So, my husband got busy right away looking for another place for us to move. It seems he gets attracted to huge older houses with spacious yard and far from neighbors. Being an American he is used to a quiet and spacious environment. One day, after few days of house hunting on his motorcycle, he came home excited. He said to me hop on I’ll show you our new home. He was bragging on the way that the house was very nice just needed a little work.
When we got there, I was shocked, the nice house he was talking about was an old big house that needed a lot of work, and in fact you could hardly see the front view of the house because of the tall grasses and weeds all over the front yard. It looked like an abandoned house and became the neighborhood garbage dumping area. There was a for rent sign hanging at the gate. I said to myself this is a haunted house, no way I will be living in there. But my husband had convinced me that he can turn this old house into a dream home for us. After negotiating with the house caretaker (the owner moved to another town), my husband hired few guys to clean the house and the yard and painted all over inside, and did some repairs. The house turned out nice and decent looking when it was finished.
Before we moved in, our helper Amy and I cleaned the whole place again, that time I decided to climb up on the very top of the closet in the master bedroom to make sure that it is well dusted up there too. I spotted in the corner, a cardboard, I picked it up and saw some written words on it, RIP, then the name of a boy and the date of birth and the date of death, I rushed down to the trash can outside the gate and threw it as fast as I can. I don’t want Amy to see it for she might be scared and quit her job. After we moved in, life went on as usual, everybody liked our spacious new place, I had my own sewing room and my hubby had his own music room and Amy had her own room and bathroom too. We even had our little garden in our backyard. My sister and her family, which includes her husband and four kids had stayed overnight in our house occasionally especially when we have birthday parties, Christmas or when my husband would be cooking his famous bagels with mint yogurt dip. My son loved to have the cousins around. They played games and loved to explore the yard.
As days went by, I got used to the house, but that cardboard and what was written on it hounded me once in a while, I never told anyone about it even my husband. Sometimes thoughts came to mind of what really happened to the boy, and why did he die at such young age? Sometimes in the middle of the night, I woke up hearing some strange noises but I just ignored it. After two years, we decided to move back to America.
My sister and I sent each other letters all the time to keep in touch (this was during pre-email). One day, I got a letter from my sister; I eagerly opened and read it. It was a long letter (three pages or so), she was updating me about life in the Philippines and how the kids are growing so fast…. In the next page she said that her husband made a confession that he saw a ghost of a little boy in our house during one of their visits but just kept it to himself, he didn’t want us to freak out. I was grateful of his silence. Probably I had looked for another house instantaneously if he had told us about the ghost at that time.
Anyway, after reading that letter, I was still shocked and had goose bumps. He would not have made up a story like that, my brother in law is a serious, quiet type and does not joke around, he is a straight forward person and also known to have a third eye. According to his story, he woke up early, everyone was still asleep. He got up and went to the living room, sat on the couch to read yesterday’s newspaper. Behind the couch were windows overlooking our porch, he notice some movements so he looked behind his back and saw a boy smiling at him. He was wondering where this boy came from and why he is at our porch this early in the morning. How did he get in? Our gate is tall and no way a little kid can open it. So my brother in law decided to go outside to grab the boy and ask him how did he got in and where does he lives. When he got out the door he looked all over the yard the boy was gone our gate was still locked and there was no other way out. That’s when he realized that he just saw a ghost of a boy.
I always remember about that ghost boy, every now and then. My sister and I both agreed that maybe he liked it every time they come to visit us because he would hear kid’s laughter and who knows he was playing with them too. Maybe that’s the reason why he was smiling when my brother in law saw him. It was his way of saying thank you for bringing my playmates back. In my mind, something tragic happened in that house that made the whole family leave and move to a new town to start their new lives. That house was actually not that old and it was a nice house for an owner to just abandon it without any compelling reason. Whatever happened, I hope that by now the ghost boy had finally found his way to heaven.
