ghosts

There were forces at 407 McMurtry beyond the norm. Spirits…ghosts if you believe in that sort of thing…and there even if you didn’t. My sister even managed to capture one on film during some remodeling my mother was doing at the front of the house. But it was a cry in the middle of the night one summer which sent chills down my spine and had me giving prayers of thanks for one of those ghostly encounters.

The last house I lived in before graduation was one of the oldest homes in Gueydan. Almost 100 years old when my family moved in, that house had seen quite a few people die within it’s four walls (including both my parents) before it was torn down in the name of progress.

It had 12 foot ceilings and tapestry wallpaper Mother painted over as soon as we moved in. At the front of the house was a formal “sitting room” she converted into a bedroom, with a pass-through closet connecting it to a smaller bedroom on the other side where my sister and I slept. At the other end of the house was my parent’s bedroom and in between was a long narrow bathroom, dining room complete with French style doors, and a drafty living room. Large enough to accommodate my family and still within their financial budget.

Just outside my parent’s bedroom was a massive beveled mirror. It was a keepsake taken from an ice cream parlor my parents owned when I was younger and hung in a place of honor in the dining room. Every morning for years my mother would come out of the bedroom and walk past that mirror on her way to the kitchen. Except for that one night my mother never varied the route from her room to her morning coffee.

Everyone had gone to bed and the house was quiet. Some might say so quiet you could hear a pin drop…or even the faint cry of a baby. Rousing from a deep sleep , my mother strained to pinpoint the origin of the sound. There it was again. Now thinking one of her children was calling out to her, my mother did something she had NEVER done before that night and never did again for all the years she lived in that house.

My mother padded barefoot through the bathroom on her way to the other side of the house to check on us. After discovering all of us still sleeping soundly in our beds, Mother decided to stay up for the day. Heading toward the kitchen, my mother soon realized just how lucky she was to have heard that ghostly cry.

Turning on the dining room light, she stopped in shock and looked at broken glass scattered everywhere. A mysterious hand had removed that massive mirror from the wall and thrown it with such force it shattered when it hit the floor. If my mother had taken her normal route to the kitchen that morning, she would have sliced up her feet or even fallen face first onto the huge shards of broken glass.

We never could figure out how the mirror ended up in the middle of the room when it needed two strong people to lift it in the first place. And why did Mother choose to pass through the bathroom that night on her way to check on us? She never had before nor since. We also wondered why no one woke up to the sound of it hitting the floor. And only my mother heard the baby’s cry. We came up with many different theories but the one thing everyone could agree on…we were all thankful for that cry in the night saving my mother from harm…

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International best selling, award-winning author, Donna L Martin, has been writing since she was eight years old. She is a 4th Degree Black Belt in TaeKwonDo by day and a ‘ninja’ writer of children’s picture books, chapter books, young adult novels and inspirational essays by night. Donna is a BOOK NOOK REVIEWS host providing the latest book reviews on all genres of children’s books, and the host of WRITERLY WISDOM, a resource series for writers. Donna is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators and Children’s Book Insider. She is a lover of dark chocolate, going to the beach and adding to her growing book collection. Donna’s latest book, LUNADAR: Homeward Bound (a YA fantasy), is now available in eBook and print form from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, and other online retailers.