Life has seemed kind of full lately, with us moving into a new space. I'm actually enjoying the mundane things of life that we'd normally take for granted. Such as doing laundry, folding it up and putting it all away nicely and neatly in its designated place. Vacuuming the floor, because there is actually a floor, not just a 12 foot long, 18 inch wide corridor that comprised the floor space of our old Georgie Boy RV. Wandering from room to room, because there are actual roomS in this place--five of them to be exact, if you count the bathroom. Wielding a duster or mop, etc. etc. -- you get the idea. I love our new space. Even if I did have to exorcise a lingering ghost---more on him later.
I also take no small pleasure in making the bed. Believe it or not, it's been a joy to have a normal bed in my life again and to be able to walk all the way around the thing, smoothing the new sheets into place, snapping the blankets in the air over it, watching them settle, then walking around the bed again, smoothing the nice fluffy blankies into place. I want to take a running jump from across the room and land in the middle of that comfy bed just like a kid. Except I'm rather arthritic and getting brittle, not to mention my wonky gall bladder full of stones. Taking a flying leap is probably not the best idea, but the spirit is willing, yes, the spirit is willing.
Speaking of spirits, more about that ghost, though it's a bit early in the season for Halloweeny type tales. Here's some backstory: This domicile was owned by an old couple who lived here for the last sixteen years. It came up for sale this year, after 91-year-old Mrs. Romney*, was taken to Oregon to live with her daughter. She could no longer live alone, but I applaud her for sticking it out as long as she did. I never met her or even saw her, but I picture her as a tiny, wiry, stalwart pioneer of a woman. Tough as nails and clean as a whistle, too.
Along with the house and most of the furniture, we also 'inherited' a grand supply of cleaning products and equipment. It's a bit bizarre to buy a place already furnished, but all the other things are even more strange. Apparently, Mrs. Romney believed in cleanliness being next to Godliness. She owned every sort of mop, broom, dusters, furniture polish, and cleaners around. She had products I never even thought of buying before. (Except a Swiffer; I treated myself to one.) She must have dearly loved to clean! That's fabulous by us, because, since everything was already spic and span, thanks to the careful ministrations of her daughter, we had very little cleaning up to do in order to move in. The place was truly 'move-in ready'.
The only drawback is that somehow I feel I must keep up her cleaning standards!
Well, never too late for this leopard to change her spots. I admit I never was the best housekeeper, but I do feel overwhelmingly compelled to keep up with old Mrs. Romney. My husband surely is checking under the bed for pods at least weekly. (For the uninitiated, 'pods' is a reference to an old 1956 movie, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in which human duplicates were grown by aliens in large seed pods under unsuspecting peoples' beds in an attempt to take over humankind.)
But dear old Mrs. Romney is still alive and kicking, so the shade of said lady is not the one that was haunting me, though her spirit of tidiness certainly has had its impact. No, the revenant to which I referred above is Mr. Romney. The story of exactly what happened to Mr. Romney is unclear. All I really know is that he loved to build and fix things and that at 90-something, he fell out of the apricot tree in the backyard. I don't know if that was the impetus for his eventual demise or why or how he even got into the tree, but he died in 2015, about a year before Mrs. Romney left her home to go live with her daughter.
After we moved into the place, I immediately felt a presence in it. I've moved around all my adult life and never have I felt that there was anyone or anything besides me, who shouldn't have been there. For two or three weeks, I felt this entity's presence, upon our taking up residence in the Romney house. I mostly felt the presence in the corner of the back bedroom, by the windows. This bedroom has two windows perpendicular to each other in one corner. One faces north and the other east, with a rocking chair in front of them. I could not rid myself of the pervading sense that we were not alone in that back bedroom and that the rocker was not empty though I do confess I never saw it move.
When we had been installed in the house for about a week and a half, I was awakened one night from a sound sleep by an icy wind blowing in from the east window. It was as though a huge wind storm had blown up and was blasting through the window; the frigidness of it woke me. I sat up, turned on the light and stared at the window, which was tightly closed, the curtains still and motionless. Shaking my head, I turned the light off, dismissing it as a dream and snuggled back onto my pillow, flinging a blanket over me. Not five minutes later the wind blew through again, smacking me in the back and sending shivers up my spine. This time I heard it! Brrrr! It was so cold! Again, I sat up and stared at the window. No way any wind blew through it! It was closed tight! Now mind you, August in southern Utah is pretty darn warm; our temperatures had been hovering right around 100° for well over a week. Yes, it cools off at night, but this felt like a winter wind. I lay back in bed, my eyes like saucers until sheer fatigue took over and I slept the rest of the night. A few nights later, when I turned over in bed to switch off the lamp, a movement caught my eye. I saw a shadow in the corner near the ceiling, where no shadow could have or should have been. It vanished through the wall. It looked like a substantial puff of smoke. No, no, I am NOT imagining things and I'm not crazy. (Well, that depends on who you talk to.)
The capper to this story came about a week after that. I'd been working on a gigantic pile of laundry that I'd heaped up in the 'garden' tub after we moved in. This mountain consisted mostly of coats and jackets and a few assorted quilts. When we came west, we must have thought that we were going to freeze to death living in an RV in the winter. Because why else would we have such a stockpile of coats and jackets? Few of which we have ever worn, I might mention. They'd been relegated to various storage crannies in the RV. However, now we have actual CLOSETS. So I wanted to get everything washed before putting it all away.
Using up the remains of my own laundry detergent before opening any more, I was keeping my liquid Purex bottle on top of the dryer. This was because Mrs. Romney had left a hefty supply of Kirkland laundry detergent, a good half-dozen 250 count boxes of dryer sheets and sundry other laundry-doing goodies in the cupboards above the washer and dryer. (I won't even get into the ten one-gallon bottles of bleach out in the shed or the eight canisters of salt that were on a shelf in one of the closets.) Anyway, there was no room for my bottle, so it sat on top of the dryer as I worked on the pile of coats and quilts.
After nearly a week of around 2 loads per day, I was happily getting down to the nitty gritty of that ginormous heap. Finally, all that was left was my bright green Christmas tablecloth and a beautiful white, ribbon embroidered queen-sized quilt that had belonged to my mother. After determining that the quilt would not fit into the washer and would have to be taken to town to a laundromat, I decided to just wash the tablecloth by itself, in case the green color ran. I shook it out and carefully tucked it in around the agitator and reached for my Purex. It wasn't there. I backed up a step and looked around. No soap. I looked in the cupboards above the washer and dryer. No soap. I turned and looked at the bathroom counter behind me. No soap. Looked under the sinks. Nope. 'Oh, well, I'll find it later,' I told myself and opened up the 30 lb. pail of Kirkland and measured some into the washer. Then I went around looking for that dang Purex. I looked high and low. I looked in absurd places that no one would ever put laundry detergent. I even looked in Patrick's laundry basket, thinking maybe he wanted to preserve the Purex for his own use, since he is allergic to many other types of detergent. But, no, it could not be found.
I wandered out to the front porch, where Patrick was having a break, sank into a chair and asked him if he had any idea where the Purex was. Of course, he had no idea whatsoever. I told him of my fruitless search for the soap. Engulfed in bafflement, I mused about where the heck the detergent could have gone.
At length, I figured the tablecloth must be ready for the dryer, so I meandered back to fish it out of the washer. I opened the lid and lo, and behold, there was my bottle of Purex, nice and clean from its spin through the wash cycle. In shock, I paused to reflect. I could not, COULD NOT have inadvertently knocked that bottle into the washer. I'd have heard it clattering into the drum, wouldn't I?? I couldn't have been so absentminded as to have missed such an event. Thinking back to my experience of the icy wind blowing across my bed in the middle of the night, the shadow disappearing into the wall near the ceiling, and the mysterious sense of never being alone, even when I was, I concluded I must have a ghost. And I was equally sure it was Mr. Romney. And that he was over in the corner of the bedroom having a grand old chuckle at my expense. I wandered back out to the front porch and with big bug eyes, told Patrick I'd found the soap and swore up and down I could not have knocked the bottle into the washer. He smiled one of those little 'Uh-huh, sure...' smiles and went back to his book.
After relating these events (straight-faced, I might add) to a friend here in the park, she nodded knowingly and said "Yes, there are many entities in this area. We have one over at the office." While I took this in, she offered to get a couple of women she knew to come smudge the house. I had no idea what that meant, so soon I was googling 'how to get rid of ghosts'. Who knew there were so many ways? Smudging involves lighting a dried bundle of sage and other herbs and going about wafting the smoke into corners and closets and other places negative energy tends to accumulate, while praying and offering blessings. Patrick has COPD so filling the house with herbal smoke was out. Of course, one can always get a priest or other shaman to come and do it for you, but I'm not Catholic and the previous occupants were Mormon, so I wasn't too sure about the practicality of that. However, one website said simply telling the ghost to leave often works and advised to do it with kindness. I digested that tidbit but did not relate any of my findings to anyone.
A day or two later, as Patrick and I were returning home from shopping, I asked him "So do you think this ghost stuff is all in my head?" "Yeah, mostly." he replied. "But I did tell Mr. Romney that he could leave this morning." I stared at him dumbfounded. Was he joking? I asked him if he was pulling my leg and he said not at all, that when he was up at five a.m. he thought it would be a good time since the house was quiet and I was still asleep. I was incredulous that my skeptical husband would do such a thing. Thinking of this the next morning while I made my bed, I thought 'Why not?'
"Mr. Romney, your wife has gone to Portland to live with your daughter. She's not here any more, I'm sorry. She sold the place to us and we live here now. So you don't need to stay here any more, you can go on to heaven, it's ok." I spoke these words out loud, trying not to feel silly, which was pretty hard.
And I am here to tell you, I have not been 'bothered' since. No unaccountable icy winds blowing through closed windows, no disappearing items, no weird shadows and no sense of not being alone. We are all by ourselves.
And I solemnly swear that I have not been up to no good...
Till next time,
"They say that shadows of deceased ghosts
Do haunt the houses and graves about,
of such whose life's lamp went untimely out
Delighting still in their forsaken hosts." ~ Joshua Sylvester
*name changed to protect privacy.
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