The House on Cambridge 3

This is yet another installment in what has become The Cambridge Series of ghost recollections. In truth, so many distinct things occurred in our house, it all becomes rather hazy in terms of sequence in time, however, this happened around 1992 when my littlest sister was going into kindergarten.

Just to recap: my parents bought a late 19th century Victorian home in Columbus, Ohio in the early 1990s. They moved in with me and my two brothers and two sisters and seemingly supernatural things began happening to my one brother and both parents almost immediately.

However, eventually, all but one member of the family would be affected. This vignette is about my youngest sister, who shall be referred to as "O..."

When we moved into our house, O was about 4 or 5 years old. Unlike most young kids, she loved to sleep and would often not rise until after 10 AM or so. One morning, after having lived in the house for about a year or so, my mother heard O calling for help from her bedroom. My mother went to check and see what was the matter. As she began to open the door, she felt resistance from the other side. It was O on the other side struggling with something. After a bit of jostling, my mom opened the door to see O standing in front of it balancing a large framed picture, partly sitting on the ground. It was the picture from above her bed. This picture is a painting framed in an old, heavy, oak frame with nice glass. It is about 3 feet by 2 feet and must weigh about 30 pounds--much too large and heavy for a kindergardener to move on her own. My mother asked her what she was doing with it on the ground and how she got it off the wall in the first place. O replied that when she awoke, it was leaning against her door. O's door opens INto her room, so anyone who would have taken it off the wall would not have been able to easily lean it against the door as they exited that same doorway. Not only that, but it would have been difficult to manage taking the picture off the wall without waking the child sleeping beneath it. Confused, but knowing what was probably going on and not wanting to scare O, Mom simply placed it back on the wall and that was that.

Or so she thought. The very next morning, O awoke again, only to find the same picture missing from the wall above her bed. As she went to open her door, she felt a pressure on the other side. Peeking around the ajar door, she saw the picture leaning against the outside of her own door. Again, she called for Mom to help her move the picture and exit her room. Again, Mom knew this was yet another supernatural action and wanted to feign non chalance in order to spare her youngest child undue fear. Our mother placed the picture back on the wall above O's bed for the second time in as many days.

Of course, you all know what happened on the third morning. O awoke, late again, and opened her door. She left her room and began walking down the hallway to the stairs to the kitchen, to where everyone in the family regularly gravitated. O slowly padded down the back staircase into the kitchen, her blanket trailing behind her like a sleepy snake. She said to my mother, "Mom, my picture is gone again..." Alarmed, Mom went upstairs to investigate. There, about 15 feet down the hall, she found the picture, this time leaning against the banister of the stairs. At this point, she was expecting it and again brushed it off. It's not easy to fool a child, but the gears in their minds switch rapidly and are usually easily distracted. To this day, O had no recollection of this encounter.

But my mother does.