For a short time, my immediate family (Mom, dad, big bro, myself) moved in with my father’s parents. G-pa and G-ma lived in the family home in the city. It is a very large house, biggest on the block, a two story affair built in the early 1900’s. It was split into a two family dwelling in the 60’s after my great grandparents who lived on the upper floor had passed.
My uncle and his family lived upstairs in the separate apartment portion of the dwelling. My family resided on the first floor with the Grands.
It was a nice bright summer day in 1992, late morning. My uncle and his wife were gone for the day (work). My two cousins were out somewhere in the neighborhood. My dad was at work. G-pa and G-ma were out doing something for their church. Mom was home, in the living room, watching “Days of our Lives.” My big brother and I were in the dining room, which shares a common wall and entryway with the living room, playing a command line entry type “Destroyer Commander” PC game on an “ancient” MSDOS run computer. Absolute cutting edge…at the time.
We had our backs to the rest of the dining room, including the aforementioned entry into the adjoining living room. Being an old and well settled domicile it had its share of creeks and groans which we were all familiar with. There were three exterior doors to which you could gain entry to this floor of the house, they all had sticky doors and made a god awful racket when opened. There was one floorboard in particular in the dining room, near the entry to the living room, that always popped when you walked on it, going from one room to the other.
My brother and I heard that floorboard emit its usual noise and were a bit startled as we had had no other auditory clues to someone moving into or about the house. Mom’s show is in full swing, she’s not moving. We both turn around from our seated positions in time to see the back of a six foot-ish elderly male walking into the living room from the dining room. He was wearing a white, short sleeved dress shirt with vertical pastel yellow and blue pinstripes, brown slacks, and black suspenders. Since this description could easily fit Grandpa on ANY given day we looked back at each other, shrugged, and went back to our game.
About ten minutes later, mom’s show is over, we had sunk the enemy fleet, and my brother and I walk into the living room to inquire about lunch. Expecting to find grandpa either sitting in his chair next to Mom or in the study/library in the next room…the conversation went something like this.
Me: “Mom, what’s for lunch?”
Mom: “I was thinking maybe bologna sandwiches.”
Bro: “Where’s grandpa?”
Mom: “As far as I know, still with your grandmother out at Bethany.”
Me: “Yeah but, we saw him come walking in here just a couple minutes ago.”
Mom: “NOBODY has walked into this room for the last hour.”
Bro: “C’mon ma, Kevin and I literally watched him walk in from the dining room.”
Mom: “I swear not a single person has come into this room recently, until you two walking stomachs came in asking about lunch.”
Me: “We…saw…him. Now where is he? We didn’t hear the front door open so he has to still be here.”
Mom: “Boys, I don’t know what to tell you other than I have been alone in this room for the better part of an hour. Now, let’s go make some sandwiches.”
My brother and I exchanged a quick worried glance with eachother. Was mom slippin’? To this day, talking of this incident with my brother, causes goosebumps and skin prickles for both him and me. Mom was unperturbed by our interaction and absolute shite at lying to a person’s face.
My brother and I, know now, like we knew then, that what we saw that day was not strictly bound to our plane of existence. Call it an apparition, a ghost, a spook, I don’t care. Call us nuts, liars, frauds, I don’t care. There is no denying our shared experience. We know what we saw.
