March 21, 2007

Who's Been Sitting in My Chair?

Rate this encounter:[an error occurred while processing this directive] Melissa Reyes, Three Rivers, Texas, 1982

My maiden name is Melissa Irene Adams (MIA). I am currently 35 years old. My dad, Jerry, was a funeral director/mortician in Three Rivers, Texas, until I was about 18. So I grew up around death. Our home was across the street from the funeral home, and the cemetery was just across the hi-way (hwy. 72). We had tombstones lining the edge of our front yard, for heavens sake, or for sale, however you want to look at it.

Anyway, I took a lot of ribbing about being a part of the Addams family and didn't have many friends wanting to sleep over, as you can guess. Now, don't let these clothes fool you, I've had ghostly experiences my whole life. Not just at the funeral home house. This incident, was the only "threatening" encounter.

I was twelve years old, asleep in my bed and awakened by a thirst so profound that I thought I might choke. I looked at my alarm clock: 12:01. I thought about how strange it was... I never got up in the middle of the night for any reason... nonetheless, I got out of bed, opened my bedroom door, and made my way in the darkness down the hall to the kitchen. I had a creepy feeling, not that that bothers me, but it heightens my senses. Anyway, the kitchen floor was typically cool under my bare feet, which I liked. The fridge and the stand-up freezer were humming in an electric duet. When I opened the Harvest Gold door, the fridge-fairy kindly made light, and I grabbed the water jug. I stood there, fridge door wide open, water jug turned up to my mouth, and drank like I had just crossed the Mojave. I stopped, to catch my breath, holding the jug in front of me with both hands when the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. You know, that feeling... when you know something or someone is right behind you. I was oddly frozen. I dared not take a breath. My ears were perking to hear any little sound.

Then, "What are you doing in here?"

I let my breath out, with much relief to my lungs. My body relaxed, and I turned to face my dad. Too cool, to let on that he scared the crap out of me, I answered, "I was thirsty."

He took the water from my still firm grip, and said, "That's weird, me too."

While discussing our strange awakenings, he got glasses from the cabinet, poured water into them, and I retreated to the dining room, turning the light on, before I sat at my mom's seat. He came and sat too at his usual seat at the head of the table, and we talked and drank our water. My dad and I kind of had an understanding about ghosts and things of the like, as we had both had encounters with the same ones over the years. We neither validated or dismissed a tale, and could talk about an incident with as much enthusiasm as discussing the weather.

So there we sat at the dining room table drinking our water and talking. As my dad spoke, my eyes were drawn to the wood shelf on the partition right behind him. It was something my dad had put up. Just two black metal brackets, a board across them, covered with a lace doily. It was just there to showcase some stupid crystal glassware that we had. I had never really paid it much mind, and I'm sure my dad thought that I was just trying to avoid eye contact, by looking at it. But, I couldn't pull my eyes away, and I couldn't even hear what my dad was saying to me. Just as quick as a flash, the shelf, and all its holdings, slid off the brackets, and crashed to the floor, beside my dad. I watched it happen, but although my mouth lay agape, I couldn't warn him to move.

"What the..." my dad said.

We were picking up the mess as I explained how I saw everything just slide off, and how amazing it was that not a single thing had actually hit my dad seeing as the shelf was right above his head. My dad joked that the "Lady in the White Dress," must've wanted that seat. I agreed, and we concluded that it was better for us to go on to bed and let our grouchy apparition have the damn chair. We were sort of laughing about it and as we got to the hallway just as I switched off the dining room light, for some reason we both turned to look at the table... and there she sat!

We just call her the Lady in the White Dress mostly because we don't know her name, but we've all seen her moving up and down the hallway at night. My parents say she goes through their bedroom door, which is at the end of the hall. My dad thinks she looks like his mother, who died when I was about 2. She is an older looking woman, with a full length white dress, but I never got the feeling that she was my granny, just a nice lady that floated past my room at night making her rounds. In a weird kind of way, when I was small, I was comforted by the fact that she walked the halls. My idea was that if there was a ghost keeping an eye on me, the boogieman wouldn't come around.

Anyway, over the years my dad and I have talked about that night several times and laughed. Honestly, I think we miss her.