The Sallie House Haunting: A True Story

by Debra Pickman

When we talked about the incident that night, I realized what he had been trying to describe to me earlier was not the loud music of the monitor, but the music of the mobile. I also realized that Tony had actually seen the mobile turning. He adamantly explained to me that the mobile had rotated several times while playing its tune. He had not set it off by bumping the crib because he was nowhere near the crib when he saw the movement. We couldn’t come up with an explanation, and by the end of the night we had put it out of our minds.

  By now, Taylor was three weeks old. When my sister arrived, she offered to be his caregiver at night to allow us time to catch up on some desperately needed sleep. This worked well. While Karen slept on the couch downstairs, Taylor slept in the cradle near her.

  After her first night, I felt so refreshed that we decided to drive to a store in Kansas City to pick up a baby’s dresser that matched the crib. When we got back home, Tony and his youngest brother, George, unloaded the dresser from the truck and set it in place in the nursery. Moments later they heard the gentle music of the mobile and watched the carousel turn as the music played. Both agreed that neither of them had wound it up and they came downstairs to tell us what had happened.

  I wondered whether Tony had told George about the experience from the previous night and they had conspired to play on it for my sake. I shrugged it off, not wanting to make a big deal about it. As Tony and I got ready for bed later that night, he told me that the mobile coming on by itself had made him and his brother very uneasy.

  three

  Karen’s visit was truly a godsend. By taking over the baby’s night-time feedings, she allowed Tony and me to get two full nights of peaceful, uninterrupted sleep. We had forgotten what it was like and how rejuvenating it could be. Nevertheless, we really missed having Taylor in our room at night and we didn’t want Karen to feel like we were taking advantage of her offer to help out, so on the third night we took back our precious baby and his night-time feedings.

  Something was odd, though. Prior to Karen’s arrival, Taylor would wake up every sixty to ninety minutes. Since her arrival he had slept for several four-hour chunks of time throughout the night. I didn’t give this much thought then, but several weeks later I wondered why the baby had been waking up so often before her arrival and why he had been suddenly able to sleep for long hours while in her care.

  Before we realized how quickly the week had gone by, it was July 25 and Karen’s last full day with us. Her week long visit had been uneventful and I’m sure quite boring, since the extent of our nightly entertainment was to rent movies and snack on bite-sized shredded wheat. We never could have anticipated the excitement that was in store for us later that day.

  For most of the day we visited at my in-laws’ house. We spent time videotaping the baby as well as other relatives of Tony’s who had stopped in throughout the day. As we began packing up the baby’s things in order to return home, Tony’s sister in-law Jeanie stopped by. She seemed very anxious about something. Eventually she told us that she had dropped by our house just before stopping in at Tony’s parents.

  A few weeks earlier she had told me about a highchair she no longer needed and I had opted to take it. She had just come from dropping it off at our house. Curious about how we had decorated the nursery, she had gone up to take a peek. Tony and I didn’t have a problem with that, but she seemed to feel a nagging guilt about it. In order to relieve her guilty conscience she had sought us out to tell us she had been in the house. I remember telling her that it was no big deal, but she remained nervous and somewhat agitated.

  Twenty minutes later, we collected our things and headed across town. We arrived home around 10:00 p.m. Because Taylor was sleeping so soundly, we carried him inside in his carseat and let him sleep. We had barely unpacked the car and baby’s stuff when Tony went upstairs to use the bathroom. When he came back down, he found me in the kitchen and asked why I had moved the stuffed animals in Taylor’s room to the floor. Putting the final touches on the nursery that morning, I had displayed several of them in different areas of the room. I had put none of them on the floor. I asked him what he meant.

  Looking at me strangely, he explained that all the stuffed animals were sitting on the floor in the middle of the nursery. A little perturbed, I asked, “Well, how did they get there?” My sister came into the kitchen and decided to join us as we went upstairs to look.

  Days earlier, I had put a scruffy-looking teddy bear on a small wicker chair just inside and to the left of the nursery room door. I had placed a few teddy bears on a shelf above the crib, several others inside the crib, and a large one on the far side of the room. There were a few other soft or musical stuffed animals laid or hung around the room.

  When we got to the room, it was just as Tony had described. All the stuffed animals had been neatly placed in a circle with their backs to each other on the floor in the middle of the room.

  We were sure that someone had played a trick on us. We rarely locked the front door. Tony’s brother George, or anyone else for that matter, could have gotten in the house to set this up. Perhaps when Jeanie was in the house she had moved the bears, but I couldn’t help wondering why she would have. The more we thought about it the more unlikely it sounded. If she had wanted to play a trick on us, why would she have gone to the effort to find us and tell us she had been at the house? Besides, it was not in Jeanie’s nature to play like this.

  Trying to be logical about the situation, we thought briefly about whether the wind or the cats might have knocked the bears to the floor. But all the windows were closed, and neither of these explanations would account for how the bears all came to be so neatly positioned on the floor.

  The three of us stood there for the longest time, just shifting our eyes around the room, and eyeing each other. I checked the bears for any sort of magnet or anomaly within the soft cushioning of the stuffing or anything else that might not have been easily apparent. I thought I might find transparent strings or fishing lines attached to them, but found none.

  After exhausting our list of logical possibilities for the strange occurrences, we decided to call Jeanie since she had been the last person in the house. As I dialed the number, I wondered if the toys were already on the floor when she had come into the room to look around. If so, she probably thought we had put them there and didn’t think to mention the strangeness of it. I also knew Jeanie always asked a lot of questions. No matter what the subject, she always had to know why, where, when, and so on. If the bears had been on the floor when she was here, she would have asked about them.

  When I got her on the phone, I thanked her for the high chair and chatted for a few minutes, not knowing how to bring up my question. I finally just came right out and said, “Hey Jeanie, I’ve got a really odd question for you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “When you were here at the house tonight, did you notice anything weird in the nursery?”

  “No, everything seemed to be in perfect order,” she said. “Why’d you ask about something weird in the nursery?”

  Before explaining the situation, I decided to rephrase my original question. I wanted to be sure that the answer she gave was in no way influenced by what I would tell her. “You didn’t by any chance move any of the stuffed animals to the floor in the nursery, did you?”

  Calmly, but sounding a little concerned, she said, “No, I didn’t touch a thing. Why? Is something wrong?”

  I gave her the short version about finding the toys on the floor, but did not say how methodically placed they were. Sounding quite shocked and distressed, she said, “Oh my God,” and then called out to her husband.

  “I wasn’t going to say anything,” she started, calling urgently again to her husband. She explained that she had felt really odd while in the house. She had felt that something was very wrong when she had come in. She said that when she’d gone up the stairs, she’d felt a strange cold s
ensation, and that she’d felt very strongly that something wasn’t quite right. When she went into the nursery, she’d felt an overwhelming unease that wouldn’t let go of her. She left the room, hurried down the stairs and out the front door. “It was just really strange; I can’t explain it,” she said.

  At that point, she’d intended to stop by to talk with us at Tony’s parents’ house, but with all that was going on, she didn’t feel the timing was right and let it go. Instead, she profoundly apologized for what she felt was an unannounced intrusion into our house. My heart raced as I relayed Jeanie’s words to Karen and Tony.

  If Jeanie hadn’t moved the toys, there were only two explanations. Either someone other than Jeanie had been in our house between the time Jeanie left it and the time we got back from my in-laws (about thirty minutes),or the second possibility was one that none of us really wanted to acknowledge. Before any of us spoke the words, Jeanie asked, “Do you think you have a ghost?” She had said the words aloud, and they brought all our stray thoughts to an abrupt halt.

  Although I can’t remember how I answered her, we soon ended the call. I was left with a disturbing thought, one that up to this point I had been able to push away: perhaps we did have a ghost. I wasn’t quite sure how to handle it. Part of me continued to think of the possibilities that having a ghost in the house would bring. The other part clung to the thought that this only happened to other people.

  Although the three of us stood in the nursery pondering what seemed to be the last alternate explanation, we returned to the possibility that someone else had gotten into the house while we were gone and set the stage for our return. Tony and his brother George were always playing pranks on each other, so rather than entertain the thought of a ghost any longer, we concluded that it must have been a practical joke. We put the stuffed animals back in their places and Tony turned out the light. We stood for a moment in the hallway, looking back into the room, trying for one last time to assure ourselves that everything was fine.

  We descended the stairs. When we reached the bottom of the stairs, Karen glanced back up. When her eyes reached the top of the stairs she noted in a loud, monotone voice, “The light in the nursery is back on.” She turned quickly to Tony who had just passed the threshold of the living room and asked, “I thought you turned out the light?”

  “I did,” he replied. His head tilted quizzically to one side and his eyes were wide.

  Seconds later, we were all standing at the bottom of the stairs again, 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 into the nursery, I would peek in and assess the area. I knew I could do this a few steps before actually reaching the upper landing. Not really wanting to, but feeling compelled to do so, I quickly glanced into the room that was dimly lit by the light we had left on in the hall. What I saw sent a stroke of terror through me and in a low voice I said, “The bear is on the floor again.” Karen and Tony came bolting up the stairs to where I still stood staring motionless into the room. Karen said, “Oh, my God, not again.” The same bear—which had been, for days, comfortable in the cozy little wicker chair near the doorway—was once again lying in the middle of the floor face up. It was positioned exactly as it had been the last time we found it there.

  By this time, our adrenaline was peaking, our blood was racing frantically, and our minds were floundering in a desperate attempt to explain the situation. Again, we carefully inspected the bear, the room, and the surrounding area. We found nothing; no strings tied here or there, no magnets hidden under the carpet or in the bear. We knew that no one had gotten in or out of the house since we last checked the upstairs. I briefly entertained the idea that we had imagined it all, but we knew it was preposterous to assume that all three of us could have imagined the same exact thing.

  We stood there just looking at the bear in the middle of the floor. We understood, more solemnly than ever before, that we had likely been witness to the playful antics of a ghost. Speechless, we all stood close searching each other for some sign of what the others were feeling and desperately trying to fight the crazy thoughts that began to creep in. Ghosts do horrible things; they are mischievous, unpredi
ctable and sometimes just plain nasty. What horrible things would this one do? Would it choose one of us to pick on? Who would it be? When would it start?

  Perhaps we didn’t run because we still thought that there had to be some logical explanation for what was happening. Perhaps it was simply our curiosity or our unwillingness to be forced out of our own home. Then again, if this turned out to be a trick, we didn’t want to be seen running from the house like scared rabbits. We stayed put.

  four

  After the incident with the teddy bear, we decided that we needed someone with an objective point of view—not only someone intelligent and analytical to help us see what we were plainly missing, but someone who could console and calm us. We were sure there had to be a logical explanation for what had happened. We made our way down stairs and waited while Tony called his brother Larry. Tony had a hard time persuading him to come over. He explained the strange happenings since our earlier phone call to his wife and all but pleaded for him to come over, even if just for a few minutes. Very cautiously Larry asked, “Really? This isn’t a joke, right? You’re serious?” Tony assured him we were very serious and in desperate need of his help. When the conversation ended, Larry had agreed to come over and offer whatever help he could.

  The three of us waited for what seemed like forever. None of us knew what to think or say, so we said nothing. Larry lived just a few minutes away and arrived shortly after 11:20 p.m. I can vividly remember the look of apprehension on his face as we tried to explain what had happened. Later that night he told us, “The only thing that stopped me from thinking that you were all crazy was the fact that I know all of you too well.”

  After telling Larry our stories, we led him up to the nursery where the teddy bear still lay on the floor. He suggested that we put the bear back on its chair, turn out the light, and leave the room just as we had done before. We followed his instructions and headed down the stairs. We each took up a spot on the couch, Larry being the last to sit down. I’m sure he’d taken the time to sneak a look back up the stairs to be sure there was no funny business on our part.