Our Haunted House
In 1973, my family moved to Denver, Colorado, the eighth move of my childhood. I was thirteen. Our new house was a standard middle-class four-bedroom build in a relatively new subdivision with green belts and a community pool. It seemed normal in all ways but one: the place came with a peculiar vibe.
Small things would happen. We pretended not to notice.
Mornings, Mom got up first. Clattering came from the kitchen well before I got out of bed. My brother and sister left for school before I did, so I knew the bathroom would be warm and steamy for me. Dad would be hacking his morning smoker’s cough in their bathroom or getting into uniform, the smoke from his first cigarette drifting on the air. I’d leave my window open to air out my room while I showered, and often, when I returned, the window would be closed. I assumed Mom had come upstairs and closed it.
Maybe while dressing, I’d notice things that felt odd—a book closed that I thought I’d left open, earrings I thought I’d left on the nightstand now on my chest-of-drawers, or the closet door open when I always slept with it closed. I assumed my mind was playing trick on me.
The room never felt warm. Which was fine. I did my homework at the kitchen table, did my reading in the den, listened to music in the living room, and spent most of my spare time in a fifty-meter swimming pool either training or competing. Butterfly, back, freestyle, and medleys. A cool room was ideal for a good night’s sleep. And I slept well.
Most evenings, the five of us would be in the den, watching TV or reading. One winter evening, our two dogs lay curled in their favorite spots, sleeping soundly. There was snow on the ground outside, and they’d learned to love snow, exhausting themselves playing in it. The smallest dog, Mie-Mie, was a Taiwan mutt I’d adopted as a pup. A black-and-white terrier type, she woke with a start, rousing Cricket. He lifted his head. A Shetland sheepdog my sister had gotten during our stint in Ohio, his long coat was smooth and glossy from my sister’s devoted attention and care. The pair exchanged looks and tip-toed to the front hall, their hackles raised. They looked up the dark stairwell and growled.
“What is it?” Mom said. She got up to have a look. “I don’t see a thing,” she said, flicking on the light. The dogs growled again. “Nothing,” she said. She climbed the stairs, the dogs cautiously following her.
When she came back, we all looked up. “Nothing,” she said again. To Mie-Mie, she said, “Silly girl. Did you have a nightmare? You made me and Cricket nervous.”
The dogs settled in their places—with their heads on their paws and facing the hallway. The evening passed. Several evenings, the dogs repeated their growls at the dark stairwell.
While chasing Mie-Mie in the snow, dear Cricket slipped, injuring his back, paralyzing his hind legs. My sister agreed to have him put to sleep. We mourned his loss.
Mie-Mie would go on to repeat the stairwell antic several times solo over the remaining months we lived in Denver. One of us always got up and reported seeing nothing. We never discussed what the dog might be reacting to, and I never mentioned the offness of my bedroom. Its peculiar vibe.
Saying some things out loud risks making them feel realer.
Once when I was alone, in broad daylight, Mie-Mie ran to the stairs, growling, her hackles raised. My heart pounding, I grabbed a baseball bat Dad kept on the handy in the downstairs bathroom. I climbed the stairs. A cool draft washed over me. In my room, I found my window open. I had not left it open.
We packed our boxes again, bound for Oregon, after only a year in Denver. Our new home, five acres in the hills west of Portland and ensconced by a forest of Douglas firs that shhhh-ed whenever the wind blew, felt safe. Safer. “This has been a move,” I said at the dinner table one evening, “that I don’t regret. That house in Denver was weird.”
We began talking about the strange way the dogs had acted, and we each had more to share. I mentioned my window and books closing themselves and the earrings that would shift from one place to another. My brother and sister had experienced similar incidences. I think my sister even saw a woman in the shower once, but she wasn’t sure; the room was steamy, she didn’t have her glasses on, and her eyesight was very poor. Dad said the house’s previous owners, its first owners, had lived there only six months. For military people like us, quick turnovers weren’t extraordinary, but Denver wasn’t a military town like some we'd lived in. The base wasn’t the center of its life or ours. It was used as a training facility, and Dad, in his last year of service, taught procurement courses there. Had our house's previous owners experienced what we'd experienced and been spooked enough to sell? Mom wondered if the subdivision had been built on an old cemetery.
Talking about the house and its strange behaviors gave us collective shivers. Mom said she'd loved the Denver house’s layout, its practicality, yet agreed that she did not miss its vibe.
That night, in my room with the lights out, and in the shadow of moonlight brightening my window, a final unpacked box seemed to hover. I crawled under a layer of my mom’s quilts and wondered whether strange vibes could hitch rides in moving vans. Could tendrils of something come drifting out of that final box like a genie out of a bottle—but with no wishes to grant? I heard dog tags clinking in the hallway and took a deep breath. Mie-Mie trotted into my room. She passed the hovering box and hopped onto my bed to settle at my feet; all appeared well, my little dog curled and snoring in an instant.