Don’t Stay Alone

Don’t Stay Alone

I once worked for a group home with mentally challenged young adults. The house they lived in was in an older area of the city, where most of the houses were what would be called, character homes. This was one of those. It had high ceilings and tall windows that went to about eighteen inches from the floor to near the ceiling . There was stained glass throughout the house that added to the old character feel of the house. The mouldings were made of big, dark wood, lots of it, also hardwood floors that creeked. There were large banisters on the stairs and old plastered walls, well painted, but you could tell it’s age. This house was three stories tall with a basement. The basement, although well lit and clean, wasn’t an area many wanted to visit.

Many of my coworkers told stories of how the house was haunted and had spirits roaming around. One of the residents lived on the third floor, all alone. When you worked the over night shift, you generally worked on your own. One of the girls said she would often see the image of the resident from the third floor, sitting on the sofa in the living room in the middle of the night. She knew he was sound asleep in his room three floors up.

Another staff had noticed planters move across the living room floor and it was common to to see images out the corner of your eye, moving out of the room. The basement had a narrow staircase and people had often said, they saw the image of a child at the bottom of the stairs, when they turned on the lights.

There was a period of time in the house where stress with the residents had escalated to the point of violent aggression. This had gone on for several weeks. One night late in the evening after a particularly stress filled day, the staff was gathered in the front office to review the days events and complete reports, when an image, a brown mass really, appeared above the table for a brief moment and then slowly floated out of the office door, into the hallway and disappeared around the corner. We all looked at each other to confirm in our own minds, that we had really seen the same thing.

I’m a, ”you have to show me and I’ll believe it”, kind of guy. After working there, I’m not so sure that is the case anymore. I’m definitely not as quick to disbelieve a story now.