I am incredibly blessed to have the friends that I do. Mostly because we all have the same sense of dark humor and interest in the spookier things in life. Anything and everything is the start to a possible mystery and/or murder story. Or ghost story.
Truly. There is nothing more disappointing to my group than to find out something is utterly and completely normal and not going to lead to us contributing to a Dateline episode on a cold case we’ve stumbled upon and managed to solve.
Case in point, my house. When I first movedin,we could clearly see that there was an attic. There were windows on the outside. We knew the space was there. We could not figure out how to get up into it. It became the mystery of the group and before any of us knew it, there were a million possible stories floating around about why we couldn’t find the access point and what we would find if we ever got up there.
I don’t think I need to say it, but most of them involved discovering decades- old dead bodies. Because of course.
After I had been here about a month, I finally put together a housewarming party. It was a packed house with a fun group of people. I stepped out into the backyard for a few minutes with a friend. When we returned insidethehouse,wenoticed that everyone was gone.
It was strange. We hadn’t been gone all that long. And if they all left, well, we should have heard them run out to get into their cars. My house isn’t that big, so wherever they were, we should hear them.
It was while standing in the living that I heard something. Faint laughter. Thumps in the ceiling.
I knew where they were.
Yes, they had finally found the access point.
I walked back to the guest room and found a ladder (because of course one of my friends had a ladder in his truck) positioned half in the closet. I climbed up and hefted myself through a small, square access point thatI hadsomehowmissed. And there they were about 10 or so people total -- crammed into the attic of my house. We stayed up there for a few more minutes as we looked around. While we didn’t discover any long hidden secrets (or dead bodies), we did learn that the house was far older than I thought from some remnants of old wiring.
Sure, it was a bit anticlimatic, but it did inspire an idea for a future book -- in which the party does actually discover a decades-old dead body.And it was definitely the talk of my friend group for a while. That is until we got yet another discovery at another party I held several months later.
We were celebrating the launch of my second novel and this time, I had invited some new friends I made through Lincoln County On-Stage. One pulled me over in the kitchen with her boyfriend. She looked up at him and in a hushed tone said, “Tell her!”
Sheepishly, he began his tale.
Decades ago, before my landlord purchased the home, it had belonged to a family member of his ex-wife. He had been in the house and was in awe of all the renovations that had been made. He told me that the attic had actually used to be a third bedroom and there was once a set of stairs in where part of the bathroom currently is that led up.
Very cool. Not sure why he was so nervous.
He then said that the old man who lived here (I can’t remember if it was an uncle or a grandfather) had died in the upstairs bedroom. Unfortunately, he had locked all the doors, so the fire department had to crawl through one of the upstairs windows to get to him.
He apologized, thinking I would be upset. I just chuckled and asked him to tell the group. He did and was shocked to hear exclamations of, “I KNEW IT! I KNEW THERE WAS A DEAD BODY ATTACHED TO THE HOUSE! Have you seen any ghosts?”
To be fair, I do live in one oftheoldestneighborhoods in Chandler. I’m pretty sure just about every house in this area has at least one dead body story. They do date back to a time when most people died in their own homes, and not of the grisly sort.
He was a bit surprised, but his girlfriend just smiled and told him that this was a group that loves spooky stuff.
That night, after everyone left (oh, and getting through the tornado sirens going off), I sat on my sofa and looked up at the ceiling. I then made a deal. If there was a ghost, we could peacefully coexist. He doesn’t bother me; I don’t call in an exorcist or whoever one would call to get rid of ghosts.
I’ve had no problems at all. No bumps in the night or shadow figures moving out of the corner of my eye. No cabinets or doors banging open. Once again, muchtothedisappointment of my friends.