MOUNTAIN MAGIC with ANN HITE

MOUNTAIN MAGIC with ANN HITE

Seeing A Haint

In my novels, I always have a haint—some people don’t know that is a word we use in Appalachia instead of ghost. When I begin a book, I don’t plan on a haint to be part of the story, but they always show up. See I’m a pantser, meaning I never know what I’m going to write until I sit down from one day to the next. One question always asked of me when I do a reading or appear on a panel is: “Have you ever seen a ghost?” I hate this question because it’s never as easy as seeing something. No, there is so much more to experiencing a haint.

***

In 1970, Mother decided after five years of living with my granny that she wanted to get us our own place. We had to take a one-bedroom apartment because no two-bedrooms were available.

At twelve, going on thirteen, the last thing I wanted was to sleep in the room with my mother and younger brother. But Mother convinced me to go along with it by telling me about the pool and all the teenagers that lived in the complex.

One week before we moved in, Mother came in from work smiling. Since dad had divorced us, she rarely smiled.

“Guess what? We have a two bedroom.”

This was the best news I had heard.

“You will only have to share with each other.”

We moved the next week. Mother gave us the larger bedroom, and we staked our claim.

My brother, Jeff, opened the door to the empty closet. “Look at this.” He held up a plastic baby bottle and two bibs that he found on the floor.

I shrugged, “Put them up on the top shelf for now. Maybe the other family before us will come back for them.”

He pitched them to the corner of the shelf and put his Lego boxes on the floor.

I noticed the light switch plate for the first time, a lamb with a bow around its neck. “This must have been a baby’s room.” I flipped the switch off.

I settled into a routine and didn’t give a thought to the family who had lived there before us. The light switch plate remained intact and as far as I knew, the bottle and bibs stayed in the closet, pushed to the back of the shelf. I made friends in the apartment complex and as soon as the pool opened for summer, I was there, dragging my dumb brother behind me. Jeff wouldn’t sleep in our room. He claimed there were weird sounds in the bedroom. Mother would find him on the sofa in the living room each morning.

More than two years passed, and I was fourteen with friends that I hung out with. My weekends were full of sleepovers, parties, and skating at the roller rink not far from the apartment. One night when I got dropped off at home, Mother, who normally went to bed, was waiting with the lights on. I was early, way before my eleven o’clock curfew. I let myself in the back door.

Mother sat in her red leather recliner with the TV playing. “Ann, some of your friends are playing tricks on me.”

Now, my friends were terrified of my mother. She was known as the strictest mother in the complex. I always went to my friends’ houses. No one ever wanted to come to my house.

“I don’t think they would. They’re all scared to death of you.” I tried to make an escape to my room.

“Wait right there, young lady.” Mother ordered. “I know what happened to me, and I’m not crazy. Those friends of yours have gone too far.”

“What did they do?” There was no use arguing with her.

“They stomped up the front stairs, making all kinds of racket. Then, they twisted the door knob and shook the door.”

“When I asked who was there, they stomped down the stairs. If I find out who did this, I am calling the police on them.”

The front stairs were accessible through a screen door. The hallway would cause quite an echo when someone used this entrance. There was a one-bedroom apartment across the hall but no one lived there.

When the same thing happened the next weekend, Mother got angry at me again. Mother threatened to make me stay home every weekend. I questioned all my friends. No one would admit to scaring my mother. The next weekend I was stuck at home on a Saturday night. Maybe it was just meant for me to be there.

Jeff was staying over with a friend. Mother and I were watching TV. It was still daylight. The screen door on the front hall squeaked open. Mother looked over at me with her “I told you so,” stare.

I opened my mouth to say something smart, but the most horrible unearthly stomping began moving up the stairs. The walls vibrated and I was sure our neighbor downstairs would come out. When the stomping reached the landing, someone twisted the knob and shook the door. Mother gave me a look of terror. And honestly, I wasn’t sure what scared me worse, the noise or Mother being afraid. The stomping moved back down the stairs. Anger erupted inside my chest and I jumped to my feet, running to our big picture glass window. If I stood and looked straight down I would be able to see who came out the screen door.

“Get away from the window, Ann.” Mother ordered.

I held my ground, face mashed against the window.

The screen door swung open. I prepared myself to see one of my friends. No one came out the door. The space remained empty. The door swung shut.

“Did you see who was there?”

“No one.”

“Don’t try to hide who it was.” Mother fussed.

“I promise I’m not.”

Within two months, Mother moved us to an apartment on the ground level. I think she always thought I was protecting my friends, even after I found out what really happened.

***

Fast forward ten years. I am twenty-four-years old, married, with a house in the suburbs. I am sitting in the living room of our old neighbor. We kept in touch over the years. This visit she brought up something strange.

“Did you guys ever have any experiences when you lived in your old apartment upstairs?’

For a minute I couldn’t remember. Kids file things away when they have no answers. But the whole scene slid through my mind.

“What kind of experiences?”

A shy smile formed on her face. “Don’t think I’m crazy.” She went on to describe the stomping on the stairs that Mother and I had heard. “There was a woman, who lived alone in your old apartment upstairs.” She looked at me for a minute before continuing. “When the stomping ended and the screen door slammed, I peeked out the door. No one was there so I went up to check on the woman. She answered the door with a gun in her hand. She explained that a person had twisted her doorknob and shook the door. But the crazy thing she said was this had been happening for weeks. Always the same time of day. Soon after she broke her lease and moved.”

I admitted to the same thing happening to Mother and that one time I experienced it. That’s when she told me the story, she promised my mom not to tell Jeff and me when we were kids.

“Your mom didn’t want you to know how she got the two-bedroom apartment. The weekend before you guys were going to move, the young couple upstairs—they had a little girl not quite one-year old—got into a terrible accident. The husband turned their VW Bug in front of an eighteen-wheeler. The little girl and the mother were killed. He was taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries. I never found out what happened to him. That is how you guys got a two-bedroom apartment.”

The hairs on my arms stood on end. The next day I told Granny about the story.

“You still had things of that baby in your room. That haint got stirred up. Wanted inside. Wanted its life back. It was confused. Probably real mad too. I told your mama not to move in that place. That something would come of it, but she never listened to me anyway.”

“Why did the haint wait two years to bother us?”

“Lord child it didn’t. Your brother wouldn’t stay in the room. Must have been something to that. Your mama was complaining about somebody being in the hall each evening from the time she moved you guys in. It just took you two years to notice something going on. Haints like to mess with you like that. All this one needed was someone to tell it what happened.”

The apartment complex still stands today. I sure hope the haint found peace by now.