The 'don't Wash' Ghost

The events of what I consider to be my only real experience with what I could only describe as 'supernatural' took place in my parents home (and mine at the time), one Saturday afternoon during the summer of 2010.

My girlfriend and I had been out shopping that morning and had arrived back at my parents house with our purchases. During our shopping outing we had stopped by the local Value Village (VV) (a well-known thrift store in the US and Canada). I like going to VV to check-out their selection of books (mostly fiction) while my girlfriend likes searching for clothing to wear to the office.

It just so happens that on that particular trip to VV, my girlfriend really hit the jackpot with her clothing search. She found at least 7 or 8 different articles of clothing that she really liked and purchased them all. When we arrived home, she immediately went to the laundry room to put these clothes into the wash (as she normally does with the clothes she buys from VV). However, when she went to put the clothes into our top-loading washing machine, she found that there was already a load of clothing inside, soaking in water and detergent. For whatever reason, my mom put her clothes in the wash and left them there without running through the cycle. My mom was at work at this time so my girlfriend said that she'd just wait until she got home to ask her if it would be ok to cycle through her laundry. So she proceeded to take all the clothes she just bought and place them inside a laundry basket. She left the basket on the washing machine.

I told my girlfriend that I was going to do a bit of work on the computer (photo retouching) in my study (a medium-sized room on the main level of the house that I used as my workspace which housed my computer and desk, 2 large bookshelves, guitars and other random objects) and she said that she was going to go upstairs to lay down in bed and do a crossword puzzle.

This is where it gets weird. So I'm sitting at my computer desk in the small study room, retouching photos. The way the room is laid out, my desk faces a window to the outer, side-wall of the house. The doorway to the room is approximately 10 feet directly behind me as I'm sitting at my desk facing the computer (I know, bad Feng Shui) and the door is wide open.

Anyway, it was around 2pm on this beautiful mid-summer's day, the house was dead quiet (all the windows were shut. We had the A/C on but it's very quiet) and all of a sudden I hear a strange, distant sound coming from the hallway. It was such an alien sound that I immediately tensed up and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I think I sensed something was wrong immediately because I had never heard anything like this sound, let alone hearing anything like it in the house.

It's really hard to describe what I had heard, but it was like a pinging, tinny, metallic sound mixed with weird metallic static. It started out really faint but quickly swelled to the level of a slightly amplified human voice. And it did indeed have a voice: that which I can only describe as the voice of woman (maybe in her 60's-70's if I were to wager a guess) with a really thick eastern European accent (to me she sounded Polish or maybe Czech). She spoke two words that resonated in a metallic, microphone-y kind of way. It almost sounded like she was speaking in a large room that was made entirely out of some type of thin, resonant metal. From hallway just outside the door to the study, in my direction, this disembodied voice said, very clearly, "DOOON'T WASSSSH!" I kid you not. It seems kind of funny in hindsight, but I tell you, it wasn't at the time. I basically froze in place, facing the computer in front of me and said to myself "W...T...F was that!?" I refused to turn around for at least 30 seconds after the sounds receded into silence.

I refused to turn around for at least 20-30 seconds after the sounds receded into silence. I finally worked up the courage to turn around investigate. I kept silently asking myself, "Wtf was that?" I checked the front door to see if anyone walked into the house, nope, the door was locked. I checked the back and side doors, nope, locked as well. I checked all the rooms on the main floor and found nothing. I even went outside and walked around the perimeter of the house but found nothing.

So I figured I'd go upstairs and ask my girlfriend if she heard anything weird and as soon as I opened the door to the guest bedroom to ask her, before I said a single word, she looked right at me as she sat on the bed and said, "Yeah, I heard it too, what the F^%# was that?!?!" On the one, hand I was relieved that she heard it too (just in case I might be going crazy and hearing voices lol) but on the other I was pretty freaked-out. We immediately connected the voice and it's message with the clothing she bought at VV.

So after rechecking every room in the house for intruders, we went through the clothes in the laundry basket to find the culprit. We weren't sure of what we were looking for but we did find one item, an nicely-made, off-white blouse with a strong scent of what I like to describe as 'old lady' perfume that my girlfriend swears she didn't smell before when she was trying on the clothes at VV. So, needless to say, my girlfriend eventually took back that blouse (without washing it.) Whether or not that ghostly, disembodied voice was linked to the blouse, I'll never know. But I can say that, so far, I haven't experienced anything like that in my parents house or anywhere else.

The memory of that incident still sticks with me and leaves me confused about the nature of the afterlife. If that was a "ghost" in the classic sense of the word, is that what happens after we die? We just float around making sure nobody wrecks our stuff? Seems pretty pointless to me. I would love to hear some theories as to why she didn't want her clothing washed if anyone has any insight.

Thanks for listening.