Who Boo?

When I was about fifteen, my friend Bryan told me that he had got permission for us to enter an old vacant farmhouse not far outside of town so we could try and detect ghost activity. Seriously. This was before any of the ghost hunter shows, before any ghost hunter detection equipment, and apparently, before any decent amount of teenage hormones took over my body to let me know what I should have been doing on a Saturday night.

It was the summer of 1981 and we were growing up in a little town not far from Des Moines, Iowa. How little? About 800 people little. I just looked and the current population is still just under 800. When you grow up in a very small town, you don’t think about things the same as people ‘from the city’. So when he suggested we go onto someone else’s property, wait until midnight, and witness (note that we didn’t have a camera or any recording method) an old dead lady rise up in her bedroom window to look out over the farm, I said, “sure – that sounds like fun!”

So the big day arrived and gave Bryan a call early that morning – called as in used the rotary dial phone attached to the kitchen wall in our house…it was 1981 after all. In all of our earlier conversations about a strategy for the big event, Bryan neglected to mention that he had to work that night. But he assured me he would be back out to the vacant house no later than 10pm that night. He said that I should not wait for him and be out there when the sun was going down in case anything happened then. So that night I got on my trusty moped (I was fifteen) and rode the three miles or so down the dirt road to the creepy house.

Of course nothing happened other than my nerves were shot by the end of the night. Bryan never bothered to show up either as he “had to work late” – right…

So what’s the point of that story? Only that our minds have the ability to generate just about any fear or emotion with only a suggestion of reality.

Now let’s try some reality.

Around 1986 I lived in Des Moines while I was going to college in West Des Moines. I shared the second floor of an old house north of downtown with two other guys. I would work from 7am to 3pm weekdays and then go to electronics school at night. It was a busy schedule.

One morning I was in the kitchen and had just put pop-tarts in the toaster. I’ll try and give you get the lay of the land of this kitchen – it won’t take long. There was only one entrance. When you came in you were immediately facing the refrigerator. Turn to your right to walk towards the sink, counter and cabinets. One step from the fridge and you will walk between the stove on your right and the two person table on your left. Both were shoved against the outside walls. One more step past the stove and you were at the counter. That was it. About six feet by eight feet.

I was in a bit of a hurry and decided to also make my lunch at the same time. So right after starting the tarts, I went to the refrigerator to get some stuff for a sandwich. The bread was on top of the fridge so I grabbed a couple of slices of that first and put them on the table. Then I got in the fridge and got out some cheese. I took one slice off the top and put it on my bread. Just then the pop-tarts popped up. I spun to the right, took two steps and opened the cabinet, I grabbed a small saucer, put the tarts on the plate, turned back left to take my two steps back to the table and found my cheese slice was now STUCK to the table instead of laying nicely on the bread!  WTH?

And before you blame my roommates, both had worked late and were out cold (I checked because I thought the same thing).  Plus that old house creaked and groaned every time anyone walked around. Nobody could sneak up on anyone there. So it wasn’t them and it wasn’t me – it was a poltergeist! Cool.

Fast forward to my current house. We have only been in this house about four years but we have already experienced some weirdly ghost-like activity. Our house is not particularly old either. It was built in 1986 but I don’t think the ghosts consider that as part of their normal agenda. Whenever we would come home and our daughter had been here alone, she would mention all the noises she could hear that sounded like someone walking around upstairs. She had even gone up there several times to check if we or our son had come home without her knowing it. She is not one to exaggerate but I never thought much of it since I understand houses settle and sometimes there’s a lot of wind here so either one would explain it. I thought that way right up until I was here alone. This house makes a LOT of noises!

Usually noises can be written off as something normal but what does it take to make a believer? In January of this year (2022) I had been on the treadmill in our lower level (my lab). After I got done running, I went up to the bathroom to take a shower. While I was waiting to cool down enough where it would do any good, I was standing about mid-way between the shower and the toilet. That’s about two feet from both. All of a sudden I caught movement out of the corner of my eye so I turned to look at the toilet paper roll since that’s what seemed to be moving.

In that bathroom the TP is on a metal bar. The cardboard inner roll of the TP just lays directly on top of it. In other words friction if there’s any movement. Well while I was staring at the roll, it started turning! From a dead stop it starting unrolling the toilet paper! It unrolled about six inches of the paper and then stopped. I had just enough time to think, ‘well that was weird…’ and it started up again. It took about ten seconds for it to unroll the last three feet or so of paper and leave it in a pile on the floor.

I was ecstatic. This means we don’t have a mean poltergeist but just a ghost cat in our house! I ain’t afraid of no ghost cat…

Author:  Bill Claman                  2/26/22            Blog #00003