George's Place
We purchased a home about nine years ago. It was a foreclosure, so we had no history of the property at that time. The price was good. We moved in and started to settle in to our new home.
At first, it was just a feeling of being watched. This only happened when I was alone in the house. I chalked it up to nerves and settling in. Within a week of moving into the house, I began to hear noises – sounds like footsteps, objects moving. I would stop whatever I was doing and go to check to see if it was one of my teenage sons coming home early from school or work. I would get to where the noise had appeared to be coming from... nothing there, just a cold breeze.
After a couple weeks of the sounds came the flashes of movement out of the corner of my eye. I then realized with certainty that my family and I were not the only ones residing in the house. (This didn’t bother me since I have had what my father calls the "third eye" for as long as I can remember; it’s a feeling, like intuition, magnified many times over.)
So I gave the ghost the name of George and started to tell him good morning or good evening when I would see him. This seemed to make him happy, as he would show himself more often and more clearly from that point on. I told my kids and my husband about him, and they looked at me like I had totally lost it. So I figured I would just let it go and be friends with George and not tell anyone else about him.
This was fine until about a year later. Strange things began to happen. Items would disappear and reappear in strange places. One morning in particular was very frustrating. I couldn’t find my glasses. I can’t see my hand in front of my face without them. I said in an angry voice, “George, where did you put my glasses?” I heard a noise in the kitchen. I stumbled down the hallway to find my youngest son standing in the kitchen with the door to the freezer open. Pointing at the freezer, he tells me, “Found them!” They had been there in the freezer for a long time. They were so cold I had to run warm water on them to be able to put them on. Once I had them on and could see, I looked at my son who was at this point was ashen and shaking. I told him it was okay. George was not going to harm him. Maybe, I told him, he wants to tell us something.
I should tell you at this point that my family was having major problems. My husband was drinking and my youngest son was finding trouble left and right, while my other son had gotten into drugs. I cried a lot if tears at that time. It was at this point I realized George was showing himself more than ever. Sometimes he would just be standing in the doorway to my room and looking at me as if to say, it’s going to be okay. I would stop crying, and he would disappear.
It was 11a.m. on December 7 when I got the call that my oldest son had been arrested for breaking into a store while under the influence of drugs and alcohol. A few weeks later, I had just stepped out of the shower when the phone rang. It was my son’s lawyer. He had made a deal with the district attorney to send my son to rehab instead of having a trial and sending him to jail. He wanted me to start making phone calls to rehab centers, as he was doing the same, but he couldn’t find one with an opening. Just then I turned back to look in the bathroom, and on the mirror were the words “The Ranch” written in the fog on the mirror. This was what the locals called the rehab center that sits on the hill just outside of town. I read it and told the attorney to call The Ranch. He said he had already called them and they had no room. I told him, “Trust me, try again." He did. They had just had a person caught with drugs taken away about twenty minutes after my son’s attorney had called the first time and they now had an opening. He called me and wanted to know how I knew. I told him, “A little bird told me.” I was not about to try to explain George to the lawyer; he probably would have tried to get me a room at the Ranch too.
About three weeks later, when I got to take my son home for an afternoon pass from rehab, we were sitting at the dining room table and having a long overdue talk. When we both stopped and looked out the window at the deck, the swing on the deck started to move, as if someone was had just sat down in it, then it started to rock back and forth as if someone were quietly enjoying a gentle swing in it. Then the swing stopped as if someone had suddenly stood up out of it and it swung back and hit them on the legs. We then heard footsteps walking off the wooden deck. I just said, “Hey, George,” out of habit, then turned and looked at my son who was as white as a sheet. I was afraid he was going to pass out. Then he said in the shakiest voice I have ever heard, “That was George!” I laughed, and said, “Yes.” Then he said, “He is real!” And I said, “Yes he’s real.”
Things began to change in my family that day. Shortly after, I left my husband and now have someone very special in my life. My son has not had a drink or any kind of drugs since he was arrested; he now has a wife, his own business and a son he adores. I don’t live in that house anymore, but my youngest son and his fiancé continue to live there, and George still likes to hide things from them, and although my son has never seen him, he and his fiancé were having a very nasty fight one night over some misplaced keys, when their three-year-old daughter walked in to the room with them and told them, “George is in the kitchen and he says stop it, and give each other a hug. You're getting on his nerves.”
They stopped fighting, looked at each other and went into the kitchen to find the missing keys in the freezer, with its door wide open. Things are starting to change for them too. I have researched the property and have found that it was originally a homestead of a minister and his family. His only son died in an accident in the 1940s, after getting upset with his father and leaving the house. The newspaper said that the minister was devastated. The last words his son heard from him were in anger. The minister died on the property some years later. His name, according to the county records, was George. I write this in thanks to George. He could not stop the tragedy that befell him and his family, but he still is ministering to those who are ready to listen.
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