After a divorce in 2003, I moved back to the town that I grew up in, Panama City, FL. I had two children, Katie (9) and Wyatt (2). I was a little nervous about being on my own but took the plunge and bought a home. It was an older mobile home but before I moved in I completely remodeled it. So it was beautiful on the inside especially. But what was hidden from within was something very ugly.
A couple of weeks after moving in, I was taking the last of the moving boxes to the road one night. As I start back to the gate my neighbor, whom I hadn't met yet, came out and introduced herself from her side of the fence. Her name was Ms. Ruby, an older divorced lady with a grown daughter. Very nice lady.
After a few moments of talking, she said to me, "Is everything ok over there?" I told her "Yes" that I had remodeled the entire home and that she should come over and see it. She then told me that her daughter was the one who had been living in it prior to me buying it. She hesitated at the thought of coming over to see it, but I thought nothing of it. We finished our conversation and said our goodbyes.
The very next night she came to my door with a pot of chicken and dumplings. I took them from her and noticed her hands shaking. I invited her in and she very slowly stepped in. She, of course, was totally amazed at how different it looked and seemed a bit more relaxed. After a few minutes she left.
I decided to go take a hot bubble bath, so I left the kids in the living room to watch TV. While in the tub I heard my daughter poking around on the piano. It faced the dining room. I heard her playing come to an abrupt stop, I heard both the kids scream. The next thing I knew, they were busting through the bathroom door, screaming that they had seen something. My daughter described it as "a white thing with a red circle". My two year old nodded his head and said "Scarwy". I got out, got dressed... Went to check. I saw nothing. It unnerved me a little, however.
The next week, again, Ms. Ruby came over with her daughter to show her what I had done with the house. After a few minutes her daughter said, "I moved out because of strange things that went on here." That caught the attention of my daughter. I could see she was about to blurt out what she had seen, so I motioned to her to be quiet. I wanted to see what Ms. Ruby's daughter had to say. She then began to tell me that years ago a young girl lived there and practiced witchcraft in the dining room, which was then the young girl's bedroom. She told me that at one time all the windows in the house had been boarded up from the inside by the girls father, after he came home one day and found her with her wrists slit... And dead. (Ms. Ruby remembered the incident very well, she had lived next door for 30 years.)
She said that she was cooking dinner one night and saw a white figure in the dining room that had a spot of red on it. At that moment I knew my children had indeed seen something. My daughter and I didn't know how to respond to that so we said nothing but Ms. Ruby and her daughter I'm sure could tell something was wrong.
After they left I went into the dining room to look at the windows. Sure enough there were hinges installed along the inside window seals. I guess I must have missed that when redoing the house. That night was the beginning of a long journey with us and the house.
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