Strange but True

When I moved to a new state six years ago, my husband and I bought an old house in what most people would call the country. Me...not so much. I really need to be out there to call it country, but anyway. We had a house inspector look it over since we were buying it from another state. My husband had grown up in the area and thought it would be a great place to raise our family. The inspection went well and we closed on the deal.

The house turned out to be a nightmare. Sort of like the movie The Money Pit. Only I think Tom Hanks got a better deal than we did. Everything you could think of went wrong with this house, even though we were told it was in great shape. The flooring, the roof, the heating and AC, plumbing, electric, foundation, wooden siding, termites, mold... Where to even start on a project like this?

We lost three computers, a TV, two microwaves, a toaster, countless light bulbs and I can't begin to tell you how many times I had to have my flat-top stove repaired because it kept blowing the motherboard. And this one stupid drawer in the dinning room kept coming open and wouldn't shut right. Nothing ever worked. You'd fix something and it would break in a couple of days. After so long of this, we decided it was time to move. I have a chronic illness and quite frankly, I didn't have the strength or energy to live through a complete remodel. I really just gave up trying with this house. I also became afraid it would simply burn down due to the electricity.

Like I said, I had given up.

Somewhere along the way, my daughter had somehow managed to place her dirty hands on her upstairs window. I could see these hand prints from the driveway everyday as I left or came home from work. She had a knack for painting on the walls or really putting anything on the walls. And I hated climbing the stairs. With my illness, it just wasn't something I wanted to do. Or even could do for that matter. So I let the hand prints go. I don't even think I told her to clean them. Why bother when she was in grade school. You know it wouldn't have been done right.

Well, we saved for a down payment on a new place because we knew we'd never sell this crappy house. And as we loved the area, we bought a piece of ground across the street and set up a double wide in the middle of a tree farm. We were all moved in our new place and somehow this window in the old house was broken. We went inside the old place and stuff had been thrown everywhere. Okay, we thought, some people must have seen it empty and riffled through things. But nothing was stolen. I even had a jar of coins, but it was still there. Maybe they missed it, who knows.

Finally we got out from under this heap of crap. The buyers have gone in to flip it. New paint, siding, flooring, and replaced the broken window.

So I'm taking my daughter to ballet a few weeks ago and she says to me, "Remember the window in my room that was broken?"

"Yeah."

"Remember how it had hand prints on it?"

"No." Then I think about it. "Oh yeah, I remember. I wondered why you did that."

"I didn't do that."

Of course not. No child ever did anything, right? "You didn't do that?" I really don't believe her.

"No. I didn't. And Mom, that window got broke and they put up a new one, but the hand prints are back. That scares me."

"Oh, stop it."

It's dark when we come home from ballet, and I didn't think anymore about it. But the next day I had to go somewhere. So when I drove by, I looked. And there, in the same spot as before, are these two hand prints. I swear to you, this is true.

I used to joke to my family that a ghost was playing with that drawer in the dinning room. But I'm not so sure it's a joke now. I'm just glad we don't live there anymore.


KJ
Put some mystery back in your life.