Weirdness Magnet

The Dress

It occurred to me that I hadn't written anything about my parent's place before the last post.

I lived there for a while after I moved back to Ohio from Washington in 1995. I stayed in what we called the cold room, because it was, and is, the coldest room of the house. Very nice in the dead of summer, not so pleasant in January, when you can practically see your breath in the chill.

I didn't grow up in this house, and they had only been there for a few years themselves when I stayed with them. But I occasionally had my strange feeling, especially in that room. The stairwell also seems to have a strange feel about it.

I am not the only person to have noticed something. A friend of the family came to visit one day, and was sitting in the living room chatting with my mother. She was surprised by what she thought was a glimpse of another person coming down the stairs. She turned and asked my mother who else was here, but my mom answered no one. Tasha, my parent's dog at the time, leaped up suddenly and ran to the stairs barking. Then she turned around, ran over to my mom, and jumped up on the couch to hide behind her. My Mom and her friend rose from their seats, walked over to the stairs and looked up, but there was no one there.

For a while mom tried to hang a large framed picture in the hall landing of the stairwell, but time and time again, the picture would tilt or fall off the wall without warning. She tried several different wallhanging strategies, and finally got one of those super heavy duty metal ones from Home Depot. About a day after she and my dad got it up there, we were eating dinner and we heard this terrific crash from the stairs. We investigated, only to find the painting all the way down at the foot of the stairs, as if it had been hurled there, the protective glass broken. The hanger was still on the wall, unscathed.

I was very tired one late night after work, and I had gone to bed with a virtual mountain of blankets over me to stave off the chill. But it was so cold that I was having a hard time getting to sleep. Suddenly I felt odd, as though my short hairs were standing up. I looked up into the near darkness of my room to see a dress standing just outside my closed closet door.

"I have to hang that up", I thought briefly, though I have no clothing that even remotely resembles it. I blinked a few times and stared at it, to try and determine what it was that I was looking at. It was an old-fashioned high-necked dress, with long tight sleeves, filled out as though someone with rather a nice figure were wearing it. It was light colored, like cream, and had small, dark-colored bows all the way down the front of it. It had no hands or head; it was just a dress.

Suddenly, it turned toward me. I froze, feeling my internal organs leap to my throat. I was unable to do anything but stare, paralyzed, as it took a few steps toward the bed, stopped, and leaned over, as if to look at me. I thought for a moment that I was going to faint, or yell out, or leap drastically toward the window behind me, but somehow I stayed frozen. After just a second or two, the dress straightened up, turned, and walked back the way it came and into the closet, without even stopping to open the closet door. I stayed awake for a very long time that night, and it was still a few days before I could bring myself to open the closet door, even in the bright light of day.

I'm not exactly sure why I felt so frightened by her. I don't think she intended me any harm, or even if she was aware of my presence. But I could scarcely breathe, and my heart was beating like crazy.

Since then, I have called her the dress ghost. I wish I knew her name.