Who Ya Gonna Call?

(August 22, 2001)

I'm reading a book about haunted houses in New Orleans. It's written a little pedantically. No need for so many exclamation points. But the stories are good, and it seems like every structure in the French Quarter is haunted.

I lived in a haunted house. In the part of Connecticut we moved to when I started high school, everything is old; maybe because of that, it's like people EXPECT ghosts. When we told Eleanor, our neighbor, what we experienced and my mother described the ghost, Eleanor looked thoughtful and said, "Now who would that be..." as though we'd said someone stopped by to borrow a cup of sugar.

The house we rented was built in 1810 or something. It was a cool little Colonial, white with black shutters (of course-- that's like, a rule or something for Colonials in Connecticut) and it had one main floor and an attic converted to two bedrooms. That was the best set-up-- my brother and I had the attic rooms, and there was a center landing that was all ours, with a bathroom. The lambs had eaten the wallpaper off the wall, but it was cool having an almost-private bathroom.

(The lambs? Another story. Lambs in diapers. What, you never entertained livestock in your room before?)

The weirdest thing about the house was a back room that was always freezing cold, no matter how high the heat. It was the reason nobody took that room for a bedroom. You could put your hand on the heater and feel that it was on, yet the room was frigid. My mother ended up using it as a walk-in closet. The other weird thing was a kind of feeling you weren't alone in your room.

One night my mother heard a noise that sounded like a chain rattling (I know, I know, Boo! and all that) and said, "Lou, some strange dog is eating Grover's food." He said, "Ummphflablogey." Okay, clearly not gettin' up. She wanted him to get out of bed and go chase the dog away (she thought the rattling sounded like a dog collar rattling against the dog food dish, out on the porch).

She got up herself, looked out the only window that looked out on the porch: the one in the "cold room." No strange dog, Grover's food was safe. Then she decided to go make sure Grover was in the house, and she also had to pee. Walking around, found the dog snoring in the kitchen, pet him. Went to pee. Came back into bed. Wanting to know what time it was, she said, "What time is it?" Again, just mumbles from Louie. So she leaned completely over to Louie's side of the bed, to the clock. Clock said 3:36.

When she went to settle back on her side of the bed, a woman lept off it in fear. My mother startled the shit out of a ghost.

The woman stood rigid against the wall, like she thought my mother was going to hurt her. She was wearing a white night gown or dressing gown of some kind, it was lacy in front and buttoned all the way up to the neck with little round pearl buttons. Her hair was dark brown in a short chin-length bob, and her face was angular. She then sank to the floor, still in a stare-down with my mother, who didn't know what to do any more than the ghost did. In fact, my mother reports that she couldn't move. Not just "I was so scared I couldn't move," but like, frozen, immobile. She whispered "Lou...Lou" but he was dead to the world. The ghost was sitting against the wall now, and wrapped her arms around her own knees. My mother (who's only '4 "11) saw that the woman had long legs, because in the sitting position her knees came almost to her chin.

That's the last thing my mother remembers until morning. When she woke up she gasped and said, "Lou!" "What," he said. "Do you remember me telling you there was a dog outside?" "Yeah." "And do you remember me asking you what time it is?" "Yeah," he said. Then she told him about the ghost. Even she'd have thought she was dreaming, except for the whole walking around and looking at the clock thing.

My mother's theory is that the "cold room" was Ruth's room (we ended up researching) and that Ruth followed my mother after she looked out the window. All around the house, and then when my mother got back into bed and leaned way over to the clock, that left the whole side of the bed free. Ruth, for whatever reason, sat down. So when my mother put down the clock and sprang back, she scared her.

So we lived with Ruth for awhile.