2nd Place Special Recognition
Our Home
By
Hugh Edward Priddy
I met Suzie at a New Year’s Eve dance 9 months ago. She moved into my home on the last day of October. We got married the Friday before Thanksgiving that same year. Our reception was at the local restaurant. Cake and food were served. By 10pm that night we were heading to a state park in the camper for our honeymoon. I had all next week off and we were going to take it easy. We had been to this state park before and loved the place.
Suzie has two daughters, Dee and Carol. I had a son named Donald. All three kids were adults, married, and out of the home. That left Suzie and me with alot of alone time together. We told all the kids to not call us unless the house burns down.
Suzie’s daughters were going to clean and setup the house for us before we returned. They were moving things around so Suzie could have a place for her belongings. I have an old clock that would give out bird calls every hour with a picture of that bird. Dee found it, liked it, hung it on the wall, and set the time. She turned AM and PM around. The owl that was to go off at midnight went off at noon. Dee had left shortly after leaving Carol still there. I did not know that Carol was superstitious. She was hard at work when noon came around. That owl started going off, “who…who”. Carol ran out the doors fast as she could bumping into Don as he arrived. It was around 1pm when the phone rang. It was Don letting us know what was going on. He was laughing so hard. After that, the clock came off the wall and was never put back up.
Three weeks later we were in bed for about two hours when I woke up to Suzie saying “I am tired. Leave me alone. Let me get some sleep.” I was thinking she must have had a dream and told her that it was not me. I was not doing anything. Sometimes our dog, Buddy, will jump on the bed and try to get under the covers. I told Buddy to get off the bed. He would not move and started barking. I picked him up and placed him on his bed. He stopped barking. Then he started barking again. He would bark, then stop, and bark again. By this time I was very unhappy with him, moved him to the living room, and closed the bedroom door.
Finally I could get back to sleep. A short while later, Suzie started up again. “Dan, please stop until the morning so that I can go back to sleep.” I said to her, “What are you talking about? You’re dreaming. I’m going to sleep on the couch that way you can go back to sleep and not think that it was me doing any of that!”
About an hour later Suzie screamed, “Get out of here!”. I got up fast thinking someone was in the house. As I was running to the room I hit the chair and fell on the floor. I jumped back up as fast as I could and ran towards that damn bedroom. I fell and hit the floor again before I made it there. I laid there until my head cleared back up. I opened the bedroom door, asked her what was going on, and who was in there. Thinking that she had a nightmare and it woke her up. As I entered the room all I could see was a misty fog. The fog moved next to me, hit me, knocking me out on the bed. As I awoke the next day, Suzie told me someone was in the room pulling down the covers.
The next week it started happened again. This time the misty fog was in the room over the top of Suzie. It was moving down very slowing pulling the covers back exposing her naked body. I have been told that ghosts cannot move anything. My hair was standing on end and there were cold shrills running up my back. I told Suzie to get dressed and we were going into the living room for the rest of the night.
The next day I started researching the history of the home and found out a murder had happened in our bedroom years ago. Now we know the house was haunted and why the previous owners left quickly and the home was low priced.
We sat down and started talking to the ghost, telling it that we were not the ones that shot him. It worked as we have not seen that ghost since, but have noticed things in the house moved on occasion. I did not believed ghosts were real until this. Was this a dream? I do know if ghosts are real. What do you think?”