Shadow Place

If there was anything different about us, it didn’t show up in the beginning. Our neighbours and friends saw us as a typical middle class, working family. I had been teaching for several years and my wife Cathy was employed with the local municipality. Cathy, along with me and our two children, Adam and baby Jacob, aged six months, moved into the double story, side-split, raised bungalow, during the Labour Day weekend in 1997. Before we bought the home, we believed that it was a nice middle class neighbourhood where nothing “bad” ever happened. The only problem was that I couldn’t convince Adam that I had made the right decision. Even though Adam was only three years old, he refused to sleep the first night in our new home. I had never experienced anything paranormal in my life; but my first encounter with the unknown happened shortly after we had moved in. I was down in the basement one evening and I heard Cathy shouting for me to come upstairs quickly. It sounded like she was beginning to panic. I ran up three sets of stairs, from the basement, to the den, to the living room and finally, to the upstairs landing. That day, I witnessed something totally bizarre. I should have heeded it as a warning of things to come. Jacob was old enough for a day bed; so we kept one beside our double bed. As I arrived upstairs, I saw the small day bed glow. I mean, it was really glowing, without the benefit of a light. It was a florescent, shimmering green colour which flowed in waves, from the top of the bed to the bottom and from side to side. It didn’t last long and it finally broke up in a thousand pieces of flickering green specks which reminded me of fireflies. We were all just dumbfounded. When Cathy told her parents about it later on, they said that we had a huge, wonderful property; but we shouldn’t stay. There was something wrong with the house. Unfortunately, my stubbornness took over. I didn’t listen to them because the property was beautiful. My intention was to have a large garden. Cathy’s concerns also fell upon deaf ears. I simply ignored everything that tried to interfere with my dream garden. Once we got settled in, we began to talk to the neighbours about the house. My next door neighbour had been friendly with the people from Saskatchewan, who lived in our house previously. They had three children. My neighbour said that the people who use to live in our home would normally move with the company every two or three years; but they had stayed eight years this time and now they were moving back to Saskatchewan. (Our house was thirty two years old and three other families had lived there before us). Our next door neighbour was a no nonsense tradesperson, who did electrical work and plumbing. It seemed strange when he said that the child in the front room use to sleep with a light on all night. We also noted that there were locks to be found in strange places. Perhaps something had gone missing and being logical people, they thought that a burglary had occurred. Later my neighbour admitted that the Saskatchewan family had left more than a few lights on. But he never mentioned what they were afraid of. A few years passed. There had been a few noises like things falling over, but nothing was ever found to be amiss. The crashes sounded like everything was falling over upstairs or in the basement, depending on where you were located in the house. For example, I was down in the den one day when everyone heard a heavy crash in the upstairs. For some reason, the sound had been blocked from my ears. I could hear nothing, even though the upstairs was right over me. Two more years passed by. There had been some strange psychic phenomena; but nothing too frightening. The first malevolent thing that happened was perceived by me to be an accident. Later on, I was told that it wasn’t an accident. In fact, it happened again. The first time I “tripped,” I was going downstairs late one night. I don’t know how I could have possibly missed my footing; however, I twisted my foot at the bottom of the stairs. I was sick with pain as I struggled upstairs to bed. I told Cathy that I might have broken my foot. Fortunately, I hadn’t. But I did have to limp around rather badly for a few days thinking how stupid I had been. At the time, I didn’t believe in the possibility of ghosts. On the other hand, Cathy was more “sensitive” towards unusual things around the house because of her psychic abilities. Now she was seriously looking at the real estate ads and begging me to leave. The first “real” instance of a haunting occurred one night just before bedtime. Cathy was getting Adam ready for bed in the front room. Adam would be seven years old at the time. I was already in bed and just about ready to fall asleep, when I heard something that made my blood run cold. It was a man’s voice and he was shouting at me. I don’t remember the words; but I remember the tone. The voice was very loud and it sounded like it was coming from the hall. The bedroom door was shut and yet the voice seemed to carry through it. I sat bolt upright and ran out into the hall. The children were terrified and Cathy was visibly upset. She asked me why I was yelling and screaming at the top of my voice. I asked her where she thought the voice had come from. She said it had come from our bedroom. I told her that it wasn’t me.