Warning: If you want cliffs, they'll be at the bottom.
This "experience" could probably be summed up in one paragraph, but I need to retell it and the detailed circumstances surrounding it. This is the first time I've ever written this out so it's going to take me some effort. It has to be this way. Skip reading this if you don't have 10 minutes to spare.
BACKGROUND
I grew up in Haltom City, TX. Our family home was built sometime in the late 60's by my Dad's cousin (builder) and sold to my Dad, so no one died in the home or anything. It housed my Mom, Dad, older Brother, 2 older sisters and myself. We never had anything weird happen in that home from the '70s, '80s and '90s. I know that I previously said that this even took place in the late-90's but it was actually 2001 when it occured. No one in my family was/is "spiritual". No abuse. We're not really religious (Methodists...like 2x a year!). Just no underlying issues, TBH. So, we're the basic of basic American Families.
Anyway, just to toss out a timeline of how us kids left that nest and what was brought into the home and maybe how it played a role in
"IT" being there for a short stint:
- 1991, my oldest Brother joined the USAF and left for Washington State. He would visit once a year but nothing unusual.
- 1992, oldest Sister (Sister 1) moved out and lived in an appartment.
- 1993, next oldest sister (Sister 2) had a child and remained at the home while going to college.
- 1995, aforementioned Sister 2 moved out with child (nephew), leaving me alone in the house with parents.
- 1997, I left home for the USAF and went to Germany and then South Korea.
- 1998-1999
NO KIDS WERE IN THE HOME!
- 1999-2000, Sister 2 and nephew moved back into the home for a year. They stayed in the largest bedroom in the home (2-car garage converted to a bedroom back in the '70s). They left before 2001.
And just to slip this in the timeline, what came into the house:
- 1986, our Grandpa passed away (damn Texas heat took him when he was moving furniture in mid-August). Anyway, we inherited a lot of different things (guns, truck, boat, tools..the good stuff!) but two things stood out. An old china hutch and a very old floor lamp that resembled something like this:
The electric cord was a very old style. The plug was something you don't see anymore/ever saw before and the cord was insulated in like wax paper or something. Total fire hazard and should have been refurbished, but I digress...
Once again, nothing funny ever happened in that home...that
I was aware of.
Anyway, in 2001, after a year in South Korea, I get orders to Charleston, South Carolina. So when I came back to the States, I had to stop at home in Texas for two reasons: Visit family and to pick up the keys to my truck that was rotting away in New Jersey. The 1979 Chevy Silverado Big-10, was passed down from Grandpa, to Dad, to Older Brother, to me and back to older brother when I was in Korea. It was just sitting there in McGuire AFB, NJ with my brother (who drove it sparingly), so I needed to fly up there, tune it up and drive it down to South Carolina. Easy-Peasy.
But while I was at the parents house, I got the Flu or something. For the week I had planned to be there and do cool stuff, it was all ruined. Basically, I just lived on the fold-out couch in the living room, only going out a few times to grab some of that majestic Whataburger! So, week was ruined, didn't see any friends..oh well. When I receieved the truck keys from my Dad, I put them on a *very special key chain and put them in the very top of my rucksack that laid next to the fold out bed. There was no reason for me to have them out or anying like that...since the truck was in Jersey and I purposely put them in that backpack immediately because that was my transportation down to Charleston...CAN'T SCREW THIS UP!
The Story Begins
On the morning before I was to fly out to New Jersey and pick up my truck for my drive down to South Carolina, I started to ready all of my stuff; washing clothes, checking my rucksack to ensure I had my orders, airline ticket, etc. Whelp...my keychain was missing from the very specific pocket I put them in. Ok...no panic, maybe I took them out for some reason. After about an hour, I couldn't find them. I even went outside to my parent's vehicles just in case they were there, nothing. Well, I let my parents know about this and they, too, started searching. We especially targeted the dining room area, to include the dining room table that was next to the china hutch and antique floor lamp. My parents liked to put magazines/newspaper/mail on it as it was in the main thoroughfare of the house. So we each took turns looking on, under and around that table and chairs. Nothing.
Then, my two older sisters came over that afternoon to say goodbye. After learning about themissing keychain that, too, joined in on the hunt because they knew it was ciritical for me. Everything was searched and searched again.
"Did you leave it in your jeans?" "No"
"We're you out in the back yard?" "No"
"Did you go to the Sheds?" "No".
"Did you go to someone's house?" "NO! I was here sick all week!".
"Oh...you went to Whataburger...you probably dropped it there." "What!? I was in the drive-thru and checked Dad's truck!"
So after about 2-3 hours of my Sisters joining in, we all started to call it quits. My Dad called my Brother and told him to start looking for a locksmith up in Jersey to get a set of keys made for the truck. What ticked me off was that I made they keychain out of paracord at my first duty station and was very proud of it. Oh well. Grow up, kid, life aint fair!
Then around 7-8pm, after we had ate dinner in the kitchen and my Sisters were getting ready to leave, BAM...I saw the keychain on the dining room table. In. Plain. Friggen. Site.
"Hey! Who found the keychain!?"
They all looked confused until I showed them the keychain and where it was laying.
No one came forward to say they found them.
My mom whispered something to my Dad, in which my Dad replied back (I'll never forget it!) "Oh, Kathye..come on!"
Mom, with a searious look on her face, "No, I'm serious. Do you really think it was the cat that kept doing that after [nephew] left?"
Sister 1 started to laugh, "Oh, is this about that poltergeist thing! lol"
Mom: "Don't laugh about it" "Your Dad thinks that Chubbs (our fat, mostly outside cat, RIP) was unplugging the floor lamp and strewing it across the floor every once in awhile.
Meanwhile, Sister 2 didn't say a word and that conversation just stopped. Sister 1 said goodbye and left. Mom and Dad went to another part of the house.
The Revelation..
On Sister 2's way out the front door, I said something to the effect of "Man, Mom's starting to get Schizo!". My sister then stopped me and said we need to go outside, and so we did. She went on to explain her version of what happened in the house for the one year she and my Nepher moved back in and beyond. She said that the cord of the floor lamp would be unplugged and strewn across the floor at least once a week. It was initially chalked-up to the nephew doing it for attention, but it kept happening when he was no longer in the home. Ultimately, all three of them (Mom, Dad, Sister) just basically said "hmm Weird..but whatever". To myself, I really didn't think it was spooky, just more "okaay".
Well, according to her, one day my mom and sister got into an argument in the largest bedroom about how she was raising the nephew (typical banter from Mom to Daughter) and all of sudden, one of those old 13", black and White TV sets turned on with a very loud volume. You know the noise when you are on a channel that's out of recption? That "Scuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu" or whatever White noise? Anyway, it was an old type TV that had a push-pull dial to turn on and off, no remote. My sister said. I'm paraphrasing it:
"That sucker made the noise like the dial was just pulled out and then it turned on and was like Scuuuuuuuuuuuuuu." "Then Mom and I just shut up, kinda barely looked at the TV from the corner of our eyes, looked at each other and then hurried out of the room....closing the door behind us. We then stood outside the door, just listening to the noise. It never went off. After a few minutes we just walked away and waited for Dad to come home. Dad came home, we told him about it but after he laughed and went to the room, the TV was off.
Apparently, it went from a very subtle showings of the weekly strewing of a floor lamp cord to that of an old black and white TV coming on to full blast. In her words, that was an escalation that went from "hey, do you guys see what I did?" to "I'm not asking anymore." My sister then moved herself and nephew to another room of the house and they never went back
that room.
That door remained closed. Dad, the ever vigiliant HVAC warrior always griped about the door being closed due to ventilation, but my Sis and Mom kept reshutting the door. My Sister said that the TV came on a couple of more times by itself, even though it was behind a closed door. According to my sister, my Mom believed it was some kind of Child spirit that attached itself to our nephew when he came back into the home in 1999-2000. Everything started at that time. And afterwards, when my Sister and nephew left, everything stopped**. She and the nephew moved out not long after. About a year later, no "kids" were in the house, until I came to visit.
**My thought at that moment, when she told me that, was "So I show back up in my early 20's and it wants to play some more with me...right now?" It didn't really make any sense to me. I never saw, heard anything before tis moment in 2001. At this point, maybe my favorite Sis is also going Schizo? Lol...maybe she and/or my Mom had a role in hiding my keys after all....
...and then it came for me
So I see my sister off and its time for me to start wrapping up this emotional day and getting all of my stuff ready for the morning flight out of DFW. My parents say "good night", the lights in the house get turned down to wind down the day and after a shower and laying my clothes out, I'm feeling decently positive for once considering what transpired over the past week in a very important chapter in my young, hot life [/Eric Cartman voice]. Regardlessm I notice that I'm no longer feeling whatever flu-type crap that I had the past 5-6 days and decide to pop open a bottle of Texas' best (Shiner) and cruise the internet for the first time in over a year (internet in South Korea was non-existent back then). So for a few hours, I'm sitting there in the living room (front of the house), at a computer desk, playing a video game and watching 240p pron on my parents powerful Dell desktop when I hear a definite
thud just outside of the living. Mind you, the parents are each probably in a coma at the opposite of the house, so rule them straight out. It was just a noise, but it gave me some pause because it was definitely sound of something hitting a carpeted area outside of the living room about 15' away. You know when you're sitting in near silence, in low light, basically, all of the stimuli to your senses are repressed and now your senses are so
sensitive? Yeah...I head that shiet. So I #1. heard it, #2. recognized it, but didn't #3. investigate it for a second.......but no doubt #1 and 2 we're very real and logged into the database.
"Okay. Let's just file that into the chapter of Hmmmm and go about our business." I return back to my game of escorting B-17 bombers over the air space of Germany in one of the greatest aerial combat games ever made: European Air War
Fast forward about an hour, after couple of more beers and some really good aerial combat, my ears started to alert me to something. In between battles/noises, my ears picked up some kind of rythym in noise coming from somwhere other than the crappy desktop speakers. It started to slowly draw my attention enough that I had to pause the game and then listen with intent. It was faint, but after about 30 long, LONG seconds....it registered as an "aah-aah-aah-aah-aah-aah" noise. It started to sound like a noise I hadn't heard in quite awhile (I was in Germany and Korea for 3+ years). It was the sound of a phone that was
left off the hook/busy number. This was 2001, before smartphones but certainly not before the widespread usage of cell phones (flip phones) so it wasn't a rare sound, but weird for me to hear.
Anyway, I decided that I was now compelled to investigate what I thought I heard and to make that noise stop. There wasn't much thought, time or distance between leaving that desk top and walking just past the threshhold of the living room to find this old rotary wall phone (example):
With the handheld phono piece laying on the carpet floor. This is in a hallway that it rarely used by anyone anymore, to include guest, in that house. Well, there was that sucker sitting on the floor making its noise in the dark. Without hesitation, I picked it up, put it back on the HOOK that does its job of keeping that handpiece where it should be unless tackled by an '80s linebacker or 2001 poltergeist!.
Then I proceeded to head back to the computer, shut it down promptly, go back the fold out bed and hard sleep.
I never spoke to my mom/sisters again about it but am very curious to do so now that I've typed all of this out.
And to add, this is the keychain in question:
After 24 years, I've never lost or misplaced it. 7 deployments, 3 assignments/6 years in Europe/Asia, 3 locations in the US. Never once have I lost it. Maybe everything lined up just perfectly in the universe for about a 8-10 hour span of time to not only leave my security, but to not be seen by myself or family before reappearing in an obvious location. Add in the rotary phone drama. This have always stuck in my mind when people talke about paranormal stuff. I've never seen anything before or since that "episode", but I darn sure remember it.
Cliffs. Lost keys to supposed Poltergeist. Found them. Found out background story of said poltergeist. Heard weird noise later. Found it out to be an old rotary wall phone that came off the hook. I didn't die. Move along.