What About Bob? The Next Installment...

Several years ago, I kept an online journal called "What About Bob?". It was my chronicle of the unexplained events that happened in my house between 2001 and 2005. I think it's time to start again...

My family is only the second to live in our house since 1940. The builder and original owner, Bob, lived here for over forty years and eventually died here in 1985. Bob's wife passed away seven years later. His daughter, who had lived here her ENTIRE life, sold us the house in 2001 when she moved to a retirement home.

We knew the week we moved in that something or someone was here. The smell of lilac would drift in and out of a room, doors would open or close when no one was there, and you could feel a definite presence. Things ramped up after about six months. We'd wake up to find all of the kitchen cupboards open or lights turned on that had been off at bedtime the night before. That's when I started making very careful notes of what was happening, trying desperately to determine some kind of pattern.

Eventually, dinner guests and friends starting mentioning things that they noticed. Bob would sometimes even put on quite a show when people were visiting. Once, my family and three friends were in the living room when we all heard what sounded like someone falling down the hardwood stairs. No one was there, of course, but we had even felt the floor shake and knew we weren't imagining things.

After about two years of observation, I could tell that Bob was really stirred up by improvements and repairs made to the house. His antics usually started the first or second day of a project and would sometimes last as much as a month beyond its completion. Things settled down around 2005, but we still braced for whatever Bob might have in store when we replaced the hot water heater, roof, and heating system this fall. All was calm.

Here it is January, 2009, and it seems Bob is ready for a little more attention. The family was experienced so many unexplainable things in the past few weeks that we're wondering if maybe he's trying to tell us something.

Christmas Week: My husband and I heard a huge crash in the studio upstairs. When I went to investigate, I found a board with some pottery I had been working on across the room from where I had left it, and all of the clay broken on the floor.

Dec. 29 - Jan. 10: The living room lamp began blinking at random times. Sometimes it would blink so much that it would annoy us a great deal and we would just turn it off. The bulb and lamp were both inspected and found in good working order. The blinking eventually stopped on its own.

Jan. 14: I came home with my son and was locking the door behind us when the coat closet on the opposite side of the living room flung open with so much force that it struck the wall beside it.

Jan. 16: While upstairs on a phone call, I thought I heard someone shuffling papers on my desk nearby. I was home alone at the time and saw nothing moving. The person on the other end of the call could hear the shuffling, too.

Jan. 16: I was broadcasting The Paranormal View from the office upstairs late that night. Lots of weird interference was coming through on my end of the connection, and when I mentioned it to my co-host when we went off the air, he said he thought he kept hearing a strange growling sound.

Jan. 19: My daughter was in the living room and I was about to walk upstairs to fetch something when we both witnessed the coat closet open. It was less violent this time, and only opened about 18-inches. I checked the handle and latch - it closes quite securely and the handle must be turned at least 1/3 to deactivate the latch.


I'm sure there's more to come, and you can bet I'm going to be logging it all!