CHRISTMAS GHOST STORIES - post yours here!!

[tomanderson]

Just a quick thread starter and then I have to go off to work--it's always great, especially with this chilly weather, to tell Christmas ghost stories. This is a tradition going back a couple of centuries! For some reason, people enjoy spooky tales told at gatherings at this time of the year. Why, Charles Dickens' A CHRISTMAS CAROL happens to be a ghost story, and at times it is fairly scarifying! I've got one of my own and I'll post it here...

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Okay, here's mine. It's not too much but maybe you'll like it. This happened about ten years back. A friend of mine named Frank had bought a house out in the desert a good hour and a half drive from Los Angeles. Real estate was cheap in this area because seriously, this was way in the middle of nowhere and I thought he was a little kooky for buying something this far out. You had to drive through lots of totally barren desert just to get to their neighborhood, which was just a few streets stuck together. And some of the streets weren't even paved. I only mention this to make the point that by the time I got there for my first visit, I hadn't seen anyone for miles and miles and that feeling of being "isolated" was quite pronounced.

Anyway, it was my understanding that this neighborhood itself was only a few years old and had been nothing but rocks and tumbleweeds, probably since forever. So his wife Gloria has cooked this amazing dinner of beef brisket and fresh rolls and stuff. Dinner is nice, and so Frank says, "I bet you want to sleep in the haunted room tonight. Well actually that's the only room, unless you want the couch in the livingroom." It was a two bedroom house. He and his wife had the master bedroom of course, and the other one was like a small guest bedroom.

Naturally I think he's having a fun on me. I am also aware that the house is only a few years old and they are the first occupants. So the idea that one of the rooms is haunted doesn't make a whole lot of sense, right? I ask him what the deal is. "Well, I'm not going to tell you. It's not a big deal, really, it's a really subtle thing. You sleep there tonight, and in the morning you can tell me if you noticed anything. That way you can't blame me for suggesting anything to you."

This bothers me, because I figure, well, if he's not going to even tell me what it is, and wants me to find out myself, then there must be something to it. So I bring my stuff into the room, and I am kind of disgusted by the girly bed they give me...I don't know why, it's just all kind of...too nice and too unslept-in. It looks like a display bed in a colonial museum or something. It's all firm and cold, in fact the whole room is cold, this is the desert, remember, so anything that's in direct contact with the elements outside will become like a popsicle on a cold night. I never feel comfortable sleeping away from home, anyway, so I am noticing all the little details with dissatisfaction. One thing that seems reassuring is that the room itself is really small, so if it is haunted, then literally, there isn't much room for a haunt. Whatever the haunting is, it's got to be something pretty damn small.

So I get ready for bed, turn the lights out and tuck myself in, and I'm honestly just hating every minute of this. I hate the bed, I hate the quiet of the house, I hate the creepy feeling of being in the middle of the desert. I guess I'm some sort of a city guy, and lights and traffic sounds are very comforting to me. So naturally I have trouble falling asleep, feels like I'm just lying in the dark there with my eyes closed for an hour. And at some point I don't remember, I fall asleep.

A while later I hear the window rattling and I kind of half wake up. The window is shaking intermittently like someone is outside grabbing it somehow. I think for a second, It's a burglar! and then suddenly I am wide awake and listening to this rattling window, but I have my eyes closed. Then I realize, this is probably the haunting Frank has been talking about. I open my eyes and look up at the window and I can't see anything, it's just dark out there. The window is still shaking now but it's calming down and now it's just sort of trembling, rattling softly for about twenty more seconds or so. And then it stops.

I think, "We're in the middle of the desert. A person would have to drive out here to even get here, if that is someone outside. And if that is someone, then they're probably freezing their <deleted> off." I wait a while, listening for the sound of wind--there isn't any. The shaking window thing doesn't happen again. Is something else going to happen? I wait for the haunting to get worse. But there's nothing. It takes me another hour to pass out again and then I think I only nap for a little while because I wake up and the sun is just starting to come up and I feel like I haven't slept at all.

So we have toast and weak, lame coffee for breakfast and he says, "So did you hear it?"

"The window was shaking," I said.

"Yep--that's it. It happens every few nights," he tells me. "It usually happens about three or four in the morning. The first time I heard it, it scared the <deleted> out of me because I thought someone was trying to break in. Then I realized that we were out in the middle of nowhere and if it's someone, they're crazy for being out here in the middle of the night. There's wild animals and rattlesnakes and stuff out there, and it's just not a smart place to be walking around outside at night."

"Hmm," I said. "So you don't know what it is at all, huh?"

"Nope."

He moved out of there a few years later and found a place closer to the city, so that's all I can tell you about it.