Can you stand one more story about our uninvited house guest? I told you before, we think
the man who bought this place before us then up and died might be visiting us now and
again. We don't find as much evidence of him as we did in the beginning but he's
still here. Last night, for example, I changed our thermostat from Heat to Cool. A few
minutes later Mike came in and asked why I didn't change it. Told him I did and he
said it was on Off. He put it on Cool. That made him a little curious so he walked back
to the thermostat to double check and it was on Heat. Only moments had passed. He walked
away and went back to find it on Off again! The same thing happens all the time with
lights. Both our cats acted frightened and refused to go into parts of the house.
But the worst experience we've had since moving in here was our third night. We were
sleeping soundly when our doorbell rang. We both sat right up in bed and looked at the
clock - 4:10 AM. Mike headed for the door, I on his heels...both fearing bad news or
something. He turned on the porch light, peeked out the curtain and no one was there.
Thinking someone was pulling a prank, Mike stepped out onto the porch in his bare feet.
Then he headed around the corner of the house.
At this point, I nearly went into a panic, thinking someone could club him over the
head...so I followed him, also in my bare feet. (Keep in mind that it was cold and our
yard was full of broken shells from the hickory nut tree and we're both barefoot and
in pj's.) The instant I stepped out the door and closed it, we both realized I'd
locked us out of the house. In our pjs. at 4:10 AM. We don't carry a house key in
our pj pockets. None hidden outside yet. Our doors are metal with small windows.
Mike immediately grabbed a decorative stone to break the window in the back door so he
could unlock it. Much to our dismay, we found we had Plexiglas! Finally, he had to use
the stone to bust the door frame and we got in...footsore, cold and badly shaken. The
whole thing was eerie.
For that night we attributed it to a possible momentary power outage. We asked the
neighbors the next day if they'd had an outage and the answer was no. It's highly
unlikely we were the only ones with a power outage so something or someone else caused the
doorbell to ring.
Since then I've spoken outloud telling whoever that this is our home now. He's
still not totally happy about it.
Shirley