The Rocking Chair

In my mother’s large country house, there is a particular piece of furniture that, for lack of a better word, seems a little haunted.

It is an old wooden rocking chair painted white that my great-great- grandfather brought to the house in the 1870’s. Although the house contains a lot of antiques, this chair is definitely one of the oldest things in it.

I suppose other pieces of furniture could potentially be good places for a ghost to sit on, and although there is another rocking chair in the living room that was my grandmother’s, the chair in question is the only one in the house that rocks all by itself (as far as we know).

As previously mentioned in this blog, we moved into the house when I was five years old in 1975. I don’t know whose idea it was to put this ancient rocking chair in my bedroom. Maybe it was already in that room and no one thought to move it. I really don’t remember. What I do remember is my mother always telling me the story of how she heard it rocking by itself when she was a little girl.

Her experience with the chair is detailed in this post:

"My Mother's Experiences" <--link)

I also remember that because of that story, there were plenty of nights as a child (and later a teenager) that I went to sleep with that chair at the foot of my bed, praying I would not hear it creaking back and forth, or worse, SEE it rocking in the middle of the night. Mostly, I think I would have heard it, if anything, as at night in that house it is so pitch black you can’t see your hand in front of your face.

In all my years of having that chair in my room, I never once saw it or heard it move on its own. However, there are a handful of people who have.

A family friend spending the evening once, claims to have heard it rocking upstairs when no one was up there. There have been a few friends over the years who also claimed to have heard it rocking on the creaky old floorboards. And of course, my mother, who knew what that chair sounded like once it started rocking.

Is there more than one spirit who likes to sit and rock on a 150 year old chair? Or is it just one who doesn’t want to give it up?

Currently, the haunted chair is in the even-more-haunted spare bedroom. The occasional guest stays in there and there have been no recent reports of the chair rocking on its own. But who knows what goes on when there are no witnesses. As you read this, that chair could be slowly creaking back and forth in that pitch black spare bedroom which is known to have a lot of paranormal activity in it.

                                                         

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What does a ghost have to do to get a cup of coffee around here?!

Yesterday we visited my mother’s house, the one this blog is written about. My mother, my son and I were sitting in the kitchen having a discussion about a vehicle my son wants to buy. The pantry is connected to the kitchen. It was daylight, sunny and everything in the pantry was clearly visible.

I was facing the direction of the pantry. My son sort of had his back to it.

Suddenly, we heard a noise in the pantry. I looked in there, and Scott turned around to see what was going on. There is a shelf in there with hooks attached underneath which holds coffee mugs. There’s probably twelve or so. The hooks are very sturdy and the mugs have hung there for many years.

When Scott and I diverted our attention to what was happening, we clearly saw the mug on the far left in mid air, on its way to falling to the floor. It hit the shelving unit underneath it, then hit the floor.

No other mugs were even moving. The mug that somehow jumped UP off the hook did not even collide with the others that are very close to it. A mug moving upwards (with no human intervention) to come off of a hook is not an easily explainable event. Skeptics could argue the hook was loose and the mug just fell but that would be impossible as the mug handle rests DOWN onto the hook. And the hook was still well attached when I inspected it afterwards.

Scott and I just stared at the scene unfolding, thinking “what in the hell just happened?” I think my mother saw what happened but she doesn’t get too concerned over this stuff anymore. I picked the mug up and put it back on its hook.

What’s even stranger is this exact same thing happened many years ago when relatives were visiting. They were in the kitchen and watched this same event unfold, as a mug came off its hook and ended up on the floor.

Of all the weirdo stuff that happens there, I get most intrigued by these events that I see happen when there are witnesses. And yesterday, there were two.

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