From The World's Strangest True Encounters
Vol. 4 in FATE Magazine's Library of the Paranormal
and the Unknown
Own for just $2.99 !
THE GHOST SOLDIER IN OUR ATTIC
By Etna Elliott
My
husband and I, with our three children, left Portland, Ore., in the hot summer
of 1928, to join my parents in the high mountains of California, five miles
from Georgetown, where they had purchased a gold mine and were working it
together with my uncle Charlie. There were no buildings at the mine and they
rented an old farm which was badly in need of repairs. It had been unlived in
for several years and my folks spent some time making it livable, so that it
was real comfortable by the time we reached there with our family.
During
the day, while the men were busy at the mine, Mother and I went to work in the
attic, which we reached by a very narrow, steep stairway. We piled old trunks,
boxes, a very tiny old-fashioned organ, an old music-box and other discarded
articles of the departed family, all in one end of the attic.
As
we were working, I suddenly felt as if someone had walked up behind me, but
turning I saw nothing but the cobwebs which hung from the peak-roofed ceiling.
I told Mother that I had the odd feeling of being watched, but she only looked
at me queerly, then talked of other things.
Later
on I ran downstairs to get something for Mother. As I came back up the steps
someone brushed by me, almost knocking me back down the stairway. Still, I
could not see a thing, although I had felt the contact distinctly.
We
worked up in the attic for several days before we had it ready for use. During
all that time, I felt an unseen presence near me. After what had happened on
the stairway, I wouldn’t let my Mother out of my sight and followed at her
heels the whole time. We had put two beds side by side in the narrow room,
leaving only a two-foot space between them. Then we hung thin lace curtains in
the doorway to hide all the things piled in the other end of the attic. And
still, air from the two windows at each end could circulate through the area
where we were to sleep.
My
husband did not like the idea of going up into that hot attic to sleep, so he
put his bed under an old apple‑tree near the front porch. Therefore, our small
daughter and I slept in one bed and our two boys in the other. That first night
I was terribly nervous, so Mother turned the kerosene lamp down low and said, “Just
leave it burn if you will feel better.” But even with the light burning I still
could feel that unseen presence and I don’t think I slept over five minutes
that whole night. I was terribly tired the next day; still I could hardly bring
myself to go to bed that next night.
Finally
the children could not be kept up any longer and I slowly climbed those steep stairs,
with cold chills running up into my hair. I got the children into bed and
climbed in beside my little daughter. I forced myself to close my eyes and
finally fell asleep, only to be awakened much later by an icy wind blowing over
my body.
With
my eyes wide open, in the dim light of the kerosene lamp, I saw him!
Standing
just outside the lace curtains was a young soldier in uniform. He was tall and
straight and looking intently at me as if he were about to speak. The curtains blew
out toward me and he started moving in my direction. I screamed and then was
unable to move until my parents came dashing up the stairs. I sobbed out what I
had seen and I thought there was a look of horror on their faces. My mother
slept up in the attic with us the rest of the night, but she wouldn’t talk much
about it the next day.
The
following night I forced my feet up the stairs. I did not want the children to
know how frightened I was. Mother stayed up there with us until the children
were asleep and I had become quite calm. I tried to make myself believe that I
had imagined the whole thing, and when morning came and there had been no
frightening experiences during the night I almost believed this.
A
week passed. I was feeling quite safe as we went to bed, and almost at once I
fell into a sound sleep, only to be awakened about two o’clock in the morning.
I
felt as if someone had shaken me. I sat right up in bed, wide awake and
trembling. My body was as cold as ice.
There,
sitting on the edge of the other bed, right against my small son, was the same
young soldier. He was looking into my face, smiling, and he had his elbow on
his knee. He held a hat in his hand, which he was swinging back and forth. I
recognized the hat as a soldier’s hat of World War I. It had a wide brim with a
heavy, bright cord around the crown. It, or a hat like it, had been hanging in
the hall when my parents moved into the house and I had been wearing it as a
sun hat since coming to the mines.
Now
this ghostly soldier had the same hat in his hand as he smiled at me, his face
not over a foot from my own. He leaned toward me, closer and closer!
I
have never remembered making a sound but I must have for my parents were soon
there. This time I could see the soldier long after they were in the room.
I
was weak and trembling for several days after that and my dad put up a cot at
the other end of the attic, just outside the lace curtains, and slept there
himself every night. So things settled down and I was beginning to think and
hope I would not see the soldier again.
When
I quietly slipped into bed beside my little daughter on this particular night I
felt safe with my dad so near. Turning on my side with my face to the wall, I
was soon fast asleep. But sometime in the early morning hours I was suddenly
wide awake and again as cold as ice. A large, heavy hand was pressing down on
my shoulder. I tried to rise but I was held tight by this pressure. Turning my
face up, I found myself looking right into the eyes of the soldier. His face
was only inches from mine and I still felt his hand as plainly as I have ever
felt the hand of my husband. I felt as if I were dying.
I
still think I would have died, and that the soldier would have taken me with
him, except that at that very instant my
small daughter sat up in bed screaming the most unearthly screams I have ever
heard. Still it seemed her screams receded farther and farther from me.
To
this day, that child, now a grown woman, thinks a soldier was taking me away.
Her screams, of course,
brought Dad and Mother, and my mother had her arms around me before that
soldier took his hand from my shoulder.
They finally got me
downstairs and in my hysterical condition I managed to make them understand
that I wanted the children brought down at once. My dad and husband hurried to
do this, and my mother held my little daughter until she cried herself to
sleep. We all sat in the kitchen the rest of that awful night.
My husband was very doubtful
of what I had seen. He said that he wanted to sleep upstairs the next night and
see for himself what was going on. I begged him not to, but he was determined.
He went off to bed and the next morning said he had slept fine. This continued
for almost a week. Then one night about midnight he came bounding down the
stairs, blankets and all. We never could get him to say what he had seen or
what had happened. He was very pale and said only that he would never sleep up there
again, that this so-and-so house should be burned and the ashes buried.
Then in the bright light of
day my parents told us what the old lady had said to them when they rented the
house. She had looked at them for a long time and then said, “You are welcome
to live in the place if you can stand it!”
Pointing to great piles of
rocks all over the place, she continued, “See those rocks? Well, I have piled
them just to have something to do, to keep me out of the house. For my husband
still lives there, although he has been dead many years.” Then she added, “Yes,
and the boys come back too, so I have left the house to them most of the time.”
She explained that her
husband had died in a drunken stupor in that house; one of her sons had dropped
dead on the back porch; her youngest son had died in the kitchen while having a
fist fight with his brother; and her oldest son, a soldier in World War I, had
come home after being wounded and died in his sleep in his bed in the attic.
“This house is bad!” she had
gone on to say. “But if you can stand to live among them, you are welcome.” Now
at last my parents believed her. The men went to work at once and built a large
cabin at the mine. My husband and I stayed there only long enough to help my
parents move out of that house with its ghostly inhabitants before returning
gratefully to our home in Portland.
FATE's Library of the Paranormal and the Unknown is an Amazon Top Ten bestselling paranormal series
