"Bob"

I know how foolish it must sound to call our alleged ghost Bob, but sometimes giving things a name makes them easier to put in some useful mental cubbyhole.

It didn't take long for Bob to move beyond the stairs. We soon started hearing him walking down the hall toward the bedrooms. We'd be downstairs watching TV when we'd hear the stairs act up again then go down the hall over our heads. Oh hell. Speak of the devil! There he goes. I was wondering when Bob would make an appearance tonight.

There's no pattern to it so far as we can tell. It happens at random, but it's most unnerving at night when we're in bed. No matter how many times we've heard it now, we just can't get over that apprehension we feel staring at the doorway as the sound approaches. Still, nothing ever appears but each time I could swear there's going to be somebody there. I can't tell you how difficult it is to fall asleep when we haven't heard him yet and the hour gets later. You get to a point where you just want to get it over with for the night.

If it had just remained limited to that we could have gotten used to it. Ha! How many times in the past 4 months have I told myself that! First the creaks and groans, then the stairs, then the hall, then the floors in the livingroom, the doors... but I get ahead of myself. Forgive me. There's just so much in such a short time. Yet somehow we're determined to tough it out, as they say. This is our first home and we're staying!

I'm sorry, this is just getting me riled up tonight. I need to step away from this for now.I'll try to get more down tomorrow.

Further explanation

As I give my previous entry more thought, I realize how silly I must sound. Surely a few odd sounds to which one is not yet accustomed do not constitute a haunting. Of course not, but I had to start somewhere. The truth is that it goes beyond that, but much like the noises, it has taken time for us to realize what was really going on. Before I get ahead of myself, let me start at the beginning again and attempt to follow the progression as we've seen or, more accurately, experienced it.

As I've said, I suspect things began the first night we stayed in the house. The house did seem oddly noisy. By this I mean moreso than you would normally expect. Odd noises in the attic, creaks in the floor, thumps in the walls. It wasn't constant, but it seemed unusually frequent. Still, the place had been build the year I was born. Just an old house doing the things old houses do. It was April. the temperature outside was all over the place - warm during the day, but still cold at night - and the spring humidity was returning to the air. Houses make a lot of noise during the changes in and out of winter in our experience. We only mentioned it in passing,not htinking anything of it at the time.

The next week we didn't think a lot of it. We were busy packing up the apartment and getting ready for the official move the following weekend so we were only in the house occassioanlly during the day dropping things off.

Once everyting was moved in the next Saturday, we started the process of unpacking and didn't notice anyhting odd. In fact, it wasn't until Monday night while we were relaxing for a bit on the couch when Kari mentioned the quiet. I realized she was right. All the house noises we'd hear the week before were completely absent. So much so we hadn't noticed for 3 days. We shrugged it off as odd but that was about it.

As the house started resembling a home, the house began to resume its creaks and growns. I noticed it and laughed then said to Kari, "Hey, I think the house finally woke up." And so it was for a few weeks. The house making it's noises and us settling in and getting used to the sounds of our new home. We never suspected that that would all change.

It's funny the things you don't notice at the time, but on reflection they start to paint a picture. Every house has it's known creaky spots. Our has a couple of spots in the floor and a few of the stairs. I remember now that around mid-May we started hearing the stairs in particular creaking once in a while. At first it was just an isolated creak. But within a week of noticing it, it became more persistent. By the end of the month, you'd swear there was somebody coming up from the basement. Yet every time it happened, niether of us were near the stairs. We were either downstairs watching TV, in the livingroom, anywhere but the stairs. It started to become a nearly nightly occurance. Not knowing what to make if it, Kari jokingly decided we had a "ghost" and his name was Bob. And so began the Bob jokes.

"Oh, Bob's coming up for bed." "Bob, thinks we're boring. He's going downstairs to watch TV." we must have come up with a hundred of these. It kept us amused and we tried not to think too much of it.

I'm not sure what to think

I'm not really sure what to think of things right now, but I feel this need to get it down somewhere. Even if only to get it out of my head, see it in text, process it somehow.

The best way I can think to state it succinctly... I think our house may be haunted.

There, I've said it. The very thought of it sends chills down my spine, but I'm running out of rational, logical, natural explanations for what's been happening. Looking back now I realize it started from the very first night we officially owned our own home. It all seemed so innocent, so normal then. Now I just don't know what to make of it.

I've never been a superstitious person. Sure, I knock on wood when one supposedly should, but only as a joke and as a sign of hopefulness that whatever I said won't backfire. You know how it goes. But now I find myself wondering what the hell we were thinking signing the papers and taking ownership of this house on Friday the 13th of all days. But that was the day. We thought nothing of it at the time. April 13, 2007, just a couple of months ago, we took posession of our very first home. All we knew was we were happy, excited, and saw nothing but our future together. We were so excited about it all that we went back to our apartment before the ink was even dry and rounded up our sleeping bags and pillows. We were going to spend our first night in our own home. As of the moment the pen left the last page and the seller's agent placed the keys in my hand, our apartment was no longer "home".

In retrospect, it all started for us that night. It was just little noises really. Odd sounds in the attic. Just mice, nothing more. The occasional creak of the floor or crack of a wall somewhere in the house. The place was 34 years old. Houses make weird noises. Even more so as they age. We just needed to get used to the new sounds of this house. after all, our apartment was in an old house and full of it's own weird sounds. That's all. To be honest, we barely gave it any more thought than that. We actually laughed at how we noticed every little sound. New places can be strange, can't they?

Over the past weeks though, the noises have continued. Not constantly, but frequently. Frequently enough that we notice them still. But they've become more... coherent, for lack of a better way to describe it. I'd swear some night I hear somebody coming up the steps, but we're the only ones here. Other times it sounds like somebody's walking down the hall but the footsteps stop at the bedroom door, then nothing.