This happened a few years ago.

The last few holidays, I had noticed a bit of friction between my dad and my uncle. I didn’t think much about it at first, I mean, they are brothers after all, and brothers get into it sometimes. My uncle though, he was not getting over whatever it was that had been bugging him, I mean, this went on for like, four years. So, last year on the day after Christmas, I asked my dad

“What’s up with uncle Ken, he’s seem really combative lately,”

“Well he’s just mad that your mom and I sold your grandma’s house after she’d past away, instead of living in it,”

“Oh yeah, why did you guys end up selling that house?” I asked My dad seemed to get a bit flustered and he said “Well, you know, it was just a really old house that needed a bunch of work, and we didn’t really feel like restoring it,”

And I left it at that.

Awhile later, I was talking to my mom about something, I don’t really remember what, but she said

“You know, we didn’t sell your Grandma’s house because it was too old...”

“Oh?” I asked

“Now, I didn’t tell the other kids about this, but do you remember after your grandma passed away, your dad and I went to go clean up her place?”

“Sure,”

“Well, the first day we went there, we met up with your uncle Ken, Sharon, Jeff, Greg, and Erin. Your dad and I got there a few hours earlier, and started clearing out the garage, and most of the basement. We ended up working straight until almost 10 o’clock at night, and by that time we were too tired to drive home from Berwyn, so we just decided to stay the night,”

“Did Ken and Sharon stay the night too?”

“No, they left a few hours before then,”

“That sounds about right.”

“So your dad and I went to go sleep in his mom’s old room,”

“Really? That’s kinda creepy,”

“I guess he thought it might help him feel closer to his mom. You know, after his dad passed away, it was really hard for him to watch her grieving so much. I always thought that she died so soon afterwards because she just missed him so much,”

“Yeah, I could definitely see that,”

“So, your dad woke up in the middle of the night because he thought he heard something downstairs,”

“Like what?”

“Well, he wasn’t sure at first, but he thought he heard someone calling his name,”

“Are you serious?”

“Absolutely. He turned the light on, and looked at the door, and he heard it again. It sounded like his mom, calling his name. So he went out into the hallway, and sure enough, he could hear his mom saying ‘Phil’, ‘Phil’ and he says that it didn’t sound like distant, or ‘ghosty’ or anything like that, he said it sounded like she was just talking to him. So he went out into the hallway, and turned the corner, and at the end of the stairs, he saw her and your grandpa standing there. He said that they didn’t look half transparent, and they weren’t glowing or anything like that, they looked solid, just like you or me. He did say that your grandpa looked very very tired, and your grandma, while she didn’t look bad, she just looked, heavy, you know? Like she was sad.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Not at all, in fact, the next day, after your dad left, I found this” She said pulling out an old diary from under the table.

“Wait, so you guys stayed the night?”

“After your dad saw that, he rushed back into the bedroom, and locked the door, which, by the way, had 3 locks on it. One in the knob, one dead bolt, and one chain. We didn’t know why at first, but the knob and the chain had been broken off, like the door had been kicked down. He left the light on all night, and left first thing in the morning,”

“You stayed behind?”

“He didn’t tell me what had happened until much later, I figured he was just too emotional to be there so soon,”

“So he left you in the house with the ghosts?”

“Well, he figured I would probably just call him crazy. You know your dad, do you think he believes in ghosts?”

“No, of course not,”

“Right. So, like I was saying, I found this diary that your grandma started keeping after your grandpa died,”

“Oh I didn’t know she had been keeping one?”

“Me neither, it starts off pretty normal, she does write about how sad and lonely she was after Jim (my grandpa) died. She really only talks about him for the first few pages, then after that it’s mostly really in depth stories about her going out and talking to her girl friends and shopping and all that. For the first few weeks, she wrote every day, then it was every other day, and then it started getting really... well, really sad. Like here...”

She opened the diary up to a page that had been dog eared The only thing it said was

“Spent some time in the garden today, I miss Jim”

The handwriting was pretty sloppy, but I didn’t really think much of it. My grandma never had very steady hands, and I knew her arthritis was getting pretty bad near the end.

“Adam, you know the garden was the one place your grandma never went, right?” my mom said

“Really?” I replied

“That’s where your grandpa had his heart attack, she NEVER went out there. Here, keep reading,”

The next entry was dated a week and a half later it said

“Feelin lonely,”

My mom looked at me, and she had the most dead serious look on her face. Now, if you knew my mom, you’d know that she’s the type who always has something witty to say, always cracking jokes, and even when she’s serious, she’s never that serious. But the look she was giving me at that moment, at least to me, was down right unnerving.

“From here, it gets pretty morbid,”

And that’s all she said

The next entry was a little over two weeks from the last one, it read:

“Last night I was woken up in the middle of the night. I thought I heard something downstairs. I turned the light on and put my hearing aid in and listened for a minute. I heard something again, it sounded like maybe the tv was on downstairs, but I hadn’t been watching tv. I put my rob(e) on and opened the bedroom door. I could hear it more clearly, it sounded like James’s (grandpa Jim) voice. He kept saying. ELENORE, ELENORE. But it was quiet, not like he was moaning or yelling or anything. I went to the stairs, and I saw him at the bottom of the stairs looking up at me. It wasn’t a ghost, it was him, and he looked real sad. Tired and sad. He looked at me and said ELENORE, and I turned and ran into the bedroom and locked the door. I know I’m not crazy, I know what I saw.”

The next entry was from the next day

“I had a man come by and put extra locks on the bedroom door. There is the lock in the door know, a dead bolt, and a chain. He looked at me like I was crazy, but I know I’m not crazy. Last night when I went to bed, I locked all three locks, left to tv in the bedroom on, and the lights. I thought I heard James again, but it might have just been the tv or the wind or something,”

The next entry, dated two days later

“For the last few nights, I’ve been sleeping with the tv and the lights on, I haven’t been woken up by James again.”

The next entry, dated the next night

“I went to go have lunch with Florence (a friend of hers) today. I wanted to tell her about James, but I didn’t dare. There isn’t no way she’d believe me. She was telling me about a cruise her and Ruth (another friend) were going to take in the fall up to Alaska to see the glaciers. I think I should go, it would do me good to get out of the house for awhile. We had to end lunch early because storm clouds were coming in, and she doesn’t like to drive in the rain.”

The next entry, dated later than night 2:30 am

“The power went out. I heard James calling me from outside the door. I unlocked the door knob and the dead bolt, and I cracked it open to look out into the hallway. I saw him, on the floor, he was on his belly, pulling himself around the corner towards my room. He looked just awful just awful just awful just awful. His face was falling apart, and his hands were just skin and bones, and his eyes

HE WAS GROWLING AT ME

HE’S COMING TO GET ME”

There was only one more entry, I think. It covered over the next five or six pages, and it just said

HE’S COMING TO GET ME

Over and over again. It might have been written the same night, it is completely impossible to tell.

“So,” My mom said “we never really told you what happened with your grandma...”

I looked at her but I didn’t say anything.

“Your aunt Marie, went by her place about a week after that. She knocked on the door, but no one answered. She used her key to get inside, and she saw that all the lights were on, even though it was the middle of the day. She went upstairs and heard the tv coming from inside her room. She knocked and knocked, but there was no answer. Marie called the police and told them what was going on, and they came out with the fire department and some EMT’s. They were able to break the door down, apparently your grandma had just locked the door knob and the chain. They found your grandma in the far corner, curled up underneath a blanket. They said she’d been there about six days and had died of dehydration.

“After we found out what had happened, your dad didn’t want anything to do with the house, so we put it on the market and got rid of it as fast as we could. We didn’t want to tell Ken what had happened, I’m sure you can understand why,”

tl;dr Ghosts

EDIT: Wow! Thank you everyone for all the positive feedback, it really appreciate it!