I had family here and a job. Stephanie accepted leaving her home out West and moved to the Western Mountains of North Carolina right after we were married. It was brave of her moving 1600 miles without knowing a single soul except me.
My uncle, a local funeral director in the area knew lots of people. We would not have gotten into the rental unit, had he not put in a good word for us.
The rent was way below any other place we had looked at and the place was spacious so we grabbed onto it quickly for fear it would be rented to someone else.
It was a stand-alone log house, too big to be a cabin, nestled along 3 sides with oak trees on a corner lot. I could throw a rock on the open side and not get it halfway to the closest house. It was a private setting and being newly married this was something that appealed to us.
The owner told us it had been the only house around and had been built in the early 1900s while collecting first months rent/deposit.
The house had a long covered front porch. Entering through a sturdy front door revealed a large square room with a gas furnace against an exterior wall. A good sized kitchen and covered back porch was off one side of the room while another square room and small bathroom were off the other side.
There was an upstairs with 2 good-sized rooms similar to the ones downstairs. The upstairs had the angled ceilings that some old houses have where a tall man would have to stand in the middle of the room to keep from bumping his head.
We decided to position our bed in such a way as to be under the angled portion of the ceiling. We did not plan on standing on the bed so it seemed a good idea.
There was not much storage upstairs save an angled small door in the upstairs bedroom that opened into an insulated attic.
There was small deep storage space under the stairs a small cupboard in the bathroom at floor level and some robust high cabinets in the kitchen. The enclosed back porch would work to store some items.
It was summer and the house was cool and airy.
Winter came and the house was still cool and airy.
We would crank that gas furnace up, close all the doors and huddle up in the living room to stay warm.
That first winter we were in the kitchen preparing dinner together and we heard a strange noise. Now it is not uncommon for an old house with a lot of history to have creaks or squeaks. This was different. To the left of the out of date, yellow kitchen stove was an exposed hot water heater. A shiny exhaust pipe ran out of the top of the water heater and up through the ceiling.
Something inside the pipe began to rattle. It would stop for a moment then rattle again. We stopped to listen…rattle…pause….rattle. I took a Phillips screwdriver out of a drawer and unscrewed the 3 screws holding the pipe on. The darnedest thing happened. When I removed the pipe from the heater a black starling fell out onto the kitchen floor. It was still twitching some but died before our eyes.
Steph, screamed when it came shooting out of the pipe onto the floor with a plop and a flop. After the initial fright, she became disgusted and made me pick it up with a dish rag and throw it away.
How was it able to come down the exhaust pipe of a water heater and still be alive at the bottom? How was it able to get in at all? To calm her down I made something up.
“ I said there probably should be a screen on top of the pipe and the wind knocked it off”. I went on hoping to sound like a gas exhaust pipe expert. “The bird was probably sitting on the edge to get warm and fell in the pipe feet first when it got dizzy from the fumes”. She seemed a little relieved but I don’t think she really bought it. Heck, I didn’t buy it.
At night we would hear creaks. Any old house can creak, right?
We would hear long and loud groans from the wood of the house as if it had an ache of some kind.
Sometimes the wooden stairs would creak. I shouldn’t even be writing this down. I know how silly it must sound.
I am not a believer in supernatural mumbo jumbo. The is a scientific reason for everything that happens. So the stairs would creak big deal right?
I am sure it was the house settling or something, but sometimes, late at night the stairs would begin protesting at the bottom first step, then the second step would join in and on and on.
If my new and beautiful wife was not sleeping right beside me I would have sworn that she was walking up the steps. The only thing was the steps did not protest quite so much when she walked up.
When you live with someone for a while you get used to the way they smell. Sometimes Steph would smell like lilacs, the shampoo she used, sometimes she would smell sick or have BO, sometimes she would fart and we would laugh. Everybody has their own unique smells and when one is intimate with that person those smells are familiar.
Steph and I would smell things sometimes, different things. She usually would pick up on it before I did, but sometimes I would smell it first. It was not one of us. Every now and then we would smell menthol cigarettes or old farmer body odor.
It could be noon on a Sunday, I would be walking to the top of the stairs. At the top, I would pause and sniff, menthol cigarettes. Steph would be storing something in the small closet under the stairs on a Wednesday morning…menthol and a whiff of unfamiliar body odor hot and musty, there for a second then gone.
1:30 am, a still and quiet night….creak, creak, creak on the stairs always coming up the stairs then a whiff of a menthol cig.
Mostly we accepted the creaks and the smells always pausing briefly but neither of us believed in “weird happenings”.
There had to be a logical explanation just as there was for the starling. Every now and then I thought of the starling shooting feet first out of the metal tube with a wet sound as it hit the floor. It’s feathers all greasy black and the one eye staring up at us.
Coming home one day from work, Steph said to me “There is a mouse in the bathroom and it is this big”. She held her hands out the way a fisherman will exaggerate the size of an uncaught fish.
Me knowing that 10 inches were an unreal size for a mouse strolled into the bathroom to take care of the rodent.
The cupboard was under and to the right of the sink. Of course, we had a sundry of cleaners and different bottles of bathroom type supplies in it. I got on my hands and knees and crawled under the sink.
I opened the door on the wooden cupboard. I was nose to nose with first one cleaner and then another as I removed them slowly one at a time. I didn’t want the mouse to get away and run past me.
As I reached for the third bottle something huge flew past my face brushing along my cheek. My reaction was to back out from under the sink quickly, hitting my head on the underside of the sink, jumping to a standing position and screaming the whole time like a school girl.
When Step ran to my rescue I was running in place and flapping my hands around while still yelling. Steph said “I told you it was big” and pointed to the wall.
Turning around I saw the brown flying squirrel at the top of the wall near the shower curtain chastising me for interrupting his alone time in the cupboard. He was somehow able to cling to the wood and chinking and complain in my direction at the same time.
I promptly regained my composure, opened windows and grabbed a broom to chase the flying squirrel out of the house.
It was around that time that things began to change.
Things were good with Steph and I. We were in love and it is easy to be optimistic when in love.
The smells and creaks were still there which we accepted. Something new had entered our home. I am certain it was not an animal.
The menthol and BO had a friendly feel. As a joke, we had started calling The menthol/BO “Old Man Carson”. The house was on a street named after the former owner, who had built the house. I am still not a believer in supernatural but it was an easy joke to make and it seemed to ease those moments. When the stairs would creak, creak, creak and wake us up, it was easier to say to the darkness “Hey old man Carson how are you tonight?”
A neatly stacked pile of papers in the upstairs area would fly across the room. This happened with all the windows shut and no breeze.
In the second room downstairs or in the storage room upstairs I would feel ice cold on a hot day. It felt as if I was being watched. If an animal is watching a human, the person rarely feels it.
The person goes about their day to day activities.
Have you ever noticed in a park, if you intently gaze at someone off a little in the distance, the person will feel it? They may not recognize the reason, but they will turn at look in your direction.
The house would get very quiet. Those little noises you normally don’t notice but are always there in the background would stop. I would be standing in a too quiet room and the nape of my neck would start to tingle. Next goosebumps would flood up my neck and down both arms. It would feel as if someone was standing an inch behind me with eyes boring hard into me.
One time I felt this and started to walk down the stairs. A stack of books not 3 feet away from me went flying.
Memory can play tricks on people. Most likely I knocked the books over somehow. That is not at all what I remember though.
I remember looking down and both of my feet were on the wooden 2nd step from the top of the stairs. My hand closest to the storage room was on the stair railing.
The book stack was not 3 feet away it was more like 7 feet away. The tingles were very cold like I was in a freezer. I started to take another step down and WHAM!
Books went flying across the room hitting the far wall hard enough to put a dent in the sheetrock. I didn’t tell Steph about it. Surely I am not remembering correctly.
One night not too long after the stair incident I dreamed deeply. It was winter time. In my dream, I saw a snowflake float by. Then another. I looked and realized I was on top of the house. The snow was falling harder now.
I was sitting and watching the snow flurry but I was plenty warm.
the dream continued and my vision started to blur. Next thing I was falling, falling. I was falling down the pipe feet first. Steph was in the kitchen somehow I could see her but I was in the pipe. I was yelling “STEPH HELP ME!” but she just went on doing kitchen work. I was dying. I was choking on the gas exhaust and my hand's scritch scratched the sides of the metal pipe walls.
Then I woke up. It was pitch black in the room. There was no moonlight. I could sense Stephanie sleeping beside me. Paralyzed with fear my voice would not work. Something was holding me down pushing me against the bed. I heard it coming…CREAK, CREAK, CREAK heavier than ever before, different. It was walking up the stairs. This time it did not stop at the top. The bedroom door swung open and whispered a faint squeak.
There was no Menthol. I could only smell a moist crumbling decay.
In the darkness, I heard steps coming toward me clomp, clomp.
A bright light was in my eyes. I heard Steph’s voice. “You’re gonna be okay baby”. She assured me. I was in a Hospital. It felt like I had been in a prize fight..and lost.
Steph said “I have been so worried about you. You got up in the night and fell down the stairs”. You’re in good hands now. The Doctor’s say you will be out in a week or so.
