The Sallie House Haunting: A True Story

by Debra Pickman

  I took a closer look at the bear and the strange burns. There was a circular spot the size of a quarter on top of its head and almost the entire side of its face was melted. The circular burn was very strange. It had burned or melted the acrylic fur right down to the base of the fabric. In the center of the circle, however, there was still a dime-sized patch of fur that had been totally unaffected by the fire. I shook my head in disbelief, trying to understand what could have made this sort of mark. I had never seen anything like it.

  I handed the bear to my mother, who was trying to make her own sense of the situation. You could see it in her expression—she just knew Karen and I were trying to pull a fast one on her. She was determined to be ready for the big laugh at the end of the joke, but we were not laughing. Had it been a different kind of incident, I might have laughed, but the thought of such a large unsupervised fire in the house was downright alarming.

  With this incident, Mom began to accept how real the circumstan-ces might be. Without taking her level of comfort into consideration, I began to severely reprimand the ghost we could not see. Mom stood there, speechless.

  Scolding

  I scolded Sallie harshly and told her the fire was very bad. I reminded her of the last time she lit a fire and the fact that I had told her “one more fire and you’re out of here.” I quickly realized that my parenting skills were not up to the task at hand.

  I reminded Sallie of all the things we had spoken of concerning the fires and risk of burning down the house, and then I asked her if she wanted me to send her away. I told her that by setting the fire she had destroyed something that was special to me. I then sent her to “her” room to think about what she had done. I was actually buying time because I really wasn’t sure what to say next. This was the first time she had set fire to an object other than a candle. It scared me and made me mad. I feared my harsh scolding might make her mad, and wondered what might happen in that situation. Would she light another fire? What item would it be, and would we find it in time? I began to think how very lucky we were that Karen caught sight of this one.

  Poor Donnie had been sleeping on the couch when I began hollering and scolding Sallie. He entered the room to find out what the yelling was about. He hadn’t seen the fire and when Karen told him, he found it very hard to believe. He wanted to know why she hadn’t awakened him so he could see it, too. She told him that her first thoughts were to take the bear to me, douse it, or put it in the sink.

  I could tell that in the back of my mother’s mind she was still wondering if this had all been planned, but with a dead serious expression she said, “The fires could really get out of hand.” I assured her that I understood the danger but that I didn’t quite know what to do about it.

  “Why don’t you just get rid of all the matches and lighters in the house,” Mom suggested. Karen and I were extremely amused by her simple solution; she just didn’t understand. Had she not realized that we had been trying to deal with this spirit and her activity for several months already? Without being too defensive, I simply said, “If it was that easy, I would have done it a long time before this, Mom.”

  We informed her that Sallie didn’t need matches or a lighter to start a fire. I tried to explain the best I could that Sallie’s activity was based on some other type of energy. Mom remained perplexed and rightfully concerned. “Well, what if she were to light a fire while you were out of the house? Or what if no one caught the fire before it got out of hand?”

  I explained as well as I could: “Sallie lights fires to get our attention. She seems to do it only when we’re home.” Looking at the bear again, I showed her the fur on the left side of its face as well as at the very top of its left ear. Although not as severe as the ring on the top of his head, it was clear that both areas had met with a heat source and the fur had been melted or singed down to the cloth itself. When Karen noticed the bear burning, the only flame she saw was confined to a very small area on top of its head.

  I went on to explain that because these three burned areas did not connect, we could assume that each area had been burned on separate occasions. Karen saw only one of them, but they could have taken place days, hours, or minutes earlier. What was significant was the fact that they had been extinguished. It seemed that when the fires went unnoticed, they were put out. I suggested that this meant that Sallie would probably not let the fire get out of hand. I wasn’t always quite as sure as I sounded, though.

  Not comfortable with my explanation, Mom asked, “Doesn’t it make you nervous thinking about what else she could do? Doesn’t it concern you that she might hurt the baby?”Although I know she was just concerned, she continued with a dissatisfied tone that made me feel increasingly defensive. I didn’t know what to do. Had she not yet realized the stress, the concern, and the worry we had been living with? Did she not think we had asked the same questions?

  I told Mom we had lived with Sallie for quite some time now and it was like living with a pet or anyone else who could not communicate verbally. Through your experiences with them you get to know them and sense what drives them, their desires, moods, capabilities and generally what you can expect from them.

  “Barbara told us that Sallie adores Taylor as if he were her own brother and would never do anything to harm him,” I said.

  All I really knew was that she wouldn’t “intentionally” do anything to harm any of us, but a little girl might not realize how quickly a fire could get out of hand.

  Karen and I went outside to talk about what how to deal with the situation. I told Karen that I enjoyed Sallie and really didn’t want to get rid of her. Karen replied that the safety of our family was more important than my wanting to keep Sallie with us. I agreed, but said I wasn’t sure how to go about making her leave, let alone do it without provoking a tantrum. We eventually decided to call Barbara for suggestions.

  Barbara was glad to hear from me and after a few polite remarks, I presented the problem. She asked about any recent changes in the house and after hearing what was going on, she offered a few observations. She suggested that Sallie was uneasy because Kori was there and sleeping in Taylor’s room. Although she didn’t think Sallie would hurt Kori, she was picking up a distinctly jealous vibe. “If possible, find somewhere else for Kori to sleep. Then tell Sallie that she can’t throw temper tantrums, and one more fire, she’s gotta go. Be very firm with her!” I listened and felt my throat tighten as if I were going to cry.

  “I can help you get rid of her if that’s what you want, but you have to tell me,” Barbara said.

  I really didn’t think Sallie wanted to be bad. I felt guilty for not recognizing her attempts to be acknowledged, and I really believed she had been trying her best to abide by the rules. I couldn’t help thinking that it must be so hard for her to feel ignored, unloved, and disconnected from the only family she had available to her.

  I felt even worse when I imagined how much she wanted to be a part of our family, to be noticed and regarded with love like any child. It seemed that the only way she could accomplish this was to do things we were telling her not to do. That led to harsh reprimands and a threat to get rid of her.

  She had gone a long time without lighting a fire. Maybe, in wanting to let us know that she was with us, she had forgotten the rules. I had been remiss in helping her remember. Perhaps we all needed a little bit more time to adjust to living with each other.

  I told Barbara, “I guess we can give her a little more time. For now, let’s just leave things the way they are.”

  Tony must have been listening in on my conversation from the kitchen and he hollered out, “Ask Barbara, did Sallie die by fire?”

  “No,” Barbara said. “If she died by fire, she wouldn’t light fires. She’d be scared of them.” That made sense. Then I asked, “Is she still happy here with us?”

  “Yes, I still get very good and happy feelings from her.”
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  Hearing those words made me feel better. For many weeks I had wondered, and although I always felt an air of excitement and happiness in the house, I didn’t feel comfortable depending on my gut feelings to interpret Sallie’s emotions. For all I knew, they were just my own hopeful emotions and excitement.

  I then asked about the letter I’d sent Barbara several weeks before. I had hoped that the lack of response was not intentional but certainly didn’t want to make her feel obligated; she had already done so much and asked for nothing in return.

  “Yes, I got it and I sent you a response about two weeks ago. Didn’t you get it?”

  Relieved that her interest was still there and her intentions were still in our favor, I let her know that we never got it. She went on to tell me that she really appreciated the photos, had used them in several of her lectures, and that they had stirred up quite a bit of interest.

  She went on to describe what she had written in her letter. She mentioned the strange things showing up in so many of our photographs. “That is Sallie.” She explained that the different colors revealed emotions—for example, the murky whitish-gray color signified fear and protectiveness, most apparent in the picture taken of the stairs where Sallie had been standing with her hand on the railing and protecting that area. She apparently did not want anyone up there.

  The bluish colors surrounding the baby doll in the nursery photos were a sign of great happiness and love. “She is allowing you to see the love she has for the baby doll.” Once again my heart was warmed by the emotion from this seemingly precious little spirit in our house.

  I told Barbara that Tony had actually seen Sallie here.

  “Oh, good!” she said, “When?”

  I detailed the experience for her and joked about feeling slighted in not having seen her for myself.

  “Sallie knows you believe in her and she’s got nothing to prove to you.”

  Next, I asked her a question that had recently come up several times. “Could there be more than one spirit in the house?”

  Barbara got quiet for a few seconds. “A boy,” she said, and then paused, “No, that’s the baby.” Then she went on. “If there is, Sallie is the dominant one and wouldn’t let anything bad happen.” Although her response was a relief to me, I wondered if she was just saying that to soothe our fears.

  We no sooner said our good-byes when I was inundated with questions from the others, who were anxiously waiting to hear about our options. I had tried to take notes during the conversation and relayed them as best as I could. It was decided that I would go up to talk to Sallie and Karen would go up to check on Kori and be my support.

  We each took a camera and headed up the stairs. Karen stopped me and silently indicated that we should take a photo of the stairs. It was the same place Sallie had stood before, forbidding passage to the second floor.

  “Sallie,” I called out, “Come and sit down with me so we can talk about what you did.” Karen continued to take pictures from the doorway and I planted myself on the floor in Sallie’s northwest corner of the room.

  “Sallie,” I said in firm but gentle tone, “what you did was bad and made me very sad because the bear you set on fire was a special gift from Tony.” A little firmly, I said, “The fire could have hurt someone in this house, even Taylor, and you could have set the whole house on fire and then none of us would have a place to live.” With my voice raised in anger I added, “You have GOT to stop setting fires to things. If there are any more fires, you are out of here! Do you understand me? I won’t stand for it anymore! You have one more chance, and that’s it. NO! MORE! FIRES!”

  I sat quietly for a minute to let the words sink in, then in a more calm and understanding tone, I said, “If you are upset about something, you have to tell me without starting a fire. Now let’s talk about why you did start it. Do you remember when I told you that we were going to have company for a few days and that Kori would stay in the nursery? I had hoped that was OK, but now I think that it must have upset you and I am sorry.”

  Being so focused on the conversation I had forgotten that Karen was a few steps away in the hallway. I was startled and my heart jumped into my throat when she interjected, “Sallie, I’m sorry, too.” Trying to regain my composure, I continued. “We’ll find somewhere else for Kori to sleep, okay? You have to remember though, that these people are guests in our house and you have to be nice to them.” As we left the room, we decided to put Kori’s playpen in the upstairs hallway.

  The rest of my family’s visit went without incident and they all left on November 15. A few days later, after having time to unpack and settle back into her own home, Karen called me on the telephone to ask if I was by chance missing a pot lid. I thought the question was strange and joked about it, but realized that she was serious when she said, “No, really, are you missing a pot lid?” I made my way to the kitchen and checked the cupboards. To my surprise, I was indeed missing a lid to my second smallest Revereware cooking pot. “I guess I am. Why do you ask?”

  She reported that when she unpacked her suitcase, she found a lid in it and had since been trying to figure out why and how it got there. “I packed those suitcases myself and I know I didn’t put it in there!”

  We talked about how unlikely it was that either of the children or any of the adults would have gotten into the suitcases after her final pack. The situation left us extremely bewildered.

  Before hanging up, she mentioned the film she’d just sent off to be developed and promised that she would send me copies. About a week later, I got the pictures. They had been taken in the nursery during the last conversation I‘d had with Sallie. As we had hoped, something odd did seem to show up in them.

  In every photo, a small arc of light had shown up along the baseboard and under the window in Sallie’s corner. At first, I thought it was a refraction of light or a reflection of the flash off the glass money jar that sat near me on the floor. Then I realized that in more than one of the photos, I had been sitting between the camera flash and this jar, meaning that the flash could not have generated an arc of light. Another interesting thing was that no matter where Karen had been positioned when she took the pictures, the arc of light showed up in the same exact place each time: the bottom of the north windowsill.

  A co-worker stopped by for a visit several days later, on November 19. He and Tony kicked back to relax in front of the TV. Ray was on the floor and Tony sat at the far end of the couch. At some point, Tony noticed the wooden balls on the ceiling fan swinging and silently pointed it out to Ray. Our spirit wanted to be noticed. Through experience, we knew that when this didn’t happen, the activity picked up.

  Already aware of this information, Ray announced in an abnormally loud voice that he was just going lay his head down and take a short nap. He closed his eyes to simulate falling asleep and immediately something went whizzing by, close and over his head. It had been so close and fast, he heard it and immediately sat up.

  Tony had seen what happened, but it happened so fast that he only caught it out of the corner of his eye. He wasn’t quite sure what had flown through the air and hit the wall across the room. They both inspected the dent in the wall and found a tiny ceramic vase lying on the floor below it. The vase had been sitting on one of the end tables. Ray realized that Tony couldn’t have been responsible for throwing it over his head from where it had been sitting.

  Tony was excited when I got home later that day and the conversation with him was interesting. Without me there to see the activity or pick up any emotions from Sallie’s perspective, Tony was forced to come up with his own theory.

  “I think she was upset because we weren’t paying attention to her,” he said. “We didn’t make a fuss over the balls on the ceiling fan when I noticed them. I think she got mad because we ignored her and threw the vase in a tantrum.”

  I agreed and was secretly proud of his
thoughts and approach.

  Several days later, Ray caught up with Tony and asked if he thought our ghost would be able to follow him home. It was a curious question, but we had no answer. Ray then went on to describe several nights of strange activity. One night, an item of clothing moved from one side of Ray’s bedroom to the other. The next night, a twenty-four-inch box fan had done the same thing.

  The strangest thing, however, was what he described as a large, sopping wet puddle in the middle of his dining room floor. He was unable to find any reason for it. It was not close to an open window, he did not have any indoor animals that might have had an accident in the middle of the night, and there was no visible sign on the ceiling that it had sprung a leak. In fact, it had not rained for almost two weeks.

  thirteen

  December 1993

  After Sallie’s display with the vase, Tony and I had four days without any ghostly activity. We wondered if Sallie had used an excessive amount of energy in throwing the vase. I had heard that spirits can lie dormant while gathering energy to unleash a powerful blow when needed.

  Four days turned into several weeks and the longest bout of inactivity we had yet seen. Was she afraid of getting into trouble, or was it the calm before the storm? Was she upset or angry with us for something we were unaware of? Was she gathering strength for retaliation? Not knowing made the lack of activity worse than the activity itself.

  This quiet period continued into the holiday season. We were planning a Christmas party for December 18. We were anticipating more than forty-five guests and as the days passed, I became very anxious. I would rather have Sallie act up before the party than during it, because there would be many strangers in attendance. The paranormal situations we had encountered to date would have been difficult to explain to them.

  The house remained quiet, however, and the day finally arrived for the traditional Christmas party we had planned: popcorn balls and brown-paper-wrapped gifts exchanged with loved ones, maintaining a sense of family togetherness and creating memories to last.