I went home to visit family a few weeks ago and to help get the house in order, in the hope that we can sell it sometime in the next year or so. The trip was good… if not exhausting. But the house is looking great and just needs a little T.L.C. to get it back into “Wow, this would be a great starter home” condition. Besides the feeling of absolute productivity I was also grinning from ear to ear at seeing my family and spending some much needed time with everyone.
NYC may be where I am most suited as an adult, but my Tennessee roots grow deep. I will always be a Southern boy living in a Yankee state (so to speak).
Aside from what may have been a spider bite, the trip was more than great. What’s a little stop at the drug store to consult with the pharmacist about a large red welt on your shoulder… no big deal when you’re surrounded by loved ones and your accent comes back in full force.
The one hiccup in the festivities was the sudden appearance of a ghoulish stain on a wall of the carport. The carport has some significant damage from age and weather and the temporary walls, which were erected to protect the space, are deteriorating badly. Those are coming down and new walls are going up. But until then, this (see picture) remains.
We didn’t notice this at all until sometime late into the clean-up. But there, on the carport wall, was, what appears to be, a grim reaper.
Now, this house has a long history of weirdness. My mother and I both heard footsteps shuffling around upstairs and once all of the kitchen cabinets swung open simultaneously and then slammed shut again. Once when I was visiting we were upstairs in her room talking and suddenly heard the sound of two children running downstairs from the kitchen to the living room and then giggling.
“Hey!” my mom yelled down the staircase, “go to bed!” And the noise stopped.
“Are you $&#@* kidding me?!” I shouted.
“It happens all the time. I just tell them to be quiet and they hush up.” My mother was very nonchalant about these things. Every home we lived in always had something odd about it. Unexplained noises, smells and even a few appearances by “people” we didn’t know. In our previous home, my youngest brother and I were walking down the hall, passing by my mother’s room. She was at work but there, on the edge of her bed, clear as day, was an elderly woman in a nightgown brushing out her long silvery hair. We actually walked past the door and stopped together, “Did you just…?” he began. “Yep.” We stepped back, looked again into the room, and the woman was still there, brushing out her hair and getting ready for bed. “You tell Mom,” he said, and we quickly walked out of the house, got in the car and drove into town.
So weirdness follows our family. But this was beyond weird. It was creepy. If you click on the picture you’ll see and enlarged version. I can make out eye sockets, a nose space and an eerie grin. No good. No good at all. It certainly didn’t help that it appeared one week before the third anniversary of my mother’s passing.
My aunt, cousin and stepfather all stared with me at this thing on the wall. “Tom, that is not right,” said my aunt. “So where are we staying tonight!?” my stepfather laughed, trying to make light of an uncomfortable moment. He really doesn’t want to believe that anything like this ever happens, but he’s had his fair share of moments that he can’t quite explain. For a skeptic, he may be one of the first to jump in the car and get the hell out of a spooky situation.
So, who knows what this stain is or why it looks like the classic grim reaper. I’m assuming that once the walls are replaced it will be gone and the house can go back to “weird” and not “creepy”. I may need another trip down South to make sure it is gone just so I can sleep soundly.
Tommy Karr 