THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT

[Wilma]

"Draaag, plop!  Draaag, plop!   Draaag, plop!

This is the sound that woke me up one night while we were living in a two-story house in Severy.  There were two rooms upstairs which the four daughters used and one bedroom downstairs which was my husband's and mine.

This house didn't have a history, but while we were getting it ready to move into, sometimes when I would enter through the back door I would have the feeling that someone had just left the downstairs.  It was a very strong feeling.  And at times I would feel as if someone were watching me from the stairs even though there was never anybody there.  The daughters had feelings like this, too.

So when this "Draaag, plop!" from the stairway woke me, I was hesitant to investigate.  It was a sound I couldn't identify.  For some reason it didn't occur to me to wake my husband, hand him a baseball bat and tell him to see what it was.  I took a flashlight and went to the stairway to see what was going on.

Shining the light up the stairs I found our momma cat with a small animal, not a mouse or rat, those I could have identified.  This was bigger.  By this time the girls were awake and my husband had somehow been wakened.  He was a sound sleeper.  He identified the small animal as a baby muskrat.

Momma cat had babies in the basement and the only way she could get the meal into the house was to carry it up the mulberry tree, to the porch roof and through the hole in the screen in a west window.  Then she had to bring it down the stairs to get to the basement, dragging it from one step to the next, "Draaag, plop."

[Diane Amberg]

 My goodness, I think I would have had the shot gun with me! I'm glad your story has an innocent and cute ending! Where did your kitty find a muskrat?

[Wilma]

There was a farm pond within 1/4 mile of where we lived that was the most probable place.

[LShortt]

I was feeling sorry the mama cat and rather impressed by her efforts...and then it dawned on me, by the time I work all week, use time from one of my days off...fight the traffic to the grocery store...fight the trafic IN the grocery store...haul it all out to the car...fight the traffic home...drag all the groceries into the house...and then handle the groceries again for the 3rd time putting it all away...I know how that mama cat feels. 

But Wilma...that doesn't explain the feelings of being watched at other times.

[Janet Harrington]

Mother didn't tell you that she was visited by a ghost at least once when we lived in that house.

[Wilma]

I say that I saw the "ghost" but some would try to explain it as something else.  It was in that time between asleep and awake.  My husband had left for work and I had gone back to bed for another hour of sleep when this old woman appeared beside the bed, watched me for a moment, then disappeared.  She was small, short and slender, her hair was in a bun on top of her head and she wore a dress with long sleeves with an apron tied around her waist.  Later that day I asked my neighbor to describe the lady that had lived there and her description matched my lady.  I never saw her again and nobody else has claimed to have seen her.  I am sure I wasn't dreaming because I wasn't really asleep yet.

This wasn't the first time I had been visited by a whatever you want to call them.  When my parents first moved to Elk County, I was 17 yrs. old.  The first night I slept in my room upstairs something woke me up and there at the foot of my bed was an elderly gentleman dressed as an elderly gentleman would have been dressed.  A coat over a vest with a watch chain across his tummy.  The gentleman carried a cane.  It was the sound of the tapping of his cane that had wakened me.  He just looked at me then turned and left.  Everybody told me that I probably had heard a rat in the attic or something and dreamed the gentleman.  I don't have any confirmation that a gentleman of that description ever lived there, but I still say that I saw what I saw.  And that's that.

[Janet Harrington]

When I first started living with Jim, my husband, I worked at the sheriff's office as the midnight dispatcher.  I would get home a little after 08:00 a.m., go to bed to sleep, so that I could be up when Jim came home and I would cook supper.  Then I would stay up until time to go to work, work my shift and then come home and do it all over again.

At least twice while I was asleep during the day, I felt the side of the bed dip down as if someone was sitting on the bed.  I woke up and nobody was there.  At least once while going from the bedroom towards the kitchen, I saw a person dressed in black going through the kitchen door away from me.  All I ever saw was the back part of a dress going through the door.

Very scary.  Jim said that I was probably visited by the family ghost.

Jim's sisters tell a story of when someone died in the family, like maybe a grandma or something and one of Jim's nephew's was outside Jim's mother's house, swinging.  The sisters were inside the house and were watching this little boy swinging and talking away.  Nobody was there.  When the little boy came into the house they asked him who he was talking to.  He said, "I don't know, but she was pushing me on the swing."  They asked what the lady looked like and he gave them a little description of what she was wearing and the sisters told me that he described their mother's grandmother.

How very strange!

[dandymomma]

We used to live in a house that was built in 1902. One afternoon I had my girlfriend and her daughter over. We ladies were sitting on the couch facing the dining room chatting and watching the children play on the dining room floor. Then all of a sudden a smiling little boy with blonde hair, a white shirt and baggy overalls walked from the doorway to the hall, accross the dining room and dissapeared into the bookcase beside the fireplace.

[Diane Amberg]

 I grew up in a big , 12 room 1870 Victorian house that had been the country doctor's house. He had his office there and the "doctor's boy" (not a relative) had a room on the 3rd floor. He took care of all the local farm families and the railroad that ran through a cut at the foot of the hill, had a contract with him to take care of railroad injuries. We know that people died there. I never "saw" a ghost, but there were of plenty of "corner of the eye" glimpses of ?...never scary. But the cat saw stuff all the time. She would look and look and stare and her eyes would follow it. She would meow at it and purr and we couldn't see a thing. We looked for bugs and spiders etc. and never could figure it out. We just accepted it.
   The house we lived in before we moved here was haunted by a gray cat.

[greatguns]

My little toe on the bedpost and I stumble to the bathroom at 3:00 A.M.  Don't tell me that I'm the only one that has had this bump in the middle of the night.