Post by LDS Guru Girl on Feb 28, 2005 8:00:53 GMT -5
In 1967, my family rented an old Victorian house in Waterloo (Ontario, Canada). It was a strangely brooding kind of building, with little touches of a neo-gothic decorative style about its eaves, chimneys and windows. Some of the glass panes in those windows were pleasingly coloured and set in quite artistic patterns which looked out of place because all of the exterior woodwork - including doors and window frames - was painted in a less than beautiful dull green which inevitably reminded the houses new English residents of the functional, but drab paint favoured by local authorities in Great Britain. There was a time when every park fence, schoolyard wall, playground gate and hospital in England was painted green - apparently because it was the only colour that committees could agree upon...or maybe it was just irresistibly cheap to buy that hideous and depressing hue in bulk?
The gardens were spacious and there was a hill behind the house that was just made for the little sled that I'd lately acquired. High walls surrounded the property and beyond the neat driveway lay a main road. Across that road, side by side as incongruent next door neighbours were a Carlings Brewery and a funeral home which always kept its dirty grey curtains drawn. The sight of hearses, driving past our home in procession with a gaggle of large black mourning limousines, became very familiar to us.
There were three bedrooms; one of them was a small cabin-like room with a set of french windows that led on to a small balcony. The french windows had stained glass which always caught the morning sunlight and painted the room in blue, red and green. Naturally, my sister and I argued about which of us would get this room and since she was very skilled at crying until she got her own way about things, I found myself quartered in a larger, but much plainer room at the back of the house whilst my sister smugly moved her things into the smallest bedroom.
However, her sense of satisfaction was short-lived. Both of our first two nights in the house were disturbed by her loud and piercing screams; closely followed by the thud of her bare feet down the wood-tiled upstairs landing as she headed for our parents' bedroom.
After the second such incident, Mum & Dad were getting tired of sharing their bed with a sobbing child. When my sister demanded to trade rooms with me, I was swiftly moved into her room and she took possession of mine.
Having sorted things out to her satisfaction once again, she told me that I would soon find out for myself just exactly how horrible the little bedroom was - plus she was very glad that the 'things' which were in it would now 'get' me instead of her.
Of course, she was right about not being alone in that room. Almost every night I would wake up to find somebody sitting at the foot of my bed. Either an old lady or an elderly man would be seated there; they'd look at me with friendly, smiling faces and I felt a hugely comforting warm glow of absolute and positive love at those times. I was five years old and I missed my grandparents back in England; these ghostly old people seemed to know that. Even now, as I remember these experiences I find tears filling my eyes because the emotions we shared were almost overpowering. I was a lonely little boy and I believe that they sorely missed being able to show love and affection to those they'd left behind. My sister was two years older than me and perhaps already too cynical to just accept what they offered - but I was too young to be afraid.
I recall that my sister frequently tried to frighten me all the time we lived in that house; she'd whisper dire warnings about 'evil things' in that room just before bed-time, but (to her great dismay) I was never scared. One day our landlord came calling to fetch some of his things from the attic. I followed him to the top of the house; at the foot of the attics only window was a carpet of flies, dried-out, dessicated dead flies which had found their way in there only to die of thirst and starvation. I imagined them looking hopelessly towards the daylight as their lives faded.
As the landlord searched through boxes and trunks, I quietly examined an ancient magnetic hockey game with chipped and rusting metal players and wondered if I could persuade my father to retrieve and fix it. The landlord found the items he was looking for; one of them was a large framed photograph - a black and white portrait of two old people. I instantly recognised them as my nocturnal visitors. The landlord told me that they were his grandparents and that they'd lived in the house many years before.
The gardens were spacious and there was a hill behind the house that was just made for the little sled that I'd lately acquired. High walls surrounded the property and beyond the neat driveway lay a main road. Across that road, side by side as incongruent next door neighbours were a Carlings Brewery and a funeral home which always kept its dirty grey curtains drawn. The sight of hearses, driving past our home in procession with a gaggle of large black mourning limousines, became very familiar to us.
There were three bedrooms; one of them was a small cabin-like room with a set of french windows that led on to a small balcony. The french windows had stained glass which always caught the morning sunlight and painted the room in blue, red and green. Naturally, my sister and I argued about which of us would get this room and since she was very skilled at crying until she got her own way about things, I found myself quartered in a larger, but much plainer room at the back of the house whilst my sister smugly moved her things into the smallest bedroom.
However, her sense of satisfaction was short-lived. Both of our first two nights in the house were disturbed by her loud and piercing screams; closely followed by the thud of her bare feet down the wood-tiled upstairs landing as she headed for our parents' bedroom.
After the second such incident, Mum & Dad were getting tired of sharing their bed with a sobbing child. When my sister demanded to trade rooms with me, I was swiftly moved into her room and she took possession of mine.
Having sorted things out to her satisfaction once again, she told me that I would soon find out for myself just exactly how horrible the little bedroom was - plus she was very glad that the 'things' which were in it would now 'get' me instead of her.
Of course, she was right about not being alone in that room. Almost every night I would wake up to find somebody sitting at the foot of my bed. Either an old lady or an elderly man would be seated there; they'd look at me with friendly, smiling faces and I felt a hugely comforting warm glow of absolute and positive love at those times. I was five years old and I missed my grandparents back in England; these ghostly old people seemed to know that. Even now, as I remember these experiences I find tears filling my eyes because the emotions we shared were almost overpowering. I was a lonely little boy and I believe that they sorely missed being able to show love and affection to those they'd left behind. My sister was two years older than me and perhaps already too cynical to just accept what they offered - but I was too young to be afraid.
I recall that my sister frequently tried to frighten me all the time we lived in that house; she'd whisper dire warnings about 'evil things' in that room just before bed-time, but (to her great dismay) I was never scared. One day our landlord came calling to fetch some of his things from the attic. I followed him to the top of the house; at the foot of the attics only window was a carpet of flies, dried-out, dessicated dead flies which had found their way in there only to die of thirst and starvation. I imagined them looking hopelessly towards the daylight as their lives faded.
As the landlord searched through boxes and trunks, I quietly examined an ancient magnetic hockey game with chipped and rusting metal players and wondered if I could persuade my father to retrieve and fix it. The landlord found the items he was looking for; one of them was a large framed photograph - a black and white portrait of two old people. I instantly recognised them as my nocturnal visitors. The landlord told me that they were his grandparents and that they'd lived in the house many years before.