The Sallie House Haunting: A True Story

by Debra Pickman

  A short time later, one of the guys noticed George’s wool jersey jacket, which had been hanging on the back of one of the chairs. It had a rather bad scorch mark above the left pocket. George insisted that it had not been there when he arrived earlier that evening. The burned area was small; about three inches in diameter. As we all inspected it, someone suggested that the unpleasant burning smell we had all smelled earlier might have been his coat.

  By 10:00 p.m., everyone had left except Samantha, Mark, and Tara. They frequently stayed later then everyone else, and we had grown accustomed to taking this time to catch up with each other. As their baby slept on the couch, Samantha sat to her left and her father to her right. Samantha had been holding the baby’s pacifier in her lap for quite some time as she watched over her sleeping daughter.

  She hadn’t moved from the couch for quite a while, but when she reached for the pacifier that should have been in her lap, it wasn’t there. The rest of us looked for it everywhere. Samantha eventually stood up and looked on the floor near her feet, as well as under the couch and between the cushions where she had been sitting. After ten minutes of looking, we gave up. “That’s okay. I have others at home,” Samantha said, seemingly undisturbed.

  About half a minute passed when I heard the slight but familiar sound of a NUK pacifier. Having the used the NUK brand pacifier for Taylor, I was easily able to identify the distinct sound that a pacifier makes when its handle slaps against the mouthpiece. Samantha looked at her lap. To her surprise the pacifier was back in her lap, just where it had been before she stood up to look for it. “Look, it’s right here,” she said.

  “I don’t know how it got there. I just felt something hit my lap and heard that sound. You know the sound it makes. And there it was.” We peered at each other from under raised eyebrows. Was Sallie playing a game? As Mark and Samantha packed their things to leave, we laughed about our amusing evening.

  Lost Remote: February 1994

  The afternoon of February 9th, Tony and I had been watching our TV, a newer 19-inch Sony equipped with a remote. When we reached for the remote it wasn’t where we usually placed it. Neither of us had gotten up or left the room, so we searched the couch cushions, floor, and tables. Still, we were unable to find it.

  Almost in unison, we said, “It’s gotta be somewhere,” and with that we expanded our search to the other rooms and in every conceivable place we could think of. Still we found nothing and eventually gave up. By 10:30 that night, Tony had fallen asleep on the couch and I took the opportunity to take a bath upstairs. Before leaving the room, I had noticed Tony’s arms were tucked under him as if he was cold, so I covered him with an afghan.

  About thirty minutes later, I returned to the living room where Tony was still asleep. I noticed two things. Tony was still lying in the exact same position I had left him in, and across the lower part of his thighs lay the television remote. My first thought was that he had placed it there himself, but I realized that there was simply no way he could have done it without repositioning himself and rumpling the afghan that I had tucked around him earlier.

  As I contemplated the situation further, he rolled over and the remote dropped to the floor. Hearing it drop, he was now awake. “So where did you find it?” I asked.

  He thought I had played a trick on him and asked, “Where did you find it?”

  I explained where it was when I came back into the room. Both of us waited and watched for signs that the other had played a practical joke.

  “So really, where did you find it?” I asked again.

  “Stop playing games with me,” he said. “I heard you tell me, ‘Here’s your remote.’”

  At first I smirked, thinking it was an amusing game, but as he sat up with a serious look on his face, I realized something was just not right. I firmly denied his accusation, “No, I did not!”

  “What do you mean?” he asked. “I could have sworn it was you. I heard a woman’s voice say, ‘Tony, here’s your remote.’”

  “It wasn’t me,” I assured him. “I’ve been upstairs in the bathroom and just now came downstairs.”

  More fully awake now, he said, “Don’t play games with me, Deb. I felt you touch my shoulder and say, ‘Tony, here’s your remote.’”

  I dug my heels in. “Okay. I swear to God, Tony, it wasn’t me.” Tony’s face suddenly lost all color and he looked me straight in the eye with a pleading expression.

  “Don’t tell me that.”

  Realizing he was upset, I didn’t say another word. I simply looked at him with an expression that plainly said, “What else can I say?”

  This experience led me to surmise that the other spirit in the house was a woman, and she had finally made her presence known, at least to Tony.

  Two days later, Tony and I were getting ready to go out to dinner. Taylor was sleeping in the nursery. Tony was in the upstairs bathroom getting ready in front of the mirror, and I was sitting at my vanity in the master bedroom wearing nothing but my underwear and combing my wet hair. All of a sudden, Tony voice startled me.

  “Did you just walk past the bath…” He stopped in mid-sentence as he realized the answer before he’d finished the question and the look on his face was very puzzled.

  He explained seeing the figure of a woman with blonde hair piled up on her head walk toward the craft room. He had caught a glimpse of this figure out of the corner of his eye. “I could have sworn it was you,” he said. Then there was that quizzical look again as his thoughts finally caught up with the sight of me sitting there. “But you’re not even dressed and she was wearing long sleeves and had her hair up.”

  I didn’t know what to say. All I knew was that the female spirit was positively trying to get Tony’s attention. I didn’t dare say that out loud, however.

  Along with being jealous, I found the situation ironic. First, there was my poor husband who’s deepest fear was ghosts and he had seen two in our own house. Secondly, I had always desired to see a ghost and had not yet been given the opportunity. I couldn’t help wonder—if I were a ghost, why would I want to show myself to someone who didn’t believe in me or ignored me?

  Binkies

  Over the course of the next few days, it seemed I was always losing the baby’s pacifiers. I would put one down, and reach for it a minute later only to find it wasn’t there. Once, I set a pacifier on the changing table near Taylor’s crib. It was only an arm’s length away and I never turned away. Of course, I turned the room upside-down looking for it and came up empty-handed. About twenty minutes later I found it lying in the middle of the crib as plain as day.

  “Sallie, it’s not nice to hide Taylor’s pacifiers, please don’t do it anymore.” Although the pacifiers disappeared a few more times over the next few days, my request was finally granted and they stopped disappearing.

  One afternoon George stopped in to see the baby, but he was napping. As we stood at the front door talking, George mentioned he had something he wanted to try.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Just something I want to try, to find out who’s here…something someone told me about.”

  “A séance?” I asked.

  “Kind of,” he said. “But not really. I’ll tell you more later.”

  “When?” I asked eagerly.

  “I’ll be by after I get off work tonight, okay?”

  “‘Yeah, I guess so,” I said, and he was gone.

  When Tony got home from work, I told him of the conversation with George and to expect him later that evening. George worked at the neighborhood grocery store only five minutes away and his shift ended at 10:00, so we expected him to arrive shortly afterward. We went about our daily routine, had dinner, put Taylor down for the night about 9:00, and waited for George. He arrived at 10:45 with a few co-workers. I’ll refer to them as Chris and John.

  Right after t
hey came into the house, Sallie’s oil lamp was inexplicably lit. Was she excited about George’s plan? Was she making herself known so that we could try to communicate with her?

  As I told Sallie hello, George asked if the lamp had already been lit. “No, it just happened after you walked in the door.” Having never before been at the house when something like this happened, the other two individuals grew rather quiet. I’m sure they wondered if it was a trick and how it was done.

  As I put out the flame I said, “Let’s blow it out and see if she does it again.” Then I asked George about his plan.

  “You’ll see,” he said.

  By then, I was getting frustrated at his vagueness and concluded that maybe he didn’t have a plan—maybe he’d just wanted to bring some friends over. While the rest of us talked about nothing in particular, George wandered around, seemingly in his own little world. At times his face would lose color, he would look like he wanted to cry and then he would announce, “She’s here.”

  Eventually he sat down at the dining room table with us.

  Tony sat in a chair with his back facing the living room. I was on his left, John was on my left, and Chris was on John’s left. George eventually squeezed in between Tony and Chris and this is the manner in which we sat for the majority of the night. Before long, several of us were feeling cool drafts of air circulating around our backs or faces, or across our arms or legs. No one had gotten up from the table to create even the slightest air movement, so we deduced that we had a least one spirit in the room with us.

  We decided to turn out the lights, illuminating the immediate area with a small candle. I went to the bathroom and got one of the votive candles that Sallie had ignited so many times previously, lit the wick and placed it the center of the table. We really weren’t trying to create a séance-type atmosphere; it just turned out that way.

  We continued with more leisurely conversation before someone said, “Okay. Whoever is here, give us a sign that you’re in the room with us.” The room went dead silent as we waited for something to happen. Earlier, we had all agreed that since it was so dark in the room, each of us would keep our hands above the table and in plain view. We wanted to make sure that if anything did happen, it would not be a prank. After an uneventful waiting period, which lasted several minutes, someone eventually broke the tense silence with a welcome joke.

  For about a half hour, we took turns at telling jokes. Sometime after 11:00 p.m. Tony waved his hands in front of and around his face. He announced that he was feeling something around his head, and it looked like he was trying to fend off an annoying but unseen bug. A moment later, his hands returned to the top of the table and conversation resumed. Almost twenty minutes later, I happened to glanced at Chris, who was intently staring at Tony’s face. He was soon straining his eyes as if to see something through the darkness. He slowly leaned closer to Tony and eventually, in a calm voice, he asked, “What’s on your forehead?”

  Tony reached up to touch his forehead with his left hand. As he did, Chris leaned in even closer. He suddenly threw himself backward into his own chair. “It’s blood!” he exclaimed.

  As Tony turned to shoot me a questioning look, I could easily make out a rather large trail of blood creeping about two inches down his forehead. In the dim light, I made a closer inspection and found the blood was trailing from a few little scratches above his eyebrows. They actually looked like cat scratches, but I knew that none of the cats had been downstairs all night, let alone on the table among our little group.

  Straining to look even harder, I noticed a good-sized gash above the other two scratches and very near his hairline. The third scratch was much worse than the others and a good deal deeper. It also looked like it would have caused a good deal of pain when it happened, but when we asked him about it, he reported he hadn’t felt a thing. Strangely enough, the more severe-looking scratch did not bleed much, and the small amount of blood that had seeped out was already drying.

  After a thorough discussion of the time before noticing the scratches, we each agreed that Tony could not have inflicted the injury upon himself. We all agreed that Tony hadn’t left the table and no one had seen his hands go to his head except to swat at whatever had bothered him earlier; his hands had never made contact with his head. We further agreed that the horizontal motions of his hands simply did not correlate with the vertical injuries on his head.

  I believe that whoever did the scratching was trying to respond to George’s request to let us know they were in the room. I think the first attempt to do so produced the upper scratch. When that effort didn’t bring the desired attention, the lower scratches were produced. One thing I can’t explain is why some of scratches oozed more blood.

  Tony’s curiosity got the best of him as we continued to talk about and examine the scratches. He eventually got up and went in the bathroom to look at them himself. While he was gone we talked, wondering who had been responsible for scratching Tony. Had it been Sallie, or the other spirit?

  When Tony returned, the conversation strayed to other things. Yet in the back of our minds, George and I were still trying to think of what should be done next. George and I decided to ask Sallie some questions. “Sallie, did you scratch Tony’s head? If you did, don’t do anything else, okay?” We waited and nothing happened. With the knowledge that our requests had never before been answered in a timely manner, we gave it more time. About fifteen minutes went by. Nothing.

  If Sallie was cooperating with us, her inaction at this point should have meant she did scratch Tony. Wanting a better confirmation, we asked, “Okay, Sallie, if you did scratch Tony, light your oil lamp like you did earlier.” We waited a few minutes. I began to think she might be scared to admit to the harm she had done.

  “Sallie, if you scratched Tony, light the lamp, but don’t scratch him again or I’ll be mad at you.”

  Again, we waited. Thirty minutes went by and nothing happened. Was this just a show of her stubborn side? Was she just too scared to admit to the action, or was the dirty deed not hers? At the end of the evening, we were no closer to understanding what or who had caused the scratches or the reason behind them.

  “Sallie, would you do something for us to show that you’re here.” I quickly added, “But no more scratches, okay? Just do something different.”

  While we patiently waited for verification, boredom set back in and we returned to telling jokes. Much of the time we spent telling humorous childhood stories and embarrassing moments. Several times, we broke into fits of laughter.

  It was during one of these times that everyone except Tony and George detected the sweet scent of perfume. Chris had smelled it first and just as he was about to say something about the aroma, I smelled it and then John did. I hadn’t worn perfume for several weeks, and this night had been no exception. To confirm we smelled the same thing, I tried to describe the familiar scent to the others. It was mildly sweet and floral, soft and pleasing—a perfume I would wear. Then I recognized it. It was one of mine. It was an Avon brand called Pearls and Lace. I kept it up on my vanity in our bedroom. I went up to see if it was still there. It was. If someone had gone upstairs to get it and used it to fill the air, the bottle would have still been missing, and we were all able to attest to the fact that no one had been upstairs at least within the previous half hour. If someone was playing a trick, where and how would they have been able to hide the smell until the right time? I shared with the others that Barbara had said this was Sallie’s favorite perfume. I almost squealed with excitement, “Oh, isn’t it neat that she brought that smell to us?” Chris and John agreed.

  Something caught our attention about 1:00 a.m., shortly before we turned the lights back on. Chris and John announced that they were tired and going to head home. As they stood up to leave, I stood with them. I had only taken a step or two when I noticed George and Tony with their heads under the table, obviously looking fo
r something. I thought that one of them had dropped something.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked.

  “A light or something reflected or something like that,” said Tony.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “A bright flash or light just flew past us and went under the table.”

  ‘What was it?’ I questioned.

  “We don’t know,” said Tony.

  As I bent down to help them look for whatever it was, I realized it was too dark to find anything. I walked over to the switch for the overhead light, and by the time I had turned around, the two of them had gotten on their hands and knees. I too found myself down on all fours and soon discovered what had been the cause of the mysterious flash of light.

  Under the table was one of Taylor’s pacifiers, one specially designed with a thermometer inside it. There was a small disk-like sensor in the nipple of it that changed colors after you let a child suck on it. Depending on the color of that sensor, you could tell whether or not your baby had a fever. Actually, it was quite an ingenious little gadget, but it hadn’t worked well with Taylor because he didn’t care for the hard nipple.

  Earlier that evening, the pacifier had been sitting on top of one of the stereo speakers just around the corner and out of view if you were sitting at the dining room table. I found it interesting that it flew not in a straight line to land under the table, but in an arc. It was also striking that no one had gone near the living room for at least forty-five minutes prior to catching sight of it in the air, nor would they have had the opportunity to pick it up and throw it across the room.

  With the lights on it, was much easier to inspect the pacifier. We were rather amazed to see that it was badly melted at its tip. It was horribly bubbled and there was a nasty odor of burnt plastic. The brightness of the light emanating from it as it flew across the room and under the table had been rather unmistakable. It was still warm when we picked it up. According to what I had researched, when a spirit touches something, the item will briefly maintain the heat generated by the force put upon it.