Ghosts Lived in My House

Home for me as a child was a big old two-story farm house built in the mid-1800s. That house, which was surrounded by several majestic old trees on three sides, was “home” on some levels from the day my parents took me there from the hospital after my birth until my beloved mom passed away inside almost 53 years later. Although I “moved out” officially at 19, it was the place to which I always returned – sometimes for temporary lodging, always for holidays, and in the end, to care for my mom.

I had mixed feelings about that home as a child because deep down inside, I was very much afraid of it – especially the “upstairs”. When I was very little the second floor was not used. I slept downstairs with my parents in a room that would later be our living room. Just outside that room was the open staircase leading to the second floor. I was forbidden to test my climbing abilities on those stairs, and at night, it was dark and scary up there.  

Some time after my sister was born, we moved up those stairs. My crib was relocated in an open hallway on the left at the top of the stairs, and my parents occupied a large bedroom on the right at the top of the stairs. I was now afraid to go in their room because there was a round hole in the floor. I knew there was a hole because the few times I’d been taken up there when it was uninhabited, I had been expressly told not to go near it because I might fall in.  It didn’t matter now that their bed was safely situated over that hole (and it might even have been fixed). I feared that somehow, some way I would be sucked alive through that hole with unspeakable consequences.

Eventually, a second bedroom was readied for me and my sister and we moved out of the hallway into our own room in the front of the house. The new danger was the large room straight ahead at the top of the stairs known as “the attic”.  My father’s ham radio equipment was situated in a corner of that dimly lit room, with the rest of it used as catch-all storage. To get to my father’s buried corner, one had to wend one’s way past old furniture, trunks, boxes, my mother’s papier-mâché torso (for dress-making) and assorted other stuff.  A door that was kept closed separated “the attic” from the rest of the 2^nd floor living space. 

Both my sister and I were afraid of the attic, sure that there were ghosts or bogeymen lurking inside. “Go upstairs with me?” we’d plead to the other. When we’d reach the top of the stairs, we’d run like crazy past the attic door to the relative safety of our room. “Go downstairs with me?” we’d wheedle for the return trip. When we left our room, we’d run like crazy past the attic door and leap down the stairs as fast as we could. One day when the attic door creaked slowly open on its own, caught alone in the hallway, my sister learned to fly.  

Besides the ghosts that lived there, the attic held a special terror for me. For in that room, near my father’s radio equipment, there was an old-fashioned red glass ball fire extinguisher mounted on the wall in case of fire. Fire was my first and worst phobia. My heart knew that the mere presence of that extinguisher forecast a fire for sure. The mere thought of it almost stopped my heart from beating.

If fire was my first phobia, lightning was my second. My kindergarten teacher taught us that lightning was electricity and electricity could cause fires. So from age 5, I was sure that our front corner bedroom, situated underneath those majestic trees was going to sustain a direct hit by a lightning bolt with my name on it. It was simply a matter of time.  

Sadly, I spent an inordinate amount of time as a child worrying about my home going up in flames. The live Christmas trees my parents bought and draped with old-fashioned hot lights were a source of incredible anxiety. So was the fireplace that my father had built in our living room when I was nine. I was plagued during the day by “real” worries about fire and at night by nightmares about fires in my home. My prayers before bed well into my adolescence included a line begging God to please-please-please not let my house catch on fire and to please-please-please not let me dream about fire. 

The year my parents brought home a beautifully modern aluminum Christmas tree, which eliminated the need for hot lights draped over live evergreen changed my life for the better. So did the eventual abolition of the “attic” in favor of a second bathroom and a new room for my sister in my early teens. The scary red ball fire extinguisher was packed away, no longer foreshadowing disaster.

Although these two events made me slightly less afraid of my home, we still had an uneasy co-existence. I was not to really feel physically safe in a home until I moved out of that one.