Not scary. Interesting.

We've had a few experiences of the supernatural type since we moved into our new house. I think maybe I'm just a lightning rod for ghostlies, or else I'm delusional. This is different than other experiences though - we've actually seen someone (or some thing?)

The first thing probably wasn't supernatural. We came home, just a few days into living here, and the laundry room door (to the outside) was wide open. It was also still locked, and it is very difficult to open when it isn't locked. I was upset because I thought someone had come in while we were gone, but there was no sign of anyone.

Then Five saw her, a few days later. Our house is roughly "U" shaped, and from Five and Beastie's room, you can see, across a garden area, into the laundry room. We had lived here just a week or two when it happened. I was in the kitchen (just outside the laundry room) and Five was in her room. Suddenly she called out "Oh! Grandma Sugar's here! Grandma Sugar's here!" She was all excited and came running into the kitchen. "Where's Grandma Sugar?" she asked.
I told her Grandma wasn't here. "But I saw her!" she said. "She was in the laundry room! I saw her curly hair!"

I was just outside the laundry room, and I know for a fact there was no one there, especially not an elderly woman with curly hair. (Grandma Sugar is my grandma, the kids' great-grandma. And that's not a blog pseudonym - they really do call her Grandma Sugar.)

I figured Five must have seen me, and through the windows I looked distorted or something. No big deal. I didn't say anything to anyone about it and really didn't think about it again, until a little later....

A few weeks went by. I was in the living room with all the kids, and it wasn't late at night, but it was dark out. I asked EJ to please go into the kitchen and get me The Babe's cup of juice. She did, but when she came back, she had a stricken look on her face and she was breathing heavily.
"What happened?" I asked.
"Oh, it was weird," she told me. "I was in the breezeway and I think my imagination was running away with me because I saw an old lady in there. She was really short and had curly hair like Grandma Sugar."

I think I almost fainted. The fact that she described her the same way Five had really stuck out to me. But I didn't say that.

"Our imaginations sure can make us think funny things, can't they?" I said. But inside I was a little unnerved.

A week or so went by. It was another regular night. We were all in the kitchen, looking for a snack, when The Hub decided to go outside and have a cigarette. EJ went into the laundry room to look in that pantry for a snack. Suddenly someone knocked on the glass of the laundry room door. EJ ran back into the kitchen. "Dad's trying to scare me!" she said. I looked into the laundry room. I could see a very short figure out there in the dark. It knocked on the door again.
"Knock it off, you're scaring the kids!" I yelled, and it ran away. A couple minutes later, The Hub came in through the door to the garage (where he had originally gone out.) I asked why he was crouching outside the door trying to scare the kids. He swore he wasn't. He told me he had been in the garage the whole time since it was so windy out. My husband is not a liar, and he isn't interested in truly frightening anyone (although he is definitely not above knocking on a window to scare the kids!) I believe him when he says he wasn't out there. He would have absolutely no reason to lie about that sort of thing.

So. A few weeks goes by, and nothing happens. The Hub is a little nervous about the house when it's late at night, just from those couple incidents. His imagination gets the best of him. I, on the other hand, am not at all nervous about this house. It does not feel creepy or "off" in any way. It's a very comfortable place, at least to me.

Then I had an experience.

I was sitting in my bedroom, directly in front of the door, working on my computer. It was after Monkey was born, because I was lying on my belly. Directly outside my door is a hallway and 3 steps going down into the rest of the house (it's a bilevel.) EJ's room is on one side of my room and Five and Beastie's room is on the other.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw EJ come out of her room and stand at the top of the steps, looking down into the breezeway. She stood there for a couple seconds. I still didn't really look up from what I was doing, but I could clearly see her since she was only maybe three feet away. "What are you doing?" I asked. No response. I looked up to see why she wasn't answering and ... she was gone. No one there. "EJ?" I called. She popped her head out of her room. "What are you doing?" I asked.
"Nothing, Mom," she answered. "Just in here on my bed reading."
"Why were you standing in the hall?" I asked her.
"I wasn't," she said, sounding confused. "Why?"
"Oh, never mind."

To say I'm spooked would be pushing it though. It really isn't scary here at all. There is nothing weird or creepy here. No cold spots, no bumps in the night, except for the cat who spends all her time trying to get into the fish tank and who falls off it every night.

However, as I was typing this, my mom called. She went out with some ladies from church tonight, and told them where our new house is. They knew the people who built this house, in 1964. They were in their 50s at the time, and the lady was very, very short. The ladies spoke very highly of the couple, saying they were just the nicest, kindest, most generous people. They sold the house in 2000, and the woman died in 2003, at age 84. The husband died just this year, at 90-some-odd years of age.

Interesting. Not scary, but very interesting. I'm curious to see if anything else happens....