Fred

Every Halloween needs a good ghost story so here’s one for the ages.

There was a young family who lived in a house on the Lane. It was Father, Mother and their two children. They bought this house from a man named Fred who subsequently passed away just after he moved away from this home.

The new family moved in and unpacked their belongings and began to settle in to their new home.

They didn’t think much of the flickering lights over the kitchen table; they didn’t even worry about it the night they were sitting at the table and the chandelier ‘came on’ of its own accord.

Day by day, they just went about their business.

One night, very late at night, Father was doing some work, downstairs, at the computer station. He stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. Just as he stretched his legs, he heard a rustle and a sound from the near-by woods. 

“Hey, boy,” the voice said. “Hey…boy,” it repeated. 

In an instant, Father rushed back inside home, slammed the door, locked it, shut off the computer and raced upstairs to bed. As he pulled the covers over his head, he could still fill the chill bumps on his arms and the hairs standing up on his head.

The next morning, Father told the story to Mother and she mostly pooh-pooh’d it as nothing to worry about. “Probably some kids playing the woods or some teenagers down there drinking. They just wanted to frighten you,” she said.

Father wasn’t so sure…but he let go of the issue and soon it was forgotten.

Then, one night a few weeks later, as the family sat at the kitchen table, the lights from the chandelier flickered again. In an instant, the door to the dishwasher slammed toward the ground and hit as far down as it would go – within a foot of the ground – with a great clatter. Father jumped up from the table to see what had happened, his two kids looking on with curiosity.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” he reported. “Looks like a draft of wind must’ve caught the door to the dishwasher and pushed it down.”

Later, after the kids had gone to bed, his wife confided in him that the door to the dishwasher had a hydraulic mechanism inside to keep it from falling in such a way as it had done during dinner. Raising one eyebrow, Father said “Well, let’s test it out.”

With all the force he could muster, he pushed the dishwasher door downward but it would only go a few inches before the hydraulic brake slowed its path. Father tried it over and over but couldn’t duplicate the scene from earlier in the evening…

Suspecting there might be some other force behind the crash, the two looked at each other. As their eyes met, they concurred.

“Must be Fred.”
                                             _____________

Life moved on. Fall turned to winter and winter into spring. The young family had settled in and began to enjoy decorating the place. 

One night, Father’s dad came over and the two men worked together to hang a fairly heavy portrait of the man’s wife – a baby picture - near the staircase. Father’s dad, an engineer, was very meticulous when he did such work. And the two men enjoyed their work together as it gave them a chance to pass the time together.

“We’ll be sure to anchor this frame, “ he told his son. “We wouldn’t want it to fall.” He noted that the photo frame was hanging on the wall just above a light switch.

“If it fell, we might wind up having to replace the switch!” 

The two of them agreed they wouldn’t want to have to make sure a repair.

The family sat down to dinner one night a few weeks later and they enjoyed chatting with their children and learning about the events of the day. As they began the evening meal, they heard a series of sounds coming from the downstairs, a rip, a zip and a crash.

Father went to inspect. 

At the bottom of the stairs, he found the frame that contained his wife’s baby picture. It looked somewhat beaten up but still mostly intact. Unfortunately, the light switch had been stripped from the wall; the pieces were strewed about the stairs and the tile at the bottom of the staircase.

Later that night, Father called his dad and related the story and asked if his dad would be willing to come over, again, later in the week. Maybe they could re-hang the photo with even more secure braces. They’d also work on replacing the light switch. 

They made the repairs and really anchored the photo this time, again placing it just above the light switch.

Within a week, Father called his dad and told him an unbelievable story.

“It happened again,” he related. “The photo fell once more. It came down the wall, again. It ripped the light switch to shreds and landed in basically the same spot at the bottom of the stairs.”

The two men arranged to make a second repair of the light switch. Father and Mother agreed, though, not to rehang her baby picture. 

“Must’ve been Fred,” they mused.
                                             _____________

Soon, enough was enough. The young family decided to look for a new place to live.

They sold the house on the Lane; they found a new home in the Hills and they prepared to move. Two men and a very big truck came to help them out.

                                             _____________

Late on their last night in the home, Father and his dad loaded up a truck full of items to take and promised to come back soon. Mother felt a little spooked working in the home alone but, after all, she was an adult. There’s really not a “Fred,” Mother thought to herself.

Fatigued from the move, she struggled to move a collection of metal folding chairs up from the basement to the tiled area just by the front door. One by one, she leaned the chairs until all four of them were in place. “I sure hope those chairs don’t fall,” she thought, and she went back to work in the basement.

As she was finishing boxing up a few work files and computer disks, she heard the predictable bang and clatter from upstairs. “Oh,” Mother thought. “The chairs must’ve fallen. I’ll pick them up when I go back upstairs.

She sealed the box with the computer disks and carried it up to the main level of the house and she planned to leave the box by the chairs after she picked them up. Only, when she got back to the main level, she found the chairs neatly stacked against the wall just where she had left them.

“Must’ve been Fred,” she thought, considering that he must be bidding her and the family farewell. When Father and his dad returned in just a few moments, she quickly exited the home for the last time. They loaded up their last few belongings and left.

“Enough is enough,” they declared.

                                             _____________

Over the years, the house on the Lane has sold and sold again. A new family comes. They stay for a while. They leave. No one says anything about why they leave. 

They just leave.

The lights will be on, tonight, on the Lane but if your little ones go looking for candy, you might try a different street. No one knows for sure, but if you go, Fred, himself, might be there. And maybe, just maybe, he’ll have a few more tricks for you to go along with all the treats.

JG

Originally posted 10/30/2013