The house is an old house. Part of it was built before the Civil War and the community were I live is named after the family that owned it. My Father worked for the family on the farm that they owned and we lived in the Farm Manager's house across from it.
Before the owner had passed away he had built a bedroom for his wife who was suffering from cancer. It was a nice room with its own separate bathroom and a long screened in porch where she could sit when she didn't want to go downstairs. His bedroom was up another short flight of stairs. In his bedroom one of the huge windows opened out onto the porch. When we were kids we loved climbing through the window to play on the porch and I have to admit that I still miss it.
A few years before the gentleman that my father worked for had passed away. Now his son and wife owned it. They lived up North and for months at a time the house stood empty. My Father looked after it and my Mother kept it clean for whenever the family might return.
It all started one night when my sister begged my mother to let her and a friend stay the night at the old house.
They stayed in the wife's bedroom and it was late at night when they finally went to bed. Sometime early in the morning the sound of the front door to the house opening woke my sister up.
She looked out the window and knew that it couldn't be our parents because all the lights were out at our house.
Scared to death she locked the door to the bedroom and woke her friend up. Huddled together on the bed they listened. Heavy footsteps came up the stairs, crossed the short landing and come up the three steps to the door.
They saw the doorknob turn. They didn't make a sound. Finally they heard footsteps going back down, cross the landing and up another short flight of steps to another landing. There are two bedrooms on that upper level. One is a guest room and the other had been the owner's bedroom.
They heard someone go into that bedroom and they heard the creak of the bed springs as someone sat down on the edge of the bed. They heard a groan and then a thud as if someone had fallen across the bed.
Terrified they stayed awake until they saw the sun come up before they ran home. My sister told my mother what she had heard but my mother didn't believe her.
Not until a few weeks later when my Father committed suicide in that very room.
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