), I was enjoying some, ahem, romance time with a lady in the living room of that house (at that point I lived in a trailer further down on the property). I felt something watching us, but I didn’t say anything. But then she said something, confirming the spooky feeling of eyes roaming. I looked over my shoulder and saw a shadowy figure standing in the doorway between the den and the living room. Once more: hauled ass out of there.

All of this could be construed as being something other than I think it is. Electrical issues are electrical issues. A flag waves because of some unknown current of air. The Ouija board’s planchette moved because of unconscious energy. Everything else? Well, the imagination is a powerful thing.

Here’s the corker, though, and here’s why I believe in ghosts:

A handful of years after the Ouija board, I was poking through our bookshelves and I found a leatherbound genealogy journal. Not the kind a family member actually puts together, but the kind a family member buys from like, an encyclopedia salesman — our name was printed in the front, and the rest of the book was empty family trees and blank entries. It did make me curious, though, because one note in the front indicated we didn’t own the house for generations, as I had previously thought. I went to ask Dad about it, and he said that, no, my grandfather had bought it from another family. And, as he talked about that family, he hit on a very curious and concerning point: the previous owners had a son, and that son went missing out in the woods and never came back.

The son’s name was all-too familiar.

It was the name given to us by the ghost through the Ouija board.

Done. Bingo. I believe in ghosts. I’m getting tingly just thinking back to it. I’d ask my father about it sometime — did he ever see anything or experience anything? — and he dismissed it. Later, though, my mother said that he confided in her that he saw things, too. I wish he was still around to ask him what he saw and experienced. Regret is a many-limbed thing, always reaching.

I had other ghostly experiences over the years — a haunting at college, the surly spirits of Jim Thorpe, the ghost lights of Hansell Road (“Fritz, come out and play”) — but none really compare to the decade-plus of haunting experienced at my house.

Happy Halloween, is what I’m saying.