The Cleaning Lady Ghost

Okay, I’ve covered all of the physical senses with at least one story or anecdote. This next story starts in the physical and ends in the psychic. I haven’t made heads or tails of it completely, so perhaps you might help me out.

In 2004 I bought a lot of antique dolls and a lot of spare parts. To this day, bits and pieces of dolls I bought that year are still on my shelf awaiting assembly, 23 dolls-worth, in fact. Some still needs wigs or eyes or dresses or glued back together, but one day, each one will be displayed with the rest of my collection. I bought each doll, each part because it would make a great addition to my collection or it was cheap. (Yes, cheap. This hobby can get quite expensive if you let it.)

I hesitate to call myself a collector because, well, I don’t care if the doll was made in France or Germany or if she’s cracked or leaking sawdust. Is she cute? Do I have one like her? Is the price right? That’s really all I care about. They aren’t a monetary investment, they’re a preservation of history.

Of pre-1920 dolls, I have at least one with a head made of each of the common materials: Bisque porcelain, china, papier-mâché, wax and celluloid. Same goes for bodies: cloth, composition, papier-mâché, leather and wood. They range in height from seven to thirty-two inches.

These dolls may have been the ONLY toy a little girl had.

Yes, I also have several from the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s including some hand-me-downs from my mom and aunt, but aside from one in particular, most of those girls are quiet.

Anyway, back in 2004, I either assembled a doll or bought one off of ebay and put her on display in the central hallway of my house. I honestly do not recall which doll it was because I’d added more than one to my hallway display that week. I’d even added old shoes to some barefooted girls and changed a few dresses.

One week, I psychically felt a greater sense that ‘someone’ else was in my house, but this is sort of normal for sensitive little me and I didn’t want to deal with psychic stuff at the time so I did nothing.

That Friday, the dishwasher came on without myself or my husband turning it on. The dishes in there were clean, we just hadn’t emptied it. Oh well. We thought nothing of it. Maybe one of us had leaned against the counter…although no one was home during when the cycle had started some time around 7:30PM or so.

The rest of the week was normal except that the kitchen light was turned on in the middle of the night a few times.

The following Friday, we weren’t home around 7:30PM, but we came home to the dishwasher running on its own again. This time, it only had a few dishes in it. We both joked that we should start filling the dishwasher up and put soap in it every Friday so that if the ghost decides to do the dishes again, it wouldn’t be for naught. Ha ha funny funny.

A few nights later, I was in my home office writing one of my novels. The door was open, but I had some music on. My husband was upstairs in our home theater which has a balcony opening over the living room and kitchen.

‘Someone’ opened the refrigerator and rummaged a little bit. I thought it was odd that my husband had come downstairs to grab something to eat without pausing the movie he was watching.

About an hour or so later, he came into my office and asked if I’d found what I was looking for in the fridge. “Huh?” He proceeded to tell me that he heard the refrigerator open and had called out to me–just a generic hello like we always do when we hear the other–and I didn’t answer, so he got up off the couch and looked out off the balcony, but no one was there by then. I told him I didn’t answer because I wasn’t in the kitchen and then we shared an “I thought that was you” “No, it wasn’t me” moment. Hmmm… We shrugged and left it at that.

Sprinkled throughout our house, we have heat-sensitive dimmers on some of the lighting. The previous owner was nuts about mood lighting, I guess. Our house was built in 1997 and we are the second owners. Anyway, there are days when my fingers are so cold I can’t get the lights to turn on in the various rooms. I have to use my elbow or my nose or something. Yeah, funny, but I gotta do what I gotta do.

A night or two after the refrigerator incident, the heat-sensitive dimmer in the home office was making the light fade on and off. I saw it shining down the hallway and nudged my husband. We were going to sleep. He had zero interest in investigating and quite honestly, I didn’t want to go in there, either. The up and down stopped after about five minutes.

The next weekend, I was up in the home theater watching a movie and my husband was downstairs. He had finished what he was doing and wanted to see if I was done with the movie yet. But first he had to use the restroom. The door to the bathroom opens directly in front of the dolls in the hallway. As he left the bathroom, he saw a shadow run away from the dolls and down the hallway toward our bedroom. He called out to me.

This time I heard him. I was coming down the stairs from the home theater. He was pretty spooked, but once again, we shrugged it off.

Throughout all of this stuff, I still had yet to psychically feel anything negative. I only felt a little frustration and maybe some sadness, but it was nothing worrisome or even really powerful. It never overcame me or gave me other cause for concern.

There were a few more nights of random lights coming on. And one day while I was home alone, the heat-sensitive dimmer in the office started bringing the light on and off again. Well, rather than trying to communicate with the ghost, I used the manual part of the switch to get the light to turn off and stay off.

That night or maybe the next, my husband and I were up in the home theater, watching a movie. About half way into it, I ‘felt’ someone come into the room. I started to tune her in. I actually didn’t have much choice. She had something to say and wasn’t going to be ignored any longer.

After about two minutes of listening to her yammer on and on about how she does all the housework, all of the laundry, all of everything and all I do is lay around and never say thank you, how I don’t appreciate a single thing she does and that I don’t love her at all anymore despite all the years we’d spent together, I asked my husband if he felt anything.

He said yes. There was something weird going on, but he didn’t know what.

I told him that there was a woman in a dress with an apron over it going on and on and on and on and on without letting me get in a word edgewise.

He was surprised, but not shocked.

I asked if he wanted to hear what the lady was saying.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it, but curiosity got the best of him.

I started repeating everything the woman said…even did some of the gestures–the finger pointing, the arm crossing over her chest, the hands on hips, the head tilting, etc. My husband wasn’t scared, he was intrigued. I think he somehow knew I wasn’t making this up, that there really was a woman standing near the entrance to our home theater and she was really, really upset.

After about five minutes of this, I distinctly saw a man’s arm reach over the back of the couch and pull out a shotgun. (Psychically, not physically, otherwise I think my husband and I would’ve launched off the couch and crashed through the sliding glass door to get out of the house as fast as possible!)

The man was sitting about where I was on the couch. The woman kept on screaming at him, daring him to shoot, even berating him. Horrible, horrible stuff and I couldn’t stop myself from seeing the shotgun go off and the woman fall down and disappear from my psychic sight.

I told my husband, “Wow. I think her husband just shot her. Holy crap.”

And the tension in the room eased up and went away. In fact, in the last four years since this incident, the office light hasn’t gone up and down on its own, the dishwasher hasn’t turned on without someone pressing the buttons, the refrigerator hasn’t opened without one of us pulling the door and no more shadow people have run past the dolls in the hallway.

Or at least not while we’re home!

Random lights do still come on overnight, though…but they’ve done that at least once every month or so since we moved in 7 years ago.

Personally, I think the whole thing may have been some sort of place memory that had gotten attached to one of my dolls. The woman was dressed in a style from as early as the 20s, as late as the 50s judging by the length of her dress and apron. The dolls in my hallway range from about 1870 to about 1945. Perhaps one of those dolls had belonged to the woman when she was a child. Perhaps one of those dolls had been on display in the woman’s house. I doubt I’ll ever know.

Maybe if I’d tried to communicate sooner, I might’ve found a consciousness to go with all of the unexplained occurrences. By the time she could no longer be ignored, it was too late. I still don’t know what to think of the whole ordeal, but I’ve learned a lot from it.

While I’m no stranger to haunted locations, this one was a little too close to home…it WAS home. Had I been anywhere else, I likely would’ve tried to communicate. For me, it’s one thing to work with a ghost…a whole other thing to live with one! I like to choose who I co-habit with, thank you.

This was also a period of my life where I tried to push aside my sensitivity. As you can tell, it’s just not always possible. If she ever comes back, you bet I’ll try to communicate. Video, EVP, K-II, whatever I can get. Like I said, doll collecting is about preserving history to me. I’d love to step back in time and talk to someone whose doll I’m now taking care of. Who knows? Perhaps years from now after I’m long gone, part of my life will replay to the new owner of one of my dolls.

All I can hope is that it’s a really fun part of my life!

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