Despite what television and movies have led you to believe, not all the "spooky" stuff happens in the dark, at night in an old house or abandoned asylum. Most of the times, at least with me and my personal experiences, they just sort of happen out of the blue. No foreboding drop in temperatures or chill in the air, no goosebumps or hairs on the back of your neck standing up. Most of the events I've witnessed, and by witness, I mean SEEN or smelled (yes, that's a thing, too!) have been just random events with little sign of anything out of the ordinary. And I'm going to mention a few that I've been witness to and share a few that other family members have mentioned that are just too eerie to have any sort of clear explanation.
The first event that I distinctly recall happening to me, and just me at the time, I was maybe 8 or 9 years old. We were living in the converted garage I've mentioned before and I woke up in the middle of the night. No idea what time it was but it was dark. I don't remember if anything specifically woke me up or if I just happened to be awake when I saw it. Laying from my bed, I could see out the "door" into the living room and I saw a figure walk from the front door, entry to the garage. She, and I say she because it looked to be a slim figure, wearing a robe and she looked like she was wearing her wrapped up in a towel. I've seen mom dress similarly to that countless times, so I just assumed it was mom. She must have just taken her shower and gotten back. She walked from the entryway of the garage, across the living room and into the closet on the opposite side. Then I realized that she didn't bother turning on the light in the closet. It was just a lightbulb hanging on a string with one of those pull-chains. And she was back there in the dark for several moments. Again, no idea how long it was but she couldn't possibly be doing anything back there in the dark for so long, so I called out to her:
"Ama." Silence. She must not have heard me.
"Ama!" Still no reply and she's still back there in the dark. What the heck. Again, I was 8 or 9. Heck was the strongest swear word I was going to use at the time.
"AMA!" Finally dad chimed in from the next room.
"What is it? What do you want?"
"Where's mom?"
"She's here sleeping, what do you want, son?" as I quickly pulled the blankets up over my head and kept thinking, did I see... was that a...? I finally fell asleep still holding those blankets over my head hoping they would protect me from whatever it was that walked into the closet and may still be there.
I've since come to read about shadow people, which I have no doubt that's what I saw that night 40 years ago. And it wasn't the only time I would see them. But not at this house, they would be in the first house we moved to in Riverside in the 80s along with several other goings-on happening there. But for grandma's house, it was barely scratching the surface of all the unusual things to occur there.
Stories I've heard include one night in the late 80s/early 90s, grandma had a dream that she had died. On the very same night, one of my uncles had a dream that grandma had been murdered and he was pursuing the killer. Still another uncle had a dream that he had killed grandma and was being chased for her murder.
There were countless times you could be sitting in the living room and depending on where you sat, you could clearly see down the hallway that lead to all the bedrooms in the house. And out of the corner of your eye, you could see somebody moving from room to room, even if there wasn't anybody else at home. This wasn't just me that would see this but almost everybody that lived there or came to visit. Once, one of the uncles I mentioned earlier thought he was feeling brave and decided to call out to whatever it was moving around the house to show itself to him, that he wasn't going to be afraid of it. And as he sat back down on the couch, the entire row of decorative mirrors on the wall behind him fell. Just the row that was directly behind him.
Still another time, and this was New Year's Eve 1999, I remember because for Christmas that year, I produced a video montage of family and cut it to music, one of the music tracks being grandpa's song, Ojos Tapatios. I've mentioned before that grandpa had recorded a record album back in the early 40s in Mexico. I've never seen this album but my uncle Jorge had a cassette recording of that song. It was in pretty bad shape, the recording. Very low and muddy sounding with lots of hiss and pops from the album's quality. But, being in production like I am, borrowed the tape, uploaded it to my computer and ran it through some filters to clean it up as best as I could 20+ years ago, with the limitations of home recording technology at the time and finally, burned it to CD. It was probably the best, cleanest sounding version that song has been heard in over 40 years. And I gave copy to every one of my aunts and uncles for Christmas.
So, apparently, on New Year's Eve, the family who still lived in the house were having a tiff. My uncle had gotten into an argument with his wife, my aunt who still lived at home was pissy about something and she was off watching TV in her room, so it was just my uncle Jorge and grandma at midnight watching Zabludovsky in the living room when grandpa's song started to play from the stereo. Nobody had touched the remote to start playing, it just started up on its own right at midnight. Both my uncle and grandmother sat in stunned silence as the song played through and as soon as it was over, it stopped and the stereo system turned itself off again. Naturally my uncle jumped up to look at stereo. It had one of those 5-disc CD changers and grandpa's disc wasn't in the "Now Playing" slot in the tray.
The house we moved to in Riverside had its own residents in addition to us. We saw them a few times but more often than not, we still knew they were around. The first event, if we could even call it that was shortly after we moved in. I recall us talking about dreams we were all having. Myself, my brother and even mom mentioned that within a few weeks of moving in, we had all dreamt about dogs or wolves in the front yard, watching the house. I don't know if they were there to watch us or to watch over us. But, in Mesoamerican culture, dogs are spirit guides for the recently deceased. It's interesting that we all saw them shortly after moving in and they re-appeared a few times over the years we lived there.
That house, we were always misplacing things only to have them turn up exactly where we left them the first time, even though we scoured the area just moments before. We had a couple of pranksters, for sure. Lights turning off and on at random, the toilet flushing at odd hours when we were all in the living room. Not just water running filling the tank back up but an actual flush. And then the first true sighting we had happened in the middle of summer, late 80s.
Veronica were on the couch watching TV, middle of the day. And to give you an idea of the layout, forgive this horribly crude drawing.
Veronica and I were watching TV in the living room and the couch was this L-shape facing the TV. Directly behind me and the couch was the dining room table and that led off to the kitchen. As you can see by the diagram, we were both watching TV when something compelled us both to look back over my shoulder. We didn't say anything, we both just turned to look at the same time. Standing there for the briefest of moments was... What could best be described as a shadowy figure. It wasn't a clearly defined form other than it was man-sized and shaped. Head, shoulders, arms. But also just a dark figure. And at the moment we both looked and caught it, it was startled, surprised that we both saw it. It quickly ducked behind the couch. I jumped up and went behind the couch to see what or what that was but nobody was there. As the arrow shows, I went in that direction to what was our kitchen and the sliding glass door leading out. The door was still closed and locked and there wasn't anybody in the kitchen.
I slowly came back looking under the dining room table, anywhere anybody could have possibly gone to in the seconds from when we made eye contact with it. Nothing. And once I got back to the living room, I asked Veronica if she saw "it?"
"A man standing there and he ducked behind the couch."
We weren't scared of it in any way, it was more curiosity. Especially since we were already familiar with what had been happening at Grandma's house while we lived there. In fact, with all the other things going on, from things missing and re-appearing, to the toilet and the lights, we, well, at least Veronica and I, started calling them, and we only assumed there was two of them, we started calling them Fred and Wilma. lol I laugh just thinking about it now. Why did we think they were a couple and why Fred and Wilma? I can't answer either of those other than to say, that's what we thought and felt was appropriate.
Fred and Wilma kept playing with us off and on over the years but it wasn't until Robert was born that they REALLY stepped up their activities in the house.
Dad had converted the garage at the Riverside house and while I used it as my room initially, once Cynthia got preggers and moved in, they took over the room and I moved back into my old bedroom. And once the baby arrived, Fred and Wilma just LOVED Baby Robert and looked out for him in several ways that can't possibly be explained away. There was a time I was sitting on the couch watching TV when Cynthia had to run to the bathroom. She had left the door to the garage open and it's funny that I remember, I heard Robert cry just as she was coming out but she was in a hurry. She told me her side of the story: She knew he was crying because he was hungry but she really had to pee so she'd give him his bottle as soon as she got back. Mind you, Robert was only a few months old at the time, not strong enough to roll himself over, much less be able to crawl anywhere. She just left him in the middle of the bed as she went to the bathroom. When she got back, she paused for a second once she got to the door. Stepped in for a bit, then came right back out and asked me;
"Louie, did you come in and give Robert his bottle?"
"No, I've been sitting here watching TV the whole time. Why?"
"When I left to pee, I left the bottle on the edge of the bed and I was going to give it to him once I got back." And there was little 3-month old Baby Robert still in the middle of the bed sucking on his Enfamil. Nobody else in the house at the time. Well, nobody we could see.
Several times when I had Robert in my lap and he was already old enough and strong enough to hold up his head, I'd be playing with him and he would suddenly stop and look at something or someone else in the room and would track his head to follow them, even so much as to look as far over his shoulder as he could and then roll his head to the other side and keep following whatever/whoever he was looking at.
There was an instance when Rob was in a walker, crashing into things as he hopped around on it and there was a precariously placed wooden rack of some kind, like a cassette tape holder or similar, sitting on top of this large wheeled bar. Dad was nearby when Rob went crashing into the bar and the rack fell with Rob directly below it. It should have hit him square on the head, the full weight of that thing would have been bad to an 8 month old. Yet, it somehow didn't even touch him. The rack hit the back of the walker, the couch arm and the wheeled bar. Entirely missing potentially crushing Rob. But in the moment, dad screamed out and tried to reach for it scaring Rob in the process. The only reason Rob cried at all was from the scare of dad screaming. And it was Rob's crying that enraged dad even more that he took the rack, opened the front door and threw it out onto the lawn, cursing its existence.
We moved out of that house maybe less than a year after that. But the dreams about dogs and wolves, Fred and Wilma and another couple of appearances of shadow people happened throughout the seven or or so years we lived there. And these are just a few my recollections. I'm curious what anyone else experienced while we lived there. The rental we lived in after that didn't have as many interactions for me. But there were still things going on, to be sure.
But it was the Canterbury House that had one of the most unusual for me. And dad. It was just the two of us at home at the time. Veronica had just had surgery done in TJ, as is typical, American doctors couldn't figure out what was going on with her without dozens and dozens of tests but as soon as she consulted with dad's GI doctor in TJ, she was taken in and the work was done. The hospital was Catholic based in that the nurses also happened to be nuns. Sanatorio San Francisco. Dad and I were at home and his bedroom had a couple of double doors that he always kept open that led into the living room. He was laying out on his bed and I was facing away watching TV in the living room. He suddenly shot up and asked me if I could smell that perfume?
"What perfume? Mom and Veronica are in the hospital in TJ."
"I just smelled this fragrance, it was the most beautiful perfume ever. I was hoping you caught a whiff of it."
"No, nothing." I shrugged.
Maybe about 30 seconds to a minute passes by and I react. Something caught my nose, the faintest aroma of flowers. Like roses but not as pungent. Something that to this day I can only repeat what dad called it, the most beautiful perfume I'd ever smelled. Just caught a whiff and it was gone but, like you often do when you smell something that smells that amazing, you want to breathe it in again, sniffing the air for another hint of it. I looked back at dad, he just nodded and said,
"That was it again" Came to find out a few days later when we drove mom and Veronica back that during the recuperation, Veronica asked about the incense the nuns were lighting and what was it.
"This is a hospital. They don't light incense here." I'm curious who was visiting us that day.
And finally (for this blog post at least), this one happened shortly after dad passed away back in 2012. It was about 5 days since he passed, so before the memorial service. I had been drinking myself into a pretty good stupor for most of that time, and for several months afterward. But this night, I was toasting every drink to his memory, I was sitting on the floor of my apartment in front of the TV when his scent hit me. Dad had a very unique scent, body odor for lack of a better term. It wasn't a scent from his cologne nor aftershave, nor deodorant. This was his. The best, closest I can compare it to is it was very similar to olive oil. Not exactly but close. I remember that scent from growing up, when he'd come home from work and it permeated his clothes. And I was sitting on the floor when it hit me. It was all too brief. It lingered in the air long enough for me to smell it and when I recognized it, I breathed it in once more then it was gone. I have no doubt dad was visiting me that night. I think he came to visit us all in those days after he passed. Cynthia told me that in that span, she was cleaning Alex's room and he bolted up out of his sleep and just said, "Grandpa!" Veronica told me that Christian had dreams about him as well.
Not everything that goes bump in the night is something to be feared.
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