Ghosts In The Cellar

My grandmother wasn't much for telling us about her personal life. About how hard her life was living in Germany during World War Two. She was strict to a point and wouldn't think twice about whacking you upside your head if you screwed up. Her accent was rough, but growing up with her we were able to make out what she meant. Which is probably the reason she hardly spoke. Anyway, my grandmother had us kids on the couch and she began to tell us about when she was a little girl and that her family had a vegetable cellar. It was under the house but you had to go outside to go into it.

My grandmothers' mother asked her to grab some potatoes from the cellar one evening before dinner. Grandma went down stairs and immediately felt a presence. She looked around and saw no one and continued to load the basket with potatoes. When she filled the basket she started to leave. She went to grab the string to turn the light off when all of a sudden a hand reached from behind her and brushed her face. Needless to say, but my grandmother didn't stick around. She dropped the basket and ran out of the cellar. She returned to the house and told her mother and father that someone was in the cellar.

Her father, my great grandfather, ran outside with a shotgun. It just snowed that afternoon but he went outside not wearing any shoes. There were no tracks in the snow other than the ones made by him or my grandmother, so he thought the intruder was still in the cellar. He searched and found nobody.

Months go by and my grandmother is still a bit hesitant about entering the cellar. So, to ease the tension, her father decided to reorganize the cellar. Clear things out, rearrange the crates and barrels. That way, you'll have a better view of the cellar when you enter.

When they moved a large bookshelf away from the wall, her father noticed that what looked like a door at one time, has now been bricked up. He never noticed it before. Since he moved into that house, 20+ years ago, that shelf has never been moved. He wanted know what was on the other side. The next day, he and a few friends went and knocked out the bricks. Sure enough, there was a room, and it smelled bad. You could even smell it outside. There was no way they could stand it and waited for the smell to air out. It took days and started creeping into the house above. During those days all kinds of weird things were happening around the house. Doors opening and closing, things being lost and reappearing out of the blue and especially the noises at night.

Enough was enough and my grandmothers father finally went to see where this smell was coming from. He entered the room with an oil lantern and found nooks that were carved out of the earth on the sides of the room about waist high with another one carved out above it. They were big enough to actually lay in. He noticed about 20 of these nooks and starting going through a pile of rags, which he thought, and saw a skull. It was, in fact, the remains of a priest. All the nooks had the remains of either a priest or a nun. Why they were there, my grandmother doesn't know, forgot, or is just keeping it to herself.

That evening, being the good Catholics that they are, they had the remains removed by the church, then had the house blessed. Nothing seemed to bother them since, not until the German army took the house away. But that's a nother story.