Over the past 30 years, we have found a few things that gave off a “spooky” vibe and have wisely avoided them.

In one instance in an antique shop, the rocking chair situated in a room full of antique dolls literally stopped me in my tracks. With so many dolls (which can seem creepy without there being anything supernatural) it took a few minutes to discern the heavy feelings of anger and dread were coming from the chair. I was proven correct when we returned to the same shop about a month later and I felt absolutely nothing, only to realize the chair was gone. we can only hope the owners of the shop just disposed of it rather than sell it to some unsuspecting customer.

In a different category are old photographs, which have always given me a “sad” feeling for those whose family didn’t care enough to keep these captured memories or who no longer had any family left. We have never purchased any because it always felt wrong that they were for sale. Until last year when my husband spotted a beautiful vintage frame at a yard sale. With its carved wood and bubbled glass, it was perfect for a project we were working on. Smiling out at us was a little girl of about seven to eight years old dressed from sometime early in the last century. The frame itself was still covered in dirt and cobwebs, where it had obviously been in a box in the garage or basement. We happily took our find to the homeowner to purchase. She immediately said, “Oh, you’re buying the picture of my Great Aunt” To which we replied, “Would you like the photo. we don’t need it, we’re just after the frame. She did not want it, since she was clearing out her mother’s home, and wanted everything gone.

We paid for our purchase and took it home. My husband immediately began cleaning the frame and removed the photo and set it aside. I picked it up, it was one of those black and white studio prints that had been painstakingly hand tinted with pastels and it seemed especially sad since we’d met someone in her family that knew who she was and couldn’t be bothered to keep her image. I made a few comments to my husband about how cute she was and how much her mother must have loved her because it would not have been cheap to have the photo taken and the print made and tinted back then. Her mother had written the child’s name on the back, and I told him I couldn’t bring myself to throw her out. We set her picture on the fireplace mantel, while we thought about what to do with it.

That night we were woken up by a large thump on our back patio door. It was loud enough that he grabbed his gun before going to investigate. We couldn’t see anything in the house that might have caused it and no sign of anyone in our backyard. We went back to bed. The next day was a lazy Sunday and we had lain down in the afternoon for a nap, I woke up to my husband jumping out of bed, and I heard him walking through the house. When he climbed back into bed, I asked him what was wrong, because I hadn’t heard anything. He said he hadn’t either but had woken up sure that someone was in the doorway watching us, but no one was there. He’d walked through the house worried that someone had gotten in while we were sleeping, but everything was locked up. Throughout the week, we both found it difficult to sleep through the night. We would wake up thinking we’d heard something in the living and kitchen area of the house and then decide we’d been dreaming. I found myself turning on the lights whenever I got up to use the bathroom because I felt uncomfortable in my house for the first time in 15 years. The daytime was not a problem because we were both at work all day. At the end of the week, I went downstairs and started a load of towels. We left to do the grocery shopping and when we returned, I took the clothes out of the dryer to fold. Except there were red streaks all over the white towels, streaks that weren’t there when I moved them from the washer to the dryer. In the bottom of the dryer were the remains of a couple of red crayons!

That finally got through to me. Shaking my head, I grabbed a couple of towels and took them upstairs to show my husband. He was confused at first until I said, there were crayons in the dryer. He looked at me, then looked at the photo still sitting on our mantel. He also shook his head and standing up grabbed the photo. “Sorry, no!” “She’s not staying.” He took the photo outside and stuffed it in the garbage bin. He’s always been a skeptic but has lived long enough with me to take notice when something so obvious is happening.

What I haven’t mentioned yet was that our children are in there mid to late 20s and no longer live at home and we haven’t had crayons in our house for close to a decade. To this day we still don’t know where she got the crayons from to put in the dryer. The door that was thumped and the rooms we heard the noises in had been in the room with her photo. But we don’t think any of it was meant maliciously, we suspect she was like any child and doing whatever she could to get our attention. My empathy for her photo and the mother who had obviously loved her may have caused her to start the contact with us. We did feel bad about throwing her picture away, but we know better than to welcome anything or anyone into our home without knowing exactly what their intentions are. All the noises and strange feelings ended as soon as the photo was gone. Hopefully, if it was the child, she moved on. The other possibility is that it wasn’t the sweet girl in the photo, but something darker willing to play games to earn our trust.

The lesson is that an object does not have to have a heavy, malevolent aura for it to be connected with a spirit. This experience gives a whole new meaning to “Let the Buyer Beware”.