The Sallie House Haunting: A True Story Read Online Free PDF

wide-eyed and scared to go back up. Again, we took turns looking at each other, as if waiting for one of us to say, “Ha ha, got ya,” but no one did. We each knew we had only been an arm’s length from each other. The situation had just become very frightening.
    We went back up the stairs, packed closely to each other like a small herd of sheep. We snuck up there as if we might have a chance to catch someone in the act.
    We emerged at the top, peered into the room, then stood there motionless for what seem a dreadfully long time staring into what should have been a tranquil room. On the floor in the middle of the room, face up on the floor, lay the small scruffy teddy bear.
    We agreed that for the rest of the evening we would stay as close together as possible. This would not only rule out any one of us as the culprit, it would also give us a certain sense of security.
    When we had last left the room, I had set the bear back on the little wicker chair just inside and to the left of the doorway. As we stood there a chilling feeling went through us. Then, still huddled closely and moving as one, we entered the room. Together we checked every square inch of that bear for a magnet, a string or anything else that might explain this trickery. We found nothing.
    Now my thoughts got scarier. Had someone been hiding upstairs all along, waiting until he could sneak into the room and set something up? We checked the entire floor turned up nothing.
    Without saying it out loud to each other, we knew we had each been thinking the same thing. Quietly I said, “Since it’s playing with the toys, maybe it’s a child ghost.”
    Karen must have been thinking along the same lines. “Maybe it’s a nurturing woman who’s trying to entertain a baby.”
    We stood there shifting our eyes slowly at each other, looking for the slightest sign of betrayal. I could tell that each of us in the silence was fighting with the knowledge within. We were the only three in the house and one of us had to be making these things happen.
    Tony put the bear back on its little wicker chair and I turned out the light. After that, we all headed back down the stairs. As we descended, I feared that as soon I got to the bottom and turned around I’d catch a glimpse of activity. But when I got there and looked behind me nothing seemed to be wrong. The others did the same. However, the room remained just as dark as when we had left it.
    During the next twenty minutes, we sat in the living room and tried hard not to discuss the recent happenings. Every few minutes one of us would get up and sneak quietly over to the bottom of the stairs, in full view of the others, to see if the light had come back on. Each time, the nursery remained dark.
    About 10:50 p.m., I announced that I had to use the bathroom. I could tell that Tony and Karen were shocked that I would think about venturing upstairs, because they asked in synchronicity, “You’re going up there alone?”
    Pretending to be brave, I said, “Yeah. Why?” They gave each other a look of disbelief.
    “We’ll wait at the bottom of the stairs for you, OK?”
    Whether standing at the bottom of the stairs was their way of keeping an eye on me or out for me, it was OK, because in all truth I was terrified.
    If one of them had gone up with me, the other would have been left alone down stairs, and at that point none of us felt comfortable being too far from the others. We discussed this like a covert operation. If both of them followed me upstairs, they would be standing in the hallway just outside the nursery. Both were certain that they didn’t want to be in that position. It was agreed that since they could see the doorway to the nursery from the bottom of the stairs, they could also monitor my whereabouts and assure themselves that I wasn’t sneaking into the baby’s room.
    I crept up the stairs while Tony and Karen observed my progress from below. Although scared myself, I decided that as soon as I could see