Josephine was haunted
And it was not just the dog.
The very first house I bought when I was still quite young was new construction. It was nice, but there was no character to it, no history, no stories to tell or guess. There were a host of reasons I didn’t last long in that setting, but that house’s lack of a real name was big on that list. And how do you name something you know nothing about?
My second house was a completely different (set of) story(ies).
Built in (I think) 1915, and set in a historic lumber mill town near Puget Sound, it had nothing BUT history. I named her Josephine. Josephine rhymed with 1915 and felt like lyrics from an Everly Brothers song. And that house was just full of stories to tell.
You’ve already heard about the tub.
And there’s been mention of our chickens.
But let’s talk about upstairs. The upstairs of Josephine contained the unholy bridal-mint-colored bathroom, two bedrooms (one big enough to be a living room), and a hallway with the brick chimney running through it from the kitchen below. The front bedroom had a lovely, large window overlooking the front yard and the street full of similar neighbor houses. All of the original second story also had gorgeous narrow-plank hardwood flooring hiding under the carpet. Before both of the kids were born, we gutted the upstairs down to the studs. There were lots of changes, but most of that front bedroom remained as it had been for the last hundred years.
It had clearly been a child’s bedroom at one point, as I found drawings on the plaster walls hidden behind a layer of drywall. But those hieroglyphs were from the 1950s or 60s. So who lived up there when the house was built?
A couple of things happened. Some of them were funny. Some of them creeped me the hell out. I’ll tell you both. Funny first.
During all of the gutting and removal of plaster and lath, I took on rewiring the entire upstairs myself. This meant I was in the attic connecting something, trekked down the folding ladder, walked down to the first floor, then kept descending to the basement to mess with the electrical panel. Same thing in reverse, up three flights to the attic. Down. Up. Down. Up. Wiring is tough work, and apparently also counts as cardio.
It was summer, it was hot, and my wife was in the backyard mowing the lawn. I’m saying this so you know she wasn’t inside the house with me because that’s important. You should also know that the stairs to the basement ran directly under the stairs between the main floor and the upstairs of the house. Lots of houses are built like that to save on precious overhead space. And as I descended to the basement for another panel inspection, I clearly heard footsteps on the stairs over my head.
I panicked. I stopped dead in my tracks, my hand on the railing shaking slightly, and my eyes followed the sound up and up and up.
Now I know you’re shaking your head at me and thinking my imagination had run away with me, but I had spent several years in that house at all hours of the day and night, and I’d heard many things that made me question my sanity. Little creaks. Lots of footsteps upstairs. The footsteps almost always sounded from the hallway as though they were walking toward that front bedroom. Sometimes the bedroom door would close. Not slam, it wasn’t violent, but I’d hear it close and latch. Importantly, most of the footsteps upstairs sounded like they were on hardwood floors, which baffled me for the longest time. We didn’t know about the hardwoods until we tore up the carpet nearly five years into owning Josephine.
I cannot account for how frequently I heard these things, but I’d come to believe that I was not alone in that house, and hearing those footsteps on the stairs were like a sudden, bowel-testing moment of confirmation.
I turned, heading for the open door into the kitchen, and there stood my wife staring back at me and the shock in my expression. “Did you hear that?” I almost yelped.
“Hear what?”
“The… the footsteps!!” and I pointed up. “Going up the stairs!”
“Footsteps?” she was giving me the you’re-nuts look.
“Yes!” I took a step up toward her. “I just heard them! Going up the stairs!”
She sighed, closed her eyes, obviously exasperated with me. “It was the dog. It was Eddy. She just ran upstairs, you dork.”
Uh.
Oh yeah. The dog. Right.
But not long after that moment, my wife and I were in bed reading at the end of a long day, and we BOTH heard the footsteps in the upstairs hall heading toward the bedroom. The door creaked and closed softly. I turned the page of my book and worked very hard not to stare her in the eye. “So, uh, was that the dog?”
She cleared her throat and also did not look directly at me. “The dogs are in their crate in the laundry room.”
“Yep,” I drew the word out nice and slow, popping the p at the end.
She turned the page of her book. “I’ve heard it a few times.”
“A-ha!” I turned and stared at her with wild eyes. “I knew it! All this time you were making me out to be the crazy one who heard the ghost in the house, but you’ve heard it, too!” And we both had a nervous good laugh about the whole thing before sleeping curled up against one another to ward off any other ghosts who might pass through in the night.1
It didn’t end there. In 2015 our second kid was born, and we set up his nursery in that upstairs bedroom. He didn’t use it early on, as he really liked sleeping in bed with us or just being in the same room with anyone, but we eventually got him settled up there. That room also had the spare bed for guests, and we took turns sleeping in it on the hard nights when he needed feeding or felt fussy. But when we were downstairs and he was up we plugged in the baby monitor and listened to the sound of his soft snores as we drifted off.
Now I’m not one to believe that ghosts are real, despite some of the evidence. I’m a science nerd. I like facts. I like tangible proof. And my wife would laugh if she heard this next part, so maybe don’t bring it up with her since she’s even more of a science nerd than I am. She was asleep when it happened anyway.
Sometime late in the night, well after we had all fallen asleep and I was suddenly awake (thanks, bladder), I heard the baby start to fuss like he was going to wake up. If you’ve parented tiny children you know this sound, and your body likely goes through the same motions. You lie still, you strain to listen to every breath in hopes that the baby will settle and go back to sleep, and your body is primed to jump out of bed before the crying gets too much momentum if it starts. And so, my ears acutely tuned to that little speaker by the bed, I know without a doubt that I heard the footsteps in that bedroom, the soft cooing sound of a voice over the crib, and the humming music that put him back to sleep as I listened.
I don’t know who lived in Josephine before us. We only found historical accounts going back to the 60s or 70s at best, and so there’s more than fifty years of mystery that we lived with in those years. Whoever it was, I think maybe they had a soft spot for tiny babies, for which I’m grateful. And I hope they sat upstairs and listened to our laughter over the dog running up the steps, maybe smiling in a mischievous way that it wasn’t just the dog.
Your trans friend,
Robin
She now denies that this conversation ever occurred. But it did. Oh yes it did.