Our Christmas Ghost: A True Ghost Story

It was Christmastime in 1977. I had two young sons and was expecting my third.  My husband was working late that night.  My sons were finally asleep, and I was in the living room, a new addition to our home, when it happened.

That year we had a HUGE Christmas tree.  It was too big for a regular stand, so we had it secured in a large container of water and literally wired to the studs in the walls in the corner of the living room.  It was beautiful.

There was no earthquake that year.  No wind inside the house.  No inside cats or dogs to make the tree do that, but I promise you, this happened.

As I was watching the television, I saw that Christmas tree shudder out of the corner of my eye.  I shrugged it off thinking that could NOT have happened, but then it shook!  It stood there and shook of its own accord with nobody touching it.

I stood up and took about two steps, when SNAP!  Something popped LOUD, and that tree fell, just as pretty as you please.  Glass ornaments shattered everywhere.

My first thought was to run and make sure the boys were still asleep in their beds.  I knew it would upset them terribly to see the tree down like that, and they might cut themselves on all that glass.

I checked on them and they were sleeping soundly, which made no sense as the tree falling was LOUD, but there they lay.  Sound asleep.  Thankfully.

I grabbed the broom and started the clean-up.

By the time my husband got home, I had most of the debris cleaned, but I was fairly pregnant and unable to pick up that big tree by myself, so he had to help me with that.  Together we stood the tree back up and he examined the wires that had secured the tree to the walls.  He had at first told me he thought a wire probably just somehow came undone, but that was not the case.  The wire looked like it had been cut.  One end was still attached to the wall and the other was still attached to the tree, but the wire was cut in two right in the middle.

My husband said, "Why did you cut the wire?"  Which, of course, I did NOT do.  He said there is no way that could have happened.  I agreed but reminded him that it did happen.

We proceeded to re-secure and re-decorate the Christmas tree, so our sons would not see it broken.

That was the first crazy thing that happened in that living room at Christmastime.  It was NOT the last.

You see, that living room was built from salvaged lumber from an old house that was torn down in Grover, North Carolina about that time.  My husband got the lumber for free and built the room himself.  He was handy like that.  We thought it was a good deal until the strange things started.  Luckily they only happened around the holidays, so most of the time the room was fine.

The next year my husband lost a favorite glove.  It was very cold that winter.  We looked EVERYWHERE, and I do mean everywhere.  Under furniture.  In drawers.  In closets.  In cabinets.  In the boys' toy box.  Everywhere.  Nope.  The glove was not to be found.

The next morning after we tore the whole house apart searching for the glove, I walked into the living room and there it lay in the middle of the floor.  Totally covered in mud.  All the doors were locked.  All the windows were closed and locked.  No animals in the house.  No clue how the glove got there, but my husband was sure glad to see it.

The hairs stood up on the back of my neck and I had goosebumps all over my body when I saw that glove.  There is NO WAY that could have happened.

In 1980 we built a new house on our property, and our old living room became a storage building.

Then one night in the waning of the year that building burned down.  We lost everything we had stored there in the fire.  Baby furniture.  Bicycles. Tricycles. Tools. Clothing. Toys. Etc etc etc.  They were never able to figure out what started the fire.  It went up in such a blaze!  That room was very near the forest.  There were trees within feet of it.  None of the trees burned.  It was the oddest thing.

Years later we heard tales of how that old house in Grover, NC was haunted.  How somebody died there around Christmastime.  Now, whether or not that is true, I do not know, but I do know that strange things happened in that room that was built from the lumber of that old Grover house.

Haunted?  Did the ghost follow all that was left of its home?  You decide.  I don't much like to think about it.  -shudder-

NOTE:  I had already moved most of the gifts to get to the glass bits, and swept up all the broken glass I could find before I thought of snapping a photo, but you can see how the tree fell.  Almost all of the glass ornaments fell off of it.  What a mess!!!