Great Great Grandpa Charlie 2

This is how my second encounter with my great-great-grandpa' Charlie went...

My second encounter with him happened about three days after my first encounter (late Nov. 2008).

Grandpa' Charlie was a huge fan of Frank Sinatra's music. Sinatra and grandpa' Charlie had met in Havana, Cuba, and Sinatra's first wife, Nancy Barbato was actually grandpa' Charlie's cousin.

So one night I was home at my apartment with my friend Levi, We were going to watch a DVD out of my Frank Sinatra video collection that night. It was around midnight, so we went into the kitchen and got some popcorn kernels and the "old timey" popcorn popper and we were standing there getting our sodas, snacks on a tray and waiting for the popcorn to finish. I have one of those records players that look like the old ones, but has the CD, cassette and radio on it in my room; I always leave the top of the record player open and keep a Sinatra record in it.

So were in the kitchen, Levi went to the kitchen closet to get the popcorn bowel, when he walked back over to me at the counter he said "can you smell that?" I stood there and took in a deep breath and there was a smell of wine. I didn't really take time to think about it, I just poured the popcorn in the bowel and got down some butter salt out of the cabinet over the counter. Just as soon as I shut the cabinet door back, the record player turned on and started playing the record. It made me and Levi jump and I dropped the bottle of butter salt. Of course I already knew that it was grandpa' Charlie.

I had told Levi about my first encounter, he believed me but was still a little skeptical. Levi told me "You probably didn't have the on/off knob turned good enough." Which would have been the logical explanation. Only thing not logical about it was, I know for a fact that I had turned it off good and removed the needle from the record because we had just been listening to it and hour before. And that when it came on it was playing "anything goes" which is the third track on the record and the track started as though someone had precisely put the needle at the beginning of the song, which is sometimes hard to do.

We got our snacks together and went to my room to watch our DVD. Levi turned off the record player and sat down on my futon while I put in the DVD. I put it in the DVD player and took a seat next to Levi and kind of put my head on his shoulder. Were waiting for the play menu to come up on the screen and right in front of Levi, almost like a 3/4 view, we heard what sounded like a zippo lighter open, light, which we could clearly see the flame, and close. Then came the smell of tobacco smoke. At this point Levi is a little uneasy asking me "What in the name of Hanukkah was that!?"

I just laughed and said "Hello Charlie."

I hit the play button for the movie, we got our popcorn and Levi put his are round my shoulder and as soon as he did that he went "OW!" and jumped up off the futon. I said "What!?" which he replied, "something just smacked me in the back of my head." I reassured him that it was just grandpa' Charlie and the he didn't have to be afraid or anything.

He was still kind of getting a little scared at which point he sat down in my recliner beside the futon.

After he sat down, I felt the futon mattress go down beside me like some one had sat down and I felt a hand being placed on my leg. Since Levi was startled enough I didn't mention anything.

We watched our movie which ended around 2:15a.m. Levi was spending the night and we've been really close friends since we started school, so I folded out the futon and we got a cover so we could go to sleep. My futon is against my wall, so I laid down, then Levi got in, so I was between the wall and Levi, we were back-to-back, meaning I was facing the wall and he was facing toward the TV.

We'd been lying there for about ten minute with our eyes closed, and we felt something knock against the futon, just like someone's leg had hit it walking by. Levi opened his eyes and there was grandpa' Charlie. Levi tapped me on my back and I turned over and sat up, grandpa' Charlie's standing there in front of the TV in his suit and tie with a cigarette. He "dipped off" the cigarette, gave us a big smile and faded away...

So after Levi saw him, we had to stay up all night because he couldn't go back to bed. We sat up in the living room just chatting and we could hear grandpa' Charlie open the refrigerator and turn on the water in the sink a few times. About 45 minutes later, we're still in the living room, we could hear someone walk up the stairs, and then we heard grandpa' Charlie's girlfriend Igea yell "Charlie!"

Levi thought that it was my mom, because it was a younger lady's voice, but then he remembered that my mom had the closing shift at the bar she works at and wasn't home yet...

The reason that Igea sounded so young is because she died when she was 37 in 1958.

I mentioned that I have seen grandpa' Charlie at different ages, this encounter he was about 64, the age he was when he died in 1962...

So here you have my second encounter.

I'll be posting more of my encounters with them later on.