Here’s an example of an unusual event connected to something mundane and probably not something any of us would consider but perhaps we should.  This was submitted to me via e-mail.  Feel free to submit your own.  Your privacy is guaranteed.  I will not post any identifying details without your permission. 

My wife and I were taking a Saturday drive along the lakeshore.  The scenery is great and the houses along the way are something else to see, huge and most of them are very, very old.

One of the houses was having a yard sale.  In this neighborhood, this was very rare so we stopped.  It looked like it might be an estate sale because it was like the entire house had been emptied on the front lawn.

While my wife was peeking in boxes and meandering from table to table; I started talking to one of the people that seemed to be hosting the sale.  The house had belonged to a very wealthy couple.  The wife had died some years before and the gentleman lived alone with the exception of a housekeeper.  There was no family.  The man became a bit of a recluse when his wife died.  He spent most of his time sitting on the large wraparound balcony, weather permitting, looking out at the lake. When the weather turned cold, he would sit in his parlor, looking out through a large window.

The man had died and left what he had to the housekeeper.  She did not want the house or the contents, instead she planned to move back to Ireland, where she was from and retire, so she put the house up for sale and decided to get rid of the contents.  She just wanted everything gone as quickly as possible so that she could get on with her own life.

The story hit me as being very sad.  Here was this man’s life spread out on his front lawn for strangers to pick at, wag their tongues over.  I didn’t want to stay around any longer, it was depressing.  So, I found my wife and convinced her that she had bought enough, that it was time to go home.

My wife prattled on and on about her new purchases and I told her the history of the house.  I felt bad because she seemed to be a little less happy with her buys.  We talked about the man and how sad that the things he and his wife had collected were going to strangers for the cheapest price.

My wife had bought china tea cups and saucers, some statuettes and a box of silver cutlery. When we got home, she washed everything and put them on display in her china cabinet.

I have to be honest and say that I quickly forgot about the old man.  I have kids, a job and a house to maintain and these take up a lot of my time.

About 2 weeks after the sale, we were having dinner when my wife asked me about how long it takes silver to tarnish.  I had to admit that I didn’t know but told her to look it up on the internet.  She then went on to warn the kids off of touching anything in her cabinet.  All 4 of them denied being in the cabinet and we have 4 boys.  None of them should have been interested in china and knick knacks.  My wife lifted up her hands and told them that all she was saying was that someone had been in the cabinet and things have been moved but it wasn’t her.

The next afternoon, when I had arrived home from work, all the boys had been gathered into the living room and my wife was on a tear.  On the coffee table was one of her estate sale purchases, a little statue of a woman in period clothing, apparently that was where she had found it when she came home from work.  It didn’t make sense because she was home before the boys arrived from school and I’m pretty sure that the statue wasn’t there when I left for work and I’m the last one out of the house.  But to be honest, I didn’t really check to see if anything was out of place in there.  Although, I like to think I would have noticed that.

The boys were all denying touching the thing and the little one was almost in tears.  So I stepped in and cut the discussion short.  I promised my wife that I would look for the key to the cabinet and we would keep it locked in the future.  That seemed to mollify her a bit but she was still glaring at the boys as they made their escape to their room or out of doors.

A couple of nights later, when we were in bed; I heard the sound of the cabinet or something in the cabinet rattling.  My wife was asleep.  I figured it was one of the boys messing around but I had found the key, the cabinet was locked and if they tried to force it?  It would break.  I crept down the stairs and around a corner into the living room.  The light from the street lit the room enough for me to see that none of my kids were there.  I checked the cabinet doors; they were locked tight.  When I turned around?  There, on the coffee table, was the same statue as the other day.  I tried the doors on the cabinet again and they were locked tight.  I checked where I had hidden the key, on the top of the cabinet, a good 7.5 feet.  The key was still there.  I took the key down and opened the cabinet, intended to put the statue back.  When I turned around, there seemed to be a shadow standing next to the table and the statue.  It moved off into the hallway and disappeared.  I felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I realized that the drapes were open in the living room and convinced myself that a car must have gone by and that the shadow was my own as the vehicle passed the house.  I put the statue back, locked the cabinet and replaced the key.  I was pretty shook up but went back to bed.  I looked in on the boys, fully expecting them to be gathered together giggling at the joke they had pulled on their father.  They were all in their rooms and sound asleep.  The joke was on me alright, it wasn’t them.

I was the first one up, I didn’t sleep very well.  I couldn’t get the cabinet or the shadow off my mind.  I made it a point to walk through the living room and to my relief, the statue was still in the cabinet, where I had put it the night before.

The day started normally but when I got home, my wife was in a state and the boys were nowhere to be seen.  She was almost hysterical, she pulled me into the living room.  She had the silver case on the coffee table, the silver was black.  Not just a little tarnished as you would expect but black but that wasn’t all apparently.  My wife told me that the statue was back on the coffee table when she got home.  She blamed the boys and had sent them all to their rooms.

I pulled out the silver polish from the kitchen and some cloths; I had my wife sit down with me and we polished to silver together.  I told her that I did not think it was the children messing with her statue but that I couldn’t offer any explanation.  The statue was in the cabinet when I left for work, of that, I was sure because I had double checked.  She started to cry.  I really didn’t know what to do.  I called the boys down and we all decided to go out for pizza, get some fresh air and perspective.  I put the silver away myself and locked the cabinet.

We went out for dinner.  I found myself getting more and more nervous as we neared the house.  I was really scared that the statue would be on the table again.

It wasn’t.  The rest of the evening was uneventful and we all went to bed.  About 3:00 am in the morning, our youngest started to howl, he’s 6.  My wife and I jumped out of bed to see what had happened.  We literally ran into the other boys as they too, ran to see what had happened to the little one.  We piled into his room and he was sitting up in his bed, crying his eyes out.  My wife reached him first.  She looked at me and told that he was shaking like a leaf.  The other three boys were huddled near the door, watching.  I turned to tell them to go back to bed, that we would take care of things and I saw a shadow, standing right behind them.  It had a definite outline of a person about 5’5.  I jumped off the bed toward the boys, pushing them away from the shadow.  My wife must have seen it as well because she screamed; of course this scared all the kids so they all started to cry.  The shadow seemed to melt away, into the wall on the opposite side of the hall.  It wasn’t a car on the street making the shadow.

We packed up the kids and went took them to my sister-in-law’s place.  My wife stayed with them and I came back to the house.  On the coffee table was the statue.  I am really freaked out at this point.  I will be honest, I didn’t know what to do.  I picked up the statue and I almost threw it against the wall.  I threw it on the couch instead.

I forced myself to walk through the house.  I don’t know what I was looking to find.  Which was good because I found nothing.

I left the house, locked up and joined the family.

We sat up talking with my sister-in-law all night.  She suggested calling someone.  Some kind of psychic or a priest.  I kept thinking of the Ghostbusters movie and that we could really use those guys.  I didn’t want to call some weirdo or priest.  This was my house and my family.  It was rough not being able to protect them and I had to go along with the suggestion because I didn’t have a clue what to do.  So, my sister-in-law hit the internet.

She gave me a short list.  A couple of the names were priests and the remaining 3 were mediums or something.  I booked off work, so did my wife and we started to make calls.  We reached the third one, a woman and after telling her what was going on, she agreed to meet us at our house.  The kids were still sleeping, beat after all the excitement the night before.  My sister-in-law agreed to watch them so my wife and I took off.

There was a woman walking around the place when we got to our home.  She introduced herself and got right down to business.  She asked us if we minded staying outside while she did what she called a “walkthrough”.  After about 15 minutes she came out of the house.  Not quite as cheerful as she had been when we first met.  In fact, she was kind of shaken up.  I suggested we all go for coffee.

She told us that the house had a very disturbed energy source.  She sensed it was female and seemed to be attached to the living room.  She asked us a bunch of questions about the house; had we always lived there and we had.  We bought the house, brand new.  She asked us if anyone close to us had died recently and that was a negative.  It was my wife that came up with the idea that the statue was involved.  We told the woman about the estate sale, the story about the old man and that the statue was one of the things we had bought.  The medium or whatever she was, did a face palm.  She told us that we had a few choices; do a cleansing, which may or may not work, sell the piece in which case we would just be passing on the problem or return it to the house.

She came back to the house with us.  My wife decided that everything she had bought should go back.  The woman agreed. She offered to do a reading of the items to see if she could get a better handle on what was happening.

Apparently, the energy attached to the items was the woman who had owned them.  She didn’t quite understand that she was dead and was upset that her “things” had been taken.  That was enough for me.  I went to the garage pulled out a few boxes, the wife and I packed up all the things she had bought at the sale.  When we pulled out the silver box, sure enough, the silver was pitch black with tarnish again.  The medium said the old woman attached to the items was to blame.  Me?  I don’t know.  After what I had seen over the past few weeks.  I was willing to believe anything.

I asked the medium what she was charging us for this visit and she waved me off, told me it was free of charge.  She just asked she be allowed to accompany us to return the stuff.

We drove over to the house, it looked deserted.  I rang the doorbell a couple of times, eventually the door opened and an older woman peered out at us.  We explained that we were returning some goods that we had purchased and told her what was in the boxes.  She said she couldn’t give us our money back.  I didn’t care, I just wanted to be rid of the things.  She agreed to take the items back.  I brought the boxes in and put them down.  The old lady asked me why we didn’t want the items and I didn’t really want to tell her, appear foolish.  The medium answered for me and explained what was going on.  She asked if she could communicate with the former owner.  The request was denied and we simply piled back in our car for the drive home.

We had no more troubles after that day.  Not one.  It was hard to convince the kids to sleep in their own rooms but eventually, they calmed down and were able to get back into normal routine although, I don’t think they or we will ever forget the experience.

A few weeks later, the medium called us to tell us that she had gone back to the house, spoken with the woman looking after the place, only to find out that this was the old housekeeper who simply wanted to sell and go back to Ireland.  The housekeeper confided that we weren’t the first people to return goods that had belonged to the “Mrs.” In addition, she was having a hard time selling the place.  She agreed to let the medium “clear” the house, whatever that means and the medium believes it was successful.  I guess it was.  I drove by the place a few weeks later and it was sold.

This incident left a mark on my wife and I.  We will never buy anything second hand again.