The Dream House that Almost Was

The Dream House that Almost Was

“That beautiful old converted brownstone is really ours!” The brownstone was on the corner of Fifty-First Street in Brooklyn, New York. My husband and I wanted the brownstone badly. It was close to the subway, and the price was right. We moved in the last week of October; the autumn leaves crunched under our feet in the long backyard as we pushed and pulled the washer and dryer into the basement. The only thing our dream home lacked was a front yard; there was no grass, just cement. The bedroom gave us an exercise in futility. The wooden parts were problematic; clearing the door, the mattress was not a willing participant in our move. The last thing was my piano; it would not fit into the house. An elderly neighbor exclaimed: “In my day the movers removed the windows and moved the piano into the room; might be wise to try that.” The elderly man disappeared, then returned with the tools required to remove the front windows. We decided to take his advice about the couch also; it went directly through the window. We returned the truck to U-Haul on Kingsland Street; it was so convenient, less than four blocks. We returned home and began to unpack glassware and dishes; truthfully, I was hoping to eat in the kitchen nook our first night. We sat down to dinner, and the lights began to dim for no apparent reason. My husband Ralph strode down to the basement where the fuse box was located; sure enough, there was a copper penny in one of the fuses.

There was a swoosh of air in our bedroom; we clung to each other: “This is freaky, Ralph; I am not sure I want to stay here!” We settled down and soon sleep overtook both of us. The following morning, Ralph located the skylight: “There is a slight air leak in the skylight; it won’t take long to fix.” I gulped my coffee as I quickly dressed and made a mad dash down the wooden staircase and down the stone steps. I had less than five minutes to catch the number five train. The steps down into the subway seemed steeper and less inviting than usual. I barely made it when the subway train came down the track. The doors opened, then closed once again, then opened. I found myself engulfed between a woman who smelled as if she had taken a bath in perfume and an elderly man who was Continually muttering to himself. There was standing room only, but I had managed to catch the train. My job with Dunn and Winchester, Attorneys at Law, was located in the Empire State Building; I took the elevator to the twenty-third floor. My data entry cubicle awaited me. I finished the last entry for the day and joined the rush-hour madness. I caught a later train; in the interim, Ralph repaired the skylight. I arrived home and quickly changed my clothes; to my chagrin, Ralph already had the situation in hand...hamburgers. Dinner at home was wonderful, especially after living in a studio apartment. The gas stove was apartment-sized; it had one quirk: you had to light it by hand, or the flame would go out. I just finished flipping the hamburgers when the pilot light went out again. We sat down to eat, and the lights began to flicker; Ralph went down to the basement, opened the fuse box, and found that everything was in order. He returned upstairs: “Tomorrow I call the electrician! This is ridiculous; we have been here two days!” I should have realized something was odd because we bought the house for half its value. Ralph and I were startled as we lay in bed; a creak came from the attic...then a bone-chilling scream. “What the hell was that, Ralph?” I asked in a perplexed voice. We scrambled out of bed, listening to the sudden stillness, a faint sound, something; anything. We got out of bed and strode toward where we thought the sound came from. There was nothing there. Sleep evaded us the rest of the night. Ralph was up and gone by the time I dragged myself out of bed; I am not a morning person.

I grabbed a newspaper to read on the subway; actually, I was afraid I would fall asleep and miss my stop. Then I got the idea to check the newspaper archives; maybe something that happened in our home. I don’t believe in ghosts or the supernatural. I found myself in front of the New York Times; I needed a half hour to find anything of interest that would explain the sounds we heard in the early morning hours. I quickly scanned the microfiche. The microfiche contained a short story about Catherine Petre. She apparently argued with her mother, stabbed her with a kitchen knife, then plunged the knife into herself. I jotted down the information and walked to work. I was not happy about a ghost who was unhappy in life and was now making our lives miserable. The question uppermost in my mind was: ‘What do we do? Can we get rid of it somehow? What would Ralph and I do?’

After dinner, Ralph and I decided to go up into the attic. We climbed the two flights of stairs and opened the creaking door. A peculiar, musty odor greeted us. We began to search the attic; there was a large footlocker near the chimney. Ralph opened the footlocker; there was a badly decomposed body. I informed Ralph of the article I found; was the body the young woman’s? Ralph called the police: “It is definitely a body, at least the skeletal remains. In a trunk in the attic. We won’t touch anything.” Ralph gave me a strange look: “The police will be here soon. We should go downstairs.” The first police officers arrived by the time we reached the first floor. “Follow us,” we said in unison. Twenty minutes later, a detective arrived: “I believe I may know who that body is. There was a young woman, twenty-five years old; she lived here with her mother. They got into an argument; the younger woman stabbed the older one to death. We found that body but never found the one belonging to the young woman. The younger woman committed suicide; we never found the body.”

The detective left after his primary investigation. Ralph and I decided this was our not-so-dream house and determined to stay. The screams and the thuds have pretty much dissipated. We found a way to cohabit with a ghost!