The House Across the Road

This is an account of my own experiences. No creative license has been taken with the retelling of this story.

I stepped through the front door for what felt like the first time. I'd been here before, three times, for the inspections before buying the property. But this was the first time I'd stepped through the front door of my house. My first house. A swell of pride bubbled up from the pit of my stomach as I looked out over the empty living room. It seemed so much bigger without furniture, so much brighter with the sun streaming through the sunroom opposite me. I placed a hand on my slightly swollen belly, breathing deeply, and thinking how this would be her first home as well. A place not just for my husband and I, but for our growing family.

I pulled the broom, mop and bucket with me inside, placing them carefully by the wall, as I excitedly went to explore every empty room. I paused in the living room as something unexpected caught my eye. Something small and dark was sitting in the corner of the room. I bent to inspect it, picking it up. A small, round pebble. I frowned as I held it in my hand. Looking behind me I saw the same thing in every other corner of the room. I stepped into the sunroom and found the same. Every single corner, of every single room in the house, held a small, round stone.

I phoned my husband, who was still busy loading his car with our belongings at the old rental property. "There's something really strange," I said. "There's a pebble in the corner of each room. What do you think it means?"

"Maybe the previous owner was trying to curse us," he laughed. "Because we got the house so far under market value." I laughed as well, but felt an unease settle over me.

"What should I do with them?"

"Throw them in the bin. I'll be there soon with the first load of stuff."

I did what he said, collecting every stone in the hem of my shirt, and then walking them to the big rubbish skip that all of the townhouses in this complex shared. As they clattered and banged into the empty metal bin, I wondered if this was the right thing to do. But my husband soon arrived with our belongings, and now that I could begin setting up the house just how I wanted, the strange stones were forgotten.

~~~

The first year in the house passed. We brought our daughter home for the first time; our early months as a small family flew by in a blur of dirty nappies and restless nights. Yet even in this new baby fog, I started to notice small signs that something wasn't quite right. At night, when I was feeding our baby in a beautiful glider chair, she'd often rip her head away and stare, fixated, on the corner above her cot. Every night, several times, without fail, she'd obsess over that one corner.

"Does your baby do this?" I'd ask my friends and the online baby forums.

"Oh yes, don't worry. Babies rip themselves away while feeding all the time. It's normal." Reassured, I ignored the behaviour.

But other strange things continued over the months which were harder to ignore. While sitting at the desk near our front door, I'd often hear the front door handle rattling. This was not a doorknob, but a lever handle. At first, I thought someone must be trying to get in — perhaps even my husband, returning from one of his many jobs (as a locksmith, he was often called out). When it first began, I'd walk to the door to peer through the peep hole, finding the entry empty.

The rattling soon progressed to the lever fully depressing, as though some unseen hand were opening the door. When this began, I would leap to my feet, pushing against the door and looking through the peep hole. When again I saw no-one there, I would open the door, tentatively stepping out into the brisk night air to try to find the prankster. Our neighbour's child had autism — perhaps it was him harmlessly and curiously playing with the door? But always, I found myself alone.

When the door started opening — slowly at first, and then one day pushed wide in a flurry — I began locking my door. 

It was the night my daughter, only one year old, woke screaming in terror that I knew what she'd been doing wasn't something 'all babies do'. In her cot, she'd shuffled as far back from that same corner as she could. Again, her eyes were fixated and her cries were unlike anything I'd heard from her before. She wasn't hungry, wasn't cold, wasn't sick or gassy. She was petrified. I scooped her into my arms and rushed her into my bed, cuddling her and stroking her head as she finally fell back to sleep.

It's the corners, I thought to myself. It's something about the corners. I remembered those smooth round stones now, and wondered if they hadn't been a 'curse' after all, as my husband had so frivolously joked. Perhaps they were something else. I tapped away on my mobile phone as my daughter slept beside me, struggling to find anything helpful on the various search bars. That was, until one article made every hair on my body stand on end. I felt like I'd been submerged in an icy bath.

     Some cultures believe that demons can hide in corners, and that by placing a round object in corners, it prevents the demon from being able to live there.

It's not a demon, I reassured myself, shooshing my daughter as she slept. It's not a demon...

~~~

I wasn't the only one to notice something was wrong. My mother-in-law was an ordained Reverend, and she felt it too. She blamed some of the misfortunes that had befallen us on this entity — my poor health, my daughter's poor health. One event finally convinced me to take her up on her offer to bless the house. My daughter, now about 14 months old, had an antique, heavy wooden doll crib in her bedroom. She loved it, always putting her toys and random household objects to sleep in it. It was far too heavy for her to move; every time she tried, it would make a heavy, loud grating sound and barely shift an inch. At this age, she'd also never figured out how to escape from her cot. One night, I woke at 3:00 a.m. as normal — my daughter crying for a bottle of milk, still not sleeping through the night. I stumbled out to the kitchen, bleary eyed, and paused in my tracks as I saw the cot was no longer in my daughter's room. It was in the middle of the living room.

My husband dismissed what was happening as flights of fancy — surely there were rational explanations. My mother-in-law, however, was all too happy to help. She wondered if evil spirits may have been attached to certain objects I'd brought back with me from the South Pacific. I wasn't convinced, but desperate for this to end. So, on her advice, I threw the items away. Meanwhile, she went around the house, sprinkling holy water in each corner, and offering prayers and blessings.

Unfortunately, things only got worse from there. 

From our bed in the master bedroom, with the door open, I could see all the way down the hallway, through the laundry to the garage door. The garage door which led to the front of our house. The handle to this door started twisting and shaking as well. I ignored it as best I could, encouraged by my sister (in whom I confided everything) not to give this thing any attention. Even this did not deter it. On several nights, when my husband was called out on locksmithing jobs, I would hear footsteps as someone entered the bedroom. I would feel the depression on the mattress as someone sat on the edge of the bed, and then made its way slowly up to where I was sleeping, crawling on top of me. When the sensation became crushing, and I lost the ability to breathe, I would mutter at my husband to 'get off me' and wave my arms at him.
Because — who else could it be but my husband returning from work? On at least half a dozen occasions my hands would pass through nothing but air, the sensation of someone on top of me dissipating instantly. There was no-one in my bedroom but me.

~~~

You might think these events would have been enough to send me running from the house, never to return. But a mortgage is like an anchor, weighing you down to one spot. And by this time, years had passed. Often, months would go by with nothing odd. Then there'd be days or weeks of incidents. There was no rhyme or reason to it. At least none that I could understand.

Several years later, my son had been born and life was even more chaotic — now two toddlers were running under my feet. I was too busy to be worried about twisting door handles, and the nightly visits hadn't happened for some time. As I was chasing my children — aged two and five — begging them to get their shoes on, the presence made itself known again. I was tired. I was distracted. We were late, again, and everything had gone wrong that morning. My son had filled his nappy not long after getting dressed, requiring a full outfit change. My daughter had spilt her breakfast on the floor, breaking a bowl. I was not thinking about the spirit. I certainly wasn't looking for it. But it was looking for us.

In the hallway, as I begged my son to let me put his shoe on his foot, he suddenly fell backwards. This was not too unsettling, but then my daughter fell as well, both of them looking up and over my shoulder. Their mouths dropped open, their faces turned pale, and their eyes widened. I didn't think I'd been that frightening, until my daughter whispered fearfully "D-d-d-daddy?"

I spun to look behind me, finding the hallway empty. My children took no more encouragement to put their shoes on, and we made a hasty exit from the house. Sitting in the car, trembling as I held onto the wheel, I turned and asked my daughter, "what did you see behind me? Daddy is at work. What did you see?"

It took a lot of coaxing to get an answer, my daughter shrugging and avoiding my gaze. Finally she mumbled, as she twirled her doll in her hands, "I think it was a man."

~~~

Many hauntings never have a resolution. We never identify the spirit who is lingering. This isn't the case for this story. We'd become good friends with our neighbours, and one night — when our neighbour from across the road was visiting, and we were enjoying a few too many drinks — I finally mentioned the weird occurrences. And I finally discovered who was visiting us. Our neigbour told us that the person who used to live in his house had died of a heart attack some years before. He'd passed away in our driveway, as he'd walked to our house, trying to get help.

We have since moved from this house. When we sold, and we were closing up, I took a single, round pebble and placed it in the corner of my daughter's old room. Perhaps the new owners would never meet the visitor. But perhaps not. And perhaps this stone would help guide them, just as the previous owner had guided me.