The Sallie House Haunting: A True Story

by Debra Pickman

  Here begins our story of life in Sallie’s house. Three months pregnant and newly married, my life had finally taken direction. Our first rental home together was quite small and my pregnancy emphasized the need for a larger home. In planning for a family, we were looking for a few specific amenities: a large yard for children and pets to run and play, and a much bigger kitchen. We knew that finding our ideal house was not going to be easy. In a small town, you all but have to know someone to get a decent place to rent. In fact, we checked out several dumps before we got a lead from Tony’s brother on a small rental house conveniently close, vacant and in need of renters.

  This run-down but quaint-looking house stood nestled between two houses just two blocks from the Missouri river. From the outside, it was plain to see it needed a few layers of paint and some attention given to the fences and gardens. I remember wondering why it was the only house on the block that was so low; you had to step down a few steps to enter the front door.

  Records for the house and nearby structures revealed that it was the oldest one the block. The landlord, a local police officer, had purchased the house a month before. He had not been able to do much work on the outside of the house, but had given the inside a much needed face-lift.

  We had our first look at the place in mid-December. The feeling in the house was comforting and calm. It had plenty of room for our family and seemed perfect. With the help of family and friends, we moved in on New Year’s Eve, 1992. The owner had freshly painted the interior a light peach with a crisp white trim. The colors radiated a level of calm as we entered the house, but looking back, I have often wondered if there was something intangible that drew us to the house.

  Although four months pregnant, I enjoyed setting up our first home together. The brick house, from its exterior, looked deceptively small. Inside it was rather spacious, boasting three good-sized bedrooms, one-and-a-half baths upstairs, and a spacious and open floor plan. In our excitement, it didn’t take us long to set up house. Little did we know that we were not the only ones living there. Had we known about the other occupants, Tony would never have allowed us to move in.

  two

  Although it is difficult to say when it all started, the activity seemed to begin just a few weeks after we moved in. The following is taken from my journal but recalls events that occurred before we actually realized paranormal activity was happening in our home. Times and date are approximate in these early entries, since we had no way to pinpoint more detailed information.

  January-February 1993

  We had approximately thirty days of normal life in our home. It was our first Valentine’s Day in our new home and after work I was met at the door by Tony, who had made a large beautiful heart with a beautiful mushy poem in the center. He had made an incredible Italian dinner to celebrate settling into our new home and the reality that we were having a baby. Little did we know that this wonderful evening would be the last of our ordinary days together.

  During a normal evening routine, we would often snuggle on the couch and watch TV. Several evenings in a row, we both began to notice that the overhead ceiling light would slowly dim to a soft glow, remaining dim for four to five minutes, and then blast at full wattage. This seemed to happen only at night when we were alone. It was as if someone was using a dimmer switch, which we did not have. This happened sporadically over a period of many weeks and sometimes several times within the same evening.

  Tony had checked the switch and changed the bulbs and fuses. At one point we even had an electrician look into the problem to determine if there was a reasonable electrical issue. There was none found. Then one night, when the lights dimmed again inexplicably, Tony joked, “We must have a ghost.” We both snickered at the comment, and strangely enough, it was the last time the lights dimmed. Had it been a way to get our attention or to be noticed?

  Tony and I noticed other strange things happening in the house; subtle little things which we never gave much thought to at the time. I kept a mental note of them and finally wrote them down many weeks later. At the time, we had no reason to suspect a ghost, and we had no reason to keep a written record of events, much less make an effort to uncover trickery or anything else that would have explained the strange occurrences.

  When we moved, we brought three cats and a dog with us, all of whom seemed to have paranormal experiences of their own while we lived in the house. The two youngest cats were naturally mischievous—the third was demure and always looking for a quiet place to snooze or hide. Sasha, the dog, was a purebred Samoyed with a very mild temperament who absolutely adored playing with children and animals of any size. Perceptive and protective by nature, she would initially bark at anyone she didn’t know.

  We had not yet purchased baby furniture for the nursery and so it remained empty for quite some time. The white walls cried out for a theme and decorative touches, but we lacked ideas and inspiration, feeling that it would all come together in due time. One of the first days in the house, Sasha followed Tony upstairs and the two of them stood in the hallway while Tony stared into the room, trying to generate ideas. Tony eventually gave up and walked away, but was drawn back by the dog’s incessant barking.

  He found Sasha standing outside the nursery, still growling and baring her teeth as if she were being threatened. Looking into the empty room and seeing nothing to warrant such a reaction, Tony tried to calm her by walking into the nursery himself and coaxing her to follow. She wouldn’t budge. For a few minutes longer, she continued to show distinct signs of aggressive and defensive behavior.

  This strange behavior took place several more times and in the same place. After about a week, however, the threat she sensed was no longer a concern and she had no problem going into or near the room. Tony thought that Sasha might have sensed an unfamiliar animal outside.

  A dog will generally consider any stranger a threat until they have become more familiar with the person or until their humans show acceptance of the visitor. After observing no negative reaction from us when the ghost was present (we didn’t realize it was a ghost then), Sasha must have concluded it was a friend and stopped being aggressive.

  Another typical indicator of a paranormal presence are cold spots or sudden drops in temperature. These cold areas aren’t just a few degrees cooler than what is considered to be normal; they can actually be up to forty degrees colder. I think I was the first to notice cold spots.

  At no time while we lived at the house did it have central air-conditioning and at the time we could only afford one air conditioner, which we placed in the front window of the master bedroom. Yet I often felt cool air flow past me on the stairs, specifically on the side of the outer wall.

  When I first felt it, I thought that the cold was probably from a draft under the door of the air-conditioned bedroom since the bedroom door was just above me and to the right as I walked upstairs. I knew warm air rises and cool air settles, so this theory could not explain the coldness I occasionally felt on my upper body once I reached the top of the stairs.

  Over the course of a few weeks, I talked with people who, at one time or another, had been in the house and gone upstairs. I was amazed to find out no one else had experienced the cold feeling except for my brother-in-law’s wife.

  March-May 1993

  During the last trimester of pregnancy, I often found it very uncomfortable to sleep in our water bed. To make matters worse, our only air-conditioner stopped working in mid-May. The heat and humidity was unbearable upstairs, so Tony and I often slept on the couch with the doors and windows open.

  One particularly hot night, about 3:30 a.m., when everything in the house and neighborhood was quiet and peaceful, I was abruptly awaken from a sound sleep by what sounded like blood curling screams, then several loud, quick thumps coming down the stairs. Practically in a state of unconsciousness, my only thought was that someone had gotten into the house and was there to do
harm. Before I was able to sit up or have any coherent thoughts, something heavy struck my body and face. Stricken with immediate and absolute terror, I screamed at the top of my lungs.

  This, of course, woke Tony, who let out an alarming scream equal to mine! As I screamed for the second time, he took a breath. I screamed; he screamed. This went on for several minutes until Tony realized he had no idea what we were screaming about.

  Tony tried to calm and quiet me. Wide-eyed and panicked, I sat stiff and motionless in his arms. We both shifted our eyes around the room in an attempt to figure out what had alarmed me so, but saw no telltale signs of anything out of order. Ten minutes later, I had regained composure, but laughed at how ridiculous we must have looked and sounded.

  I also noticed my cats’ strange behavior. They seemed panicked, their hair was standing on end, and they were slinking around the room as if awaiting an ambush. They were hissing at each other and bolting about frantically trying to find a hiding place. I had never seen them in this frenzied state.

  As I told Tony what had happened, it was as if a light bulb turned on in my head and I realized that the scream I had heard could have come from one of the cats, as well as the distinct and heavy thumping I heard on the stairs and the blows to my body. The question was, what had they encountered that had sent them into such a frenzy? Tony and I decided to take a look.

  I remember wondering, as I mounted the stairs, if the neighbor’s cat, Marmalade, had somehow gotten into the house. It would not have explained the severe reaction of my cats; they had seen Marmalade many times before.

  Oddly enough, as I got to the top of the stairs, I felt a wonderful coolness throughout the whole upper half of the house. We could logically assume that the cool air we felt upstairs was not a result of the night air; it simply was not that cool outside or in the lower level of the house.

  When we came back down, we found the cats were still in a panicked and nervous state. No, this abnormal behavior certainly was not the result of running into a neighbor cat. Never had I ever seen such a prolonged response in an animal, especially in a cat. In retrospect, I can’t help but wonder if this event had been the first time one or all of the cats had met up with Sallie. Their panic certainly enhanced our own fear and although we may never know what really happened that night, we will never forget how hard we laughed.

  June-July 1993

  Ghost hunters believe that spirits have the ability to toy with electrical appliances. Knowing nothing about this theory, we were surprised and baffled by activity involving an electric stove top timer.

  On June 18, a week before my son was born, I had been cooking in the kitchen and had just put a cake into the second-hand oven we had recently purchased. I set the digital timer for twelve minutes. Less than a minute later, as I was wiping the counter next to the stove, I noticed the timer showed just over four minutes. I looked at my watch and made a mental note on when to take the cake out. Seconds later, my eyes caught sight of the oven timer again, which now read fourteen minutes. I decided to purchase an egg timer on my next trip to the store and didn’t give it another thought until the next day.

  I had been sitting alone in the living room and suddenly heard an odd buzzing sound coming from the kitchen. I got up and found the oven timer buzzing. I stood there in puzzlement, just staring at it for a while. After about a minute, the timer stopped buzzing and I stood there thinking how strange it was for the thing to stop itself. This model was one where it was up to you to turn it off the alarm.

  The next day, for no particular reason, the buzzer again went off. The first few times, I hurried into the kitchen and shut it off to stop the annoying buzz. However, the buzzing became so frequent that I simply gave up.

  There were also times when the timer went off while we had visitors. At one such time our confused guest said, “No one’s been in the kitchen for hours.” I nodded my head, and in exasperation told of how it had been going on for days. Someone suggested that we disconnect it and Tony agreed that we probably would. It was the last time the timer went off by itself and after that it kept correct time and worked perfectly fine.

  I have often wondered if the buzzing frequencies had been some sort of signal from Sallie, such as a game or an attempt to communicate with us about the timing of something that happened in her lifetime. Perhaps it was something different altogether. Perhaps she was just excited, because on June 26, 1993, our son Taylor Jacob was born.

  My doctor insisted on seven days of bed rest after we left the hospital, but I got bored and was anxious to finish decorating the nursery. On June 28, I pleaded with Tony, who reluctantly gave in and allowed me to start painting.

  We had tried for months to choose a theme that would be perfect for the room, but had found it very difficult. Then after the baby was born, for reasons unknown to us, we decided on an even representation of pale pink and baby blue. We had made these choices before knowing about Sallie and afterwards wondered if there wasn’t some sort of influence upon that decision.

  One day while painting, I hurried to the other room to answer the phone. Fifteen minutes into the conversation, I wandered back to the nursery and a few feet into the room the phone went completely silent. I stood there dumbfounded, wondering if something had happened on the other end of the line. I pressed the “talk “button, which acted as an on/off button, but still nothing.

  I rushed towards the door of the room, thinking I might be able to reach another phone before totally losing the connection. As I stepped over the threshold and into the hall, I heard Karen’s voice saying, “Hello, hello, are you still there?” It had been at least a minute, if not more, of dead silence.

  Not wanting to lose the long distance call again, I remained in the hallway for some time before eventually forgetting and wandering back into the nursery. The same scenario played out again. Afterwards, I recreated the situation several more times and for longer durations of dead silence. Each time the result was the same. We had never had any problem with that phone before (or since), which lead me to believe that something in the nursery was causing interference.

  After ruling out battery trouble, we wondered if there was something within the structure of the house and within the walls of the nursery, but we had been on the phone in that room often without any trouble. Once we realized we were being haunted, we learned that spirits give off an intense amount of energy that can create electrical interference.

  This interference was not only related to the area in the nursery. It happened on many other occasions in other areas of the house: upstairs and down, in good weather and bad, with local and long distance calls. There seemed to be no real pattern to the disturbances. They sometimes happened so frequently within a single conversation, it was impossible to finish a sentence and I was forced to end the call prematurely. Then one day, the problem ceased completely.

  When we first brought Taylor home from the hospital, he had typical newborn confusion. He slept more in the day and awoke often for his feedings in the night. Even though his sleeping habits were naturally a bit backward at first, he began to adapt to a normal regimen. This didn’t last long, however, and for weeks we couldn’t sleep because he would wake up almost immediately after we laid him in the crib. Tony and I had become so worn out from those sleepless nights that we felt like zombies going through our daily routines.

  We asked family and friends for advice, we read books and magazine articles and they all said the same things—that’s life with a newborn, it will wear off in a couple of days, try this, try that. We kept waiting for it to wear off, but something just didn’t seem right. We ran through all the possibilities we had been alerted to—his cradle wasn’t in the path of a cold draft, he wasn’t too hot or cold, his tummy was full, his diaper was clean and we were pretty sure it wasn’t gas or colic because he never sounded that distressed.

  We explained Taylor’s sleep habits to my sister
in New York, who had become a mom herself eighteen months earlier. After offering suggestions to no avail, she offered to fly down. We gratefully accepted the offer.

  The day before her arrival, Tony helped me out by doing some of the vacuuming. He had been in the nursery, which was still quite bare except for a changing table and crib. The crib was equipped with the usual blankets, quilts, bumper pads, pillows, toys, and stuffed animals. I had also attached a wind-up musical teddy bear mobile to the side of the crib. While Tony vacuumed, the baby and I were in the only air-conditioned room, across the hall.

  Suddenly, Tony came bursting into the room. He said that while he was vacuuming, the teddy bear mobile started playing and turning. I told him about how the new baby monitor worked; one of its special features was if the baby cried for more than a minute, or any other loud noise was generated for the same amount of time, the monitor would play a lullaby in a attempt to soothe the baby back to sleep. I assured him the vacuum had probably set off monitor.

  With great conviction, he informed me that it hadn’t been because of the vacuum. It was obvious that I had upset him, and he abruptly closed the bedroom door and returned to vacuum the nursery. Soon he was back at the bedroom door, demanding that I take a look. Thinking this was some sort of game he was playing and not being in the mood for one, I told him no. He flatly announced that he was done vacuuming the room.