I had a conversation with the current owner this past weekend when I got to see the inside of the house on Little Street in Streator that my parents owned from 1963-1979. We were piecing together the history of the house. I mentioned that when my parents saw the house for the first time, the husband of the couple who owned it was in a hospital bed in what would become our breakfast room. The current owner snapped to attention and asked if that man died in the house. I told him no, but that the previous owner had. According to my research, he had a stroke and was in a coma for ten weeks before passing away in the home.
The current owner said, “We think the house is haunted.” He told a story of viewing the house prior to buying it. He sat down on a bed and the lights went off. He stood up and they went on again. He sat down. The lights went off. He stood up and they went back on. I asked which bedroom he was in at the time. It was the bedroom that I shared with my sister. One night when we lived there, the doors covering the compartments of a built-in in the closet started banging even though they were latched tight. The current owner’s wife said she was in the closet once and one of those doors dropped open hitting her on the head.
She said that when she is cooking, she often feels like someone is standing behind her. I laughed and said, “That could be my dad. He always thought he could cook better than most people.” Her husband told another story. They had a wooden clock on the wall in the kitchen. One morning they came downstairs and found that the clock had been wedged behind the oven door handle. He said it was such a tight fit that it took all his strength to wrestle it free.
I was texting a friend after the visit to the house and telling her the ghost stories. She said her brother-in-law also lives in a haunted house in Streator. She said that he has seen two young children, a boy and a girl, who are wearing old fashioned clothes. She’s in a gingham dress and he’s wearing knickers. One time he was sitting in his chair reading and the radio on the table next to him came on full blast. It’s the kind that you have to turn the knob. One of his sons was coming down the stairs one time and a thick piece of blue glass hit him in the back. There’s no source of blue glass upstairs. More recently he said he woke up and there was a woman in his bedroom. And he said she wasn’t even good looking! Also there is a noose in the basement. It wasn’t there before and it is made of new rope that he didn’t own. His neighbor told him that when the house was vacant, before he and his wife bought it, they would sometimes see lights going off and on at night.
I read a recent article—no doubt timed to coincide with Halloween—written by a scientist who said there is no hard evidence that ghosts exist. I wanted to write back to the author and ask if it’s possible that no instruments exist yet that can record the evidence. I’m a naturally skeptical person and tend to discount things that an individual sees when no one else is around, but I’m not sure what I think when the evidence is collaborative. I also think that physical evidence like the wedged clock, the blue glass and the noose are hard to dismiss.
People believe in things they can’t see or measure—God, angels—why not ghosts? I don’t necessarily buy-in to the myth of ghosts being tortured souls who are dead but trapped in the world, but I think we are naive to think that our current map of reality is the Truth. I welcome visits from my departed family members and would find comfort knowing they were near. Strangers and trickster ghosts, not so much!
I’m hoping for treats this Halloween night and no visits from ghosts unless they are neighbor kids donning a sheet and braving our first snowfall of the season. I’m confident that there will be evidence of footprints.
Crows Feet Chronicles 