The Events That Made Me Realize We Were Not Alone

Growing up, I had experiences with spirits here and there. It seemed as if someone made me aware of the fact that someone had died in a place, or if someone told me they had experienced something in a room or house, I became very aware. For the first few months that we lived in our current house, I was blissfully unaware of anything going on. However, I think gran chose things that way.

My first inkling that something was going on in the house, was when we went dancing one Friday night. My dad and my husband at the time were the last ones to leave the house. So they were in charge of locking up. When we got home after midnight, neither one of them had the keys to the house. We searched the car, no luck. Searched the yard, came up empty. Eventually my dad helped my husband onto the roof of the house and he moved tiles on the roof and went into the house through the ceiling. He opened up from the inside with the spare keys and we then proceeded to grab flashlights and search the yard and the street for the keys. We went through the entire interior of the house as well. They were missing. Around 2am, we gave up and went to bed. My dad said it could very likely have been that the keys fell out of the car at the dance.

The next morning, when my dad woke up, the bunch of keys that we had been looking for lay on his bedside table, about an inch from his face. He could not believe it. Then came the experience with the alarm system going off while attempting to watch "the Ring". At this point I started wondering if there was something going on in the house. My dad had bought one of those home gym machines that he set up in the front lounge, I loved it. One night he was struggling to sleep. He was lying in bed when he heard the distinct sound of the weights of the machine being moved around. He opened the bedroom door and stood and listened. The weights were still making noises; he said it sounded like someone was stacking them onto a barbell rod, ready to lift them. The noises stopped when he reached the dining room and he could see the gym.

A few weeks later, mom and dad were alone in the house. They were busy in the kitchen doing dishes, when they suddenly heard talking coming from the TV room. Mom said dad jumped a metre into the air, he got such a fright. Dad, of course, denies this. When they went to investigate they found the TV on, playing a DVD we had been watching the night before. Neither of them had been close to the TV or the DVD player, but they were both turned on.

I was living in the granny flat around this time, and my bedroom shared a wall with my parent's kitchen. Every now and then I would hear the tumble dryer. That distinct sound when you have something like jeans in the dryer, and every time a button hits the side of the dryer, it makes a muffled "ding" in the machine. I assumed someone was busy in the kitchen. One morning I thought I would take some of my stuff and throw it in as well, but when I left the flat and walked into mom's kitchen, the machine was off. I touched it, no heat. Opened it, no clothes, and no one was in the house. So, I thought maybe I was hearing things, and I went back to the flat only to get to the bedroom and, once again, hear the tumble dryer going.

If you sit in the TV room and a hailstorm hits, you can hear the sound of footsteps running past the Jacuzzi area.

Mom used the spare room (now the boy's room) to sit and do her make-up. The room gets full sun from the front, so the lighting is great. She had her vanity against the window, so the bedroom door was right behind her, always reflected in the mirror. And she would frequently tell me that whilst sitting there, she would catch the reflection of a dark shadow in the mirror. It would walk past the door and disappear. This only happened when she was alone in the house. The same thing would happen if either she or I sat alone in the TV room. We would frequently catch a shadow out the corner of our eye, going past the Jacuzzi. I also had a feeling that one of my boys was watching me from around one of the corners, but neither of them ever jumped out when I had these feelings.

One night, the boys and I were home alone, this was in early October this year, and it had been one of those rainy evenings. The house felt a bit stuffy, so we had opened one of the windows that over-looks the Jacuzzi. I have lacy orange curtains over those windows. Every so often, a gust of wind would come blowing through the window and lift the curtain a little. Then subside, and the curtain would fall into place. My eyes were drawn to this every time the curtain moved. At one point I went to the kitchen for something and as I walked past the window, I closed it. Getting what I wanted I went back to the TV. And, as I sat watching, the curtain lifted up as if a gust was blowing through again. I thought maybe I did not close the window properly. Therefore, I got up and went to check. The window was shut. As I had just sat down again, the curtain lifted again, this time higher than before. I was looking at it, and it slowly went back into place. My heart was racing and I felt a bit numb. But after that, the curtain remained in place. We have also sat and watched TV and the channel suddenly flipped. And this was not the TV channel, it was the satellite channel.

I have now discovered that the TV going on and changing channels is Charlie being mischievous. It was also him who played with the weights in the gym. However, I had suspected that. I do not know where the tumble dryer incident came into play, and Gran had taken the keys the night we went dancing. One of the men had left the gate open, keys still in the lock, and Gran had made sure the house was safe. Kiddo is the one looking at me from around a corner and he is the one running past the Jacuzzi when it hails. Tim told me I have to remember that he is still, essentially, a little boy. Even he gets scared.

On a side note, my mom had gone to visit a friend of hers on Saturday. I spoke to Tim and asked him if Gran had gone with her, and he asked me why I wanted to know. I told him her room does not feel as welcoming as it usually does. He laughed and said I was right, and that mom would most likely have felt that she was with her. When I asked mom on Sunday, she said yes, she had felt that she was not alone. I then told her, for no apparent reason, that she is protected. She would always be safe because her mother loves her very much. And right then, 2 things happened. I got a BBM from Tim, simply stating, "Did, does and always will". In addition, I had the distinct feeling that my Gran had laid her hand on my right arm. My mom started to cry.