Crazy Fortune 4: The Dallas Experience
One evening, Richard and I had climbed into bed to watch a movie on the television that we had inherited from Jane and Horace’s son and daughter-in-law. I can’t remember now what we were watching, some old black-and-white classic perhaps, and Richard fell asleep in the middle. I was wakeful, so I watched the movie to the end and then turned off the television and snuggled down in the bed to go to sleep.
That’s when I heard a very strange sound. It sounded like someone was operating a hand drill somewhere close by. I got out of bed and looked around the room, not sure what I was expecting to find, but it was such a persistent and peculiar noise that I couldn’t ignore it. Not seeing anything, I lifted the shade and peeked out one of the windows, half-expecting to find somebody crouched down in the bushes, drilling into the side of the house. Nada.
I got back into bed and at that point, the house started creaking. Old houses creak, of course, and shift and sigh. But soon, the creaking became so loud and scary-sounding that I was concerned that the foundation had finally given way and the house was about to come crashing down on top of us. I shook Richard awake, and told him I thought we should get out of the house, when all of a sudden we heard hammering. And more drilling. What the hell?? We threw on our robes on and hastily shoved our feet in the nearest shoes we could find, ready to run outside when all the noise stopped. No more hammering. No drilling. Not even the tiniest creak.
We stayed alert, ready to bolt, but when everything seemed okay, we warily got back into our bed. We remained keyed up for some time, but finally, we fell asleep. In the morning, Richard got up and went to the closet to pick out a set of clothes for his workday.
“Wow!” he exclaimed, “Look at this!” He whipped the louvered door back and forth on its track. The door, which had always gotten stuck halfway, moved as if it had been greased with the zippiest lubricant known to mankind.
“That’s weird,” I said. Though I was happy that the door was working. I headed to the bathroom and pushed the door shut behind me, resigned to the fact that it was going to get hung up on the jamb the way it always did, but to my great surprise, it closed easily with a satisfying click.
I opened the door and stuck my head out. “Look at this!” I called to Richard. He ambled over and watched me as I pushed the door shut.
“Huh,” he said.
We continued getting ready for our day and soon Fred was ringing the doorbell. He and Richard commuted to work in Arlington together, leaving me the car for my shopping job. Because I was so conditioned to having to wrench that door to get it open, I gave it a mighty tug and it opened so easily that it knocked me backward and crashed into the wall.
“Well, I’m happy to see you, too!” laughed Fred.
How bizarre! Every single door in the house was now working perfectly, as if they had all been re-hung. No sooner had Richard and Fred driven off than the phone rang. It was Rod.
“Was there something going on in the house last night?” he demanded.
“There sure was! I thought it was going to fall down on top of us.”
“And Toki! You know she’s not a barking dog, but she crawled into my bed with me and wouldn’t stop barking. At something.”
“Did you hear drilling and hammering?” I asked.
“Honey-chile, I was so scared, I didn’t know what I was hearing!”
We rehashed our nocturnal adventure to our satisfaction and then went about our business. There was no more creaking after that. No more drilling or hammering. I began to think it was some sort of ghost who loved the house and was looking after it.
There’s an interesting postscript to this story: Neither Richard nor I ever saw any ghosts, but around Christmas time, Richard’s sister Kathleen came to visit. We had an office party to attend the night that her flight came in, so we made arrangements with Richard and Kathleen’s cousin Dotti to pick her up and take her to our apartment. Dotti stayed and visited with her for a while, but then had a commitment of her own and left. Kathleen hung out in the living room, waiting for us to arrive.
When we got back from our party, we found Kathleen waiting for us, somewhat agitated. She said everything was fine, though, and we settled in for a chat. During the conversation, we told her about the carpenter ghost, and she bolted upright in her seat.,
“Oh my God,” she said.
“What?” we asked, puzzled.
She shivered, chafed her elbows. “Well, after Dotti left, I was sitting here on the sofa and I saw somebody go from the bathroom into the bedroom. I thought you guys had gotten home, so I went into the bedroom looking for you, but then I realized—there’s no way for you to get in here without going through the living room. And when I got to your bedroom, there was no one there.”
Well, no one visible, at any rate. But at least not only was this ghost friendly, it was handy!
Above: Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of the house and I’ve run out of pictures from our time in Dallas (since we weren’t taking pictures at that time, we ended up with only those pictures that friends took and passed along to us). So I’m posting a picture of our plum tree as it begins to blossom this spring.
Thursday, March 11, 2010