Ghost Story 2, Part 1 - The Mischief Maker

I volunteered to move into my parents' new house in Florida while they were still living in Seattle to make sure the contractors finished the lanai, pool, etc. I gave up my beachfront apartment on the nearby island, and went for the free rent. 2800 square feet. 10 minutes closer to work. No hurricane evacuations. All good.

And all was good for about a month. Then, the tapping started.

At first it was just annoying, a tapping sound in my bedroom that sounded like somebody drumming a pencil on a table during a meeting. I just slept through it most of the time, thinking it was the air conditioning clicking on. Then, I noticed that it had sort of a beat. It had sort of a rock beat, and it would change.

Then, I noticed that it stopped if I moved. And that it started between 2 and 2:30 every single damn morning. OK, still, not scary. I experimented with it - moving to see if the beat would change or if it would just stop. Timing when it stopped, etc.

Understandably, I started losing a bit of sleep in the middle of every night. I was still sleeping when it stopped, but was awake every night from about 2- 4. After about a month of that, I woke up one night to see something that is really hard to describe.

I remember waiting and waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, because I just couldn't reconcile the image. It was a huge black spot - at least 2 feet wide, on the ceiling above the bedroom door, and it seemed to be shaped like a spider. I watched it move from the ceiling, down the wall, and under and around the doorway to the other side. This was the first time I was scared.

Then things really started happening. The main theme was the tapping, but new things were added. One night I awoke to the sound of the microwave bell going off in the kitchen. Another night, the water faucets in the bathroom nearest my room were turned on, and I had to get up and shut them off. I would turn off all the lights in the house before going to bed, and when I got up in the morning, they would all be back on. Now remember, this was a brand new house. I kept thinking, maybe the wiring's off, maybe this, maybe that.

But I was getting less and less sleep. I moved in in September, and in November a friend from Michigan came down for the long Veteran's Day weekend. I didn't tell her because at this point, what would I say? Um, there's some tapping and stuff.

So the first night, nothing really weird happened, just the tapping. We got up early and went deep sea fishing and had a great day in general. The second day, she came into the kitchen all bleary-eyed and said, "This weird tapping noise kept me up all night."

And, that was the first night that I had no tapping. I apologized and shared what I had been going through. Luckily, it didn't worry her too much. At this point I started freaking out a bit, because the thing moving from my room to her room was just too much. The following Monday I was telling a co-worker about it, which is hard when you're worried about looking kinda nuts. My secretary overheard me, and asked to speak to me in private. It turns out she had some experience dealing with this kind of problem, and wanted to come over and "evaluate" the house.

Tomorrow, part deux.