The Typewriter

Author's Note: I met them at their home in Inwood, West Virginia. They were tastefully dressed, soft-spoken, and their home was filled with fine art. Both work as consultants in the telecommunications industry in Washington, D.C. They have two children of elementary school age. This is how she told their story.

When we bought our home, we discovered almost immediately that someone had cemented an old Smith upright typewriter into our basement floor near the south wall. We thought it was charmingly unique and left it undisturbed.

One day it was raining, and the children were playing in the basement. They found the typewriter and a piece of paper and began to play with it. I could hear the tip-tip-tapping through the house.

That night I put the children to bed at their regular time and snuggled up with my husband on the couch. Shortly, we both heard the tip-tip-tapping of the old machine. I thought that one or both of the children had gotten out of bed and sneaked down to the basement to play with the wondrous new toy.

I went to the basement door, opened it and saw that the light was out. I looked in the children's bedroom and they were fast asleep. I listened at the basement door again and could hear the sounds of the typewriter quite distinctly.

My husband went downstairs to investigate and found no one in the basement. The typewriter was silent. He pulled the paper from the machine, scanned the print and saw only a jumble of letters, punctuation and numbers.

We didn't hear the typewriter again for many months. Then one day the children were playing with it again. When they came upstairs for dinner, they left a sheet of paper in the machine.

That night the same thing happened. The children were in bed, and we heard the tip-tip-tapping. When we opened the basement door, the sounds stopped.

We loved the house and none of the family was especially bothered by the odd behavior of the typewriter. Whenever we heard it typing of its own volition, we joked about our haunted typewriter.

On our first anniversary in the house, we held a party and decided to use the typewriter as the main entertainment. We invited new friends and neighbors.

At the appointed time, we asked our friends to bear with us, listen carefully, and we turned out all the lights in the house. My husband took a flashlight, went to the basement and carefully rolled a piece of paper into the old machine. After he closed the basement door, it immediately started to type.

Our guests listened patiently to the tip-tip-tapping from the basement. When we turned on the lights, we announced with great pride that they had just heard our very own haunted typewriter. One of our neighbors clutched at her chest and, much to our dismay, she fainted.

When she came to, she apologized and said she never knew the typewriter had been saved. We were confused and asked what she meant. She said that she had been a resident of the neighborhood all her life. She remembered quite vividly that a young woman had committed suicide in that basement during World War II. She received a telegram telling her that her husband had been killed on Tarawa. She hung herself after she typed a note on an old Smith typewriter.

Author's Note: After the party, they disabled the typewriter so that it was no longer capable of producing sound. For my benefit, they put it back together and rolled a piece of paper into the machine. I heard the tip-tip-tapping clearly.