By Joanne Duke Gamblee
Copyright ©2006 Joanne Gamblee

"Her mother had slept in the bedroom that my husband and I slept in, and her father had slept in Joanna's room, where things kept getting moved. He had emphysema and couldn't sleep well because of trouble wit It breathing, and he'd walk around the house a lot during the night. When I heard that, it made sense to me that when he'd come into our room and he'd walk around and stop on my side of the bed, maybe it was this whole thing of aggravating his wife, or maybe just checking on her, whatever. But how come he wouldn't have known she wasn't there? She didn't want him around her because of his emphysema and all that coughing, and the daughter said she'd tell him to go out on the back porch where it was unheated and he could breathe better out there. The back porch is where he was when he died. And that's where I heard those sounds of people talking.

"She said the way she knew it was her dad in our house was the experience she had with him after he died. She was living across the road then. On the night her  youngest. son got married, when she had come home from the wedding and was putting thiings away_, she heard his voice and he said, `Why couldn't I be at the wedding?'

"She answered, `Pop, you're dead. It's time for you to go home.' She said she ordered him out of her house and told him to stop bothering her. 'You need to go on.' She said she had an or her experience with him alter her mother died and she was getting their house ready to sell, so she knew he was still there. After I shared some of the experiences we had had, she said, 'Its my dad; you need to tell him to go on.'

"So a few months alter that, on a really bad day for me, that's what I did. It was in the fall and I had a new, beautiful Afghan pup only three months old. I was taking her for a walk, when somehow she got loose and ran into the road. Right in front of me, she was hit and killed. I was just devastated. It was a terrible day. When my husband came home we both grieved over her, just couldn't get over ir.'I'he next morning my husband left early for work, and after he was gone I laid back down until it was time to get the kids ready for school. I still felt so heartsick and strung out from the day before. It was dark outside, the light in the hall was on and it shone into the room making things somewhat visible. I was half asleep when I heard steps coming clown the hall. They stopped at the foot of my bed, next to a clothes basket full of clothes.

"I thought it was one of the kids but when I opened my eyes, no one was there At the same time, I could see the clothes had been messed with in the basket. I was unhappy from the sad day before and in no mood to put up with anything, so in the instant I realized what was happening I sat up and said out loud, `Get out of my room. I'm upset and don't need to put with this.'

"Our doors took skeleton keys and the string of keys happened to be lying on top of the dresser. I watched as those keys came off the dresser and dropped to the floor, and that just infuriated me. I remembered about ordering him to leave, so I jumped out of bed, and said `You are leaving.' I grabbed the keys, hurried downstairs, unlocked and opened the front door, all the time saying, `Get out of my house. You're leaving. Get out and stay out of my house. You're not welcome here.' I could hear a sound advancing down the steps but I couldn't. see anything. But I did feel the presence of air movement and I could tell when it went by me. As soon as I sensed it was gone, I closed and locked the door, and then I went out to the kitchen for some coffee to try to settle down before the kids got up.

"Basically, that was the end of the trouble. Danny said he continued  to hear noises in the attic, but not to any great extent. I prayed over the spirit to let it be at rest, and as far as we know, that seems to be the case. We have no way of knowing why he stayed while we lived there, though. If his spirit came back to aggravate his wife, we don't know why it would stay on after she died and be there with our family. We lived another eight years in that lovely house and other than the activity of a busy and lively family, there were no disturbances."