The Old House

I was reading the posts this morning and Jimmy's Blog brought this story to mind. We were living at the old house and I decided that I wanted a working doorbell. DH said it was too difficult (?) to repair. So I decided to get one of those wireless sets. After installation, I had a 'ding dong' at the back door and a 'ding dong type of church bell chime.' I was delighted! 

A bit of a back story on the old house: It wasn't all that old. We were the second occupants and nobody had died there. The house was in a tidy little subdivision about 5 miles from town and had been a work project for the high school's building class. 

We bought the house in 1994 and I was so thrilled. We had sold our little 2 bedroom, 1bath and were almost lost in this 3 bedroom, 2 bath house with an eat-in kitchen, large living room, and den. Our furniture was lost in it. There was a deck in the back off the patio doors in the den. Heaven!  All the rooms were large compared to the little house we had left behind.

Our little boy turned 5 just after we moved in. He sulked a lot at first, he had loved the little house and didn't like the change. DH started working out of town the following year and I decided to move BL into the other bedroom because his was good for a sewing room because of the light. He wasn't happy with the change, but the other bedroom had a larger closet for all of his books and toys. 
He started having nightmares. I thought (and still do) that he was unhappy with the changes to his young life. The nightmares ended in a year or so, I think, at least the screaming in the night ones. As he got older, he would tell me about his wild dreams of running and abduction by aliens.

Little things would happen around the house, you know the kind where a person hollers at nothing saying, "As long as you live here, give us some rent!" Shoulders nudged, closet noises, little things moved. Nothing really scary. 
I was sick one time and I decided to sleep in BL's room and he slept in his tent in the living room. My coughing would have kept DH awake. I settled in. The house was dark and quiet. My blanket slid from my shoulder. I pulled it back. It slid again, and I pulled it back. I checked to see if Rough was lying on it and turning over. Rough was not in the room. I settled in again and the blanket slid down further this time, I pulled it back up harder this time and all of a sudden the blanket was jerked halfway down the bed. I was out of there so quick! DH would have to put up with my coughing! He claims it was the cough medicine or something and I was hallucinating. No sympathy. He went to sleep in BL's bed and never said anything.

After that, I often had a feeling of somebody watching me. Once, I felt it so bad that I called a girlfriend to come to stay with us, DH was out of town. Yes, she laughed, but she came.

Now, to the doorbell ... It was nice to know when someone was at the door. If the front bell rang, I knew it had to be a salesman or Jehovah's Witness. Then the back doorbell started ringing once in the night. Late, like 1 or 2 p.m. Nobody there, no cars, no lights on in the neighborhood. I talked to a rep from the mfg and he said that sometimes a remote door opener will set the doorbells off. Okay. I could see that. The next time I got woke to the bell in the middle of the night, I checked the neighborhood to see if I could see someone had just gotten home. Nope. I considered taking them down. It was a while later, the bell sounded again. It just went 'ding' no 'dong'. I took the cover off the next day. There was no way that it could do that. Push in, 'ding' and release, 'dong.' I pulled that thing off the door frame and threw it in the garbage.

Call me paranoid or crazy, if you will, but I believe there was something wrong with that house! Not much, just enough. I haven't had any of those thing happen here. If I told you this story before, please accept my apologies.