My Mother And I Moved To A House In Georgia And That’s When Things Got Out Of Control

The move went smoothly, and at least three people a day stopped in to say hello. Most brought Bundt cake or carrot cake, neither of which I’m too fond of. Some offered us a dinner invitation to their lavish homes while others invited us for coffee or tea. Being 13, they might as well have offered me a stack of school books. I’m a nerd on the outside, and I love to read, but I hate school just as much as the next kid.

The town was nice enough, even with its haunting heritage. On hard days, I sometimes wondered if my mother moved us here to mock me after all.

My room was on the second floor. It overlooked nothing but flat, now barren fields where the slaves would have labored the entire day. My mother’s room was right down the hall, along with the guest room. I would have much rather had the guest room as it was twice as large as mine with a view of a small pond just west of the house. The pond was adjacent to a decrepit old shed which I thought held promise.

The first floor was roomy, easy to become lost in. As you walked in, there was a gathering room and then a small hall lined with a bathroom and closet. The living room was in direct view of the front door. Next was the dining room, then a small swinging door to the kitchen which led to a sun porch. The floor above the second was just an attic, which could have served comfortably as another guest room.

It was a great house, time worn and elegant. I didn’t like the surrounding area right away. This was despite the fact everyone was polite and full of southern hospitality.

Our first night in the house seemed to be going rather well, until around three in the morning when I went down the hall to use the bathroom. As I opened the door, my gut turned and burned like a raging flame. It became harder and harder to breathe. I closed the door, and the pain instantly went away.

When I opened it again, I saw a young black female. She was hanging from the ceiling, her throat beginning to swell from the cinching rope around her neck.

I ran back to my room and slid under my covers, wrapping them tightly around me. I heard someone walk past my room and then stop at the door. I wanted to run to my mother, but I knew the repercussions if I did.

I began to cry, wondering why this had to happen to me. Why me? Was there anyone else like me?

When I woke up my mother was standing over me. “Are you okay sweetie?”

“Yeah, why?”

“It’s almost two in the afternoon!”

“Oh?” My mother was a firm believer in “the early bird gets the worm.” If I ever slept past nine in the morning, she thought I was coming down with the flu.

“Well, Mom, I think I’m going to go explore the town.” I wanted to see if there was a library that might have some information on this land. Maybe it would tell me what my grandfather knew but never told anyone. I also thought about a question I asked myself the night before. Was anyone else like me?

“Good idea. You need some fresh air. You look peaked.”

The streets were almost completely empty of cars. People walked the sidewalks, couples hand in hand, and parents carrying their children. I passed the library I had set out to find. It was a large brick building that looked as if it were filled with more books than any one person could dream. I decided I would stop in on my way back home. I became entranced with the beauty of the old town and wanted to continue my tour.

The town, with the light of day, was charming.

As I made my way back, I saw a few kids my age leaving the library. None of them seemed to notice me, though the adults did. I hated being new. I imagined everyone knew who we were by now, and they all gave me that sweet smile. I wondered if they knew there was something different about me.

I went into the library. It was perhaps the nicest library I had ever seen in my life. Its cathedral-style ceilings exposed a second level of books, which turned out to be mostly biographies. The ceiling was painted with angels and fluffy clouds. I wondered why all the angels were children.

The main floor had the check-out desk and a few computers that seemed to date back to the 1980s. There was a children’s area and a mix of mystery/horror stories interspersed with other fiction. I searched the nonfiction for an hour before my eye caught sight of a peculiar book.

The book was Haunted America, by Beth Scott and Michael Norman.

The book was tattered, almost as if it had been left on a battlefield. The cover was torn and hardly readable, and some of the pages were stained and faded by wear. Apparently it had been popular, so maybe I was not the only one in this town that was seeing spirits.

The book talked about haunted places throughout the United States and Canada. I wasn’t sure what I would find, but I hoped it was more than just ghost stories. Maybe I would read about someone that shared the same problem. If all else failed, I knew I could get on the 1980s-era computer and, by nightfall, surely find some new information.

I got a library card and left with the book in my hand. On the entire bike ride home I thought of ways to sneak the book into the house without my mother seeing it.

Around five in the afternoon I headed home for dinner after leaving one of the shops in town. I headed down some back roads, trying to find as many shortcuts as possible.

There was a long line of woods that I decided to explore.

It was almost an hour later when I saw a young black man walking by a small stream. I walked over to him. “Hello,” I said.

“Yes, suh,” the man responded as though I had just caught him in the middle of some shameful act. He looked at the ground, his eyes never meeting mine. He looked homeless, but I highly doubted he was because the town was too small to allow it.

“What are you doing here?” I tried to spark some small talk.

“Ah’m awful sorry, suh. I be leavin’ now.” His accent was heavy, but I couldn’t place it.

“Okay,” I said in confusion as I watched as the young man walk away from the stream. I saw him walk past a tree and then vanish. I rubbed my eyes hard, but he was nowhere. I ran back to my bike. The hair on the back of my neck was standing on end, and it felt as though a million spiders found refuge there. My stomach grew queasy. Each time I saw an apparition the reaction was never the same. One thing that always stayed the same, though, was the intense burning in my stomach. I bent over as I felt my stomach rise to my throat.

I peddled home with the speed of a world-class racer. But the ride itself was a blur. The only thing I could recall was the feeling of relief when I saw my house in the shortening distance.

Once home I leaped from my bike with fluid grace and ran upstairs, locking myself in my room.

That night was no better than the last. I couldn’t sleep because I was too frightened I might wake up and see someone staring at me, someone that was not really there physically.

I started to doze off, and then I heard someone walking around downstairs. My mother was at work. She worked as a receptionist at the Savannah police station just inside the city limits. She did the same kind of work she had done in Indiana, just a lot less of it. She usually went in around eight in the evening.

The room was too dark to see the clock on the opposite wall. I reached over for the hockey stick my mother gave me a few years ago for Christmas. I was breathing hard, and my sight was blurry without my glasses.

I walked downstairs hesitantly as the sound continued toward the kitchen where I heard someone push a chair up to the table.

The door opened slowly. I jumped back, too frightened to scream. I put the stick in front of me in order to defend myself.

“What are you doing, Chris?”

“Mom?” I shrieked. “I thought you were working tonight!” All the air I had been holding in my lungs escaped me at once.

“I was, it was a dead night so I came home early.”

“I heard someone down here, and it scared me.”

She shot me a look of disappointment. It was the soul-piercing look a mother gives her child when she wants the child to retreat in fear. But then her gaze turned desperate. “Chris, please don’t do this again.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “We have a chance at starting over.”

“But, Mom…” She cut me off.

“Go to bed, Chris.”

The rest of the night went by smoothly, though my feelings were hurt by her angry reaction to my fear. It was probably the best night’s sleep I had had in months. I actually slept through the entire night – what was left of it. Usually, I tossed and turned through the night, never fully asleep. This was especially true of the night before, as I had nightmare after nightmare of the woman I had seen hanging in the bathroom.

When I woke, the sun was shining through the window onto my face. It was warm. I liked the way the early morning summer sun felt upon my face.

I rode my bike back to the library. I wanted to find out anything I could about the Savannah area. Specifically, I wanted to find more information about the house we lived in.

I sat at one of the old computers which took 10 minutes just to boot. I looked up my address on the town’s history page and found quite a few interesting facts.

Over 17 slaves were killed at the location of our home, another seven had been raped. The owner, after finding out that one of the slaves had had relations with his wife, hung the man and burned the slave quarters. After that, he killed another six slaves, one of whom was a pregnant woman who served in his home.

Right then I knew the faces I had seen earlier were the faces of slaves that had ruthlessly been murdered. In accounts of the fire that burned the house, many people believed it was due to an oil lamp that had fallen over. Those that dabbled in the supernatural believed that the disgruntled spirits of the slaves had knocked over the lamp to get revenge for those who were murdered. What I read next was even more unnerving. The slave owners that died in the oil lamp fire were my ancestors.

My bike ride home was nice, given the circumstance. A breeze blew softly, speaking to the trees like whispering children as I rode by. I couldn’t believe all of the new information I’d uncovered, and I had no idea what to do with it. I was scared to go home, knowing what had taken place there. Even though our house was built more than a hundred years ago, the original foundation was built in blood.

All night I wondered what I could do to help the souls rest. I had read somewhere about exorcisms and spiritual cleansing, but I knew I couldn’t do it alone and my mother would never believe me.

I was on my own with this one.

The light seemed dimmer, and the house seemed colder. I hoped my mother would be home soon, and something would happen so that she could see what I saw.

I hoped that if I showed her what I had found, she would understand. Most of all, I wanted to know why she had chosen a place with such a terrible history. Moving a young boy who sees ghosts into a place with a history like this was a strange decision. I knew there was a possibility that she had no idea, but I doubted that.

I heard my mother’s car pull into the driveway. She was finally home from work. I went downstairs to meet her and showed her the papers that I printed out at the library.

She hardly gave it a glance before she got angry. “Chris, I told you to grow up!”

“But, Mom, you don’t think this is weird?” I felt tears of despair in my eyes. “I saw them!”

“Chris, there is no such thing as ghosts!”

“But…”

“No! We’ve been here for what, a week? I haven’t seen anything weird, so how come you are the only one who has?”

“I don’t know! I’m not making it up!” I was begging for her to believe me now.

“Go upstairs!” Before I could respond she yelled. “Right now, young man!” Her tone was heavy with anger.

The moon was full that night. It shone brightly through my window. That was good, because my mother got mad when I slept with the lights on. I didn’t really sleep that much anymore, anyway. The moon lit the room like a soft lamp. I liked it, aside from the eerie shadows that created a maniac’s canvas, painted across the walls and ceiling

I read some of the books and pamphlets I’d picked up at the tourist center in town. Some tried to hide the facts about the slavery and the haunting, the rest were rather open about the history.

I had to figure something out. I didn’t want to spend my life under my mother’s worried looks or, even worse, in an institution. At the same time, I didn’t want to spend my life denying the fact that I was being tormented.

In my peripheral vision I saw someone in my doorway standing, staring at me. I could tell the person was tall and lean. I knew it wasn’t my mother; she was much shorter. I felt the person’s eyes peering down on me intently. The person watched me as I lay in the bright moonlight.

I turned my face to the person, and the shape was gone. I went to the hall and looked both ways. To my right, toward the stairs, I saw a woman in a white gown walking down the steps slowly. She stopped when she reached the landing, turning to look at me and then continuing down the stairs.

I followed her through the house that my mother spent her days decorating. But the rooms were not at all how they had been only hours before. Now they were decorated like the home might have been in the 1800s, lit by flickering candles.

I blinked hard twice and opened my eyes. The house wasn’t how my mother had decorated it. I stood there, unable to move or speak. I couldn’t breathe. My breath was trapped in my lungs.

I couldn’t comprehend what had happened. I stood in a daze, looking around and desperately trying to figure out whether or not I had dreamed it. I was exhausted, so maybe that was the reason. I knew that was not true, though, not entirely.

I went back to my room. It was three in the morning.