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I’ve shared stories with you before about some of the weird things that I’ve heard when I’ve been working alone in my church. Footsteps, muffled voices, lights going on and off, the sound of the refrigerator door in the church kitchen opening and shutting – all these occurrences happening for no seemingly logical reason. Usually I am the only one to notice this stuff. This time, not so.
A fellow parishioner and I spent a couple of hours this afternoon at the church cleaning out a store room. The room is part of a warren of small offices, closets, maintenance rooms, and the like that take up a two-storey area behind the chancel (the area at the front of the church sanctuary behind the pulpit).
There is one doorway into this part of the church and one set of wooden stairs that connect the two floors. My friend and I were in this area and know for a fact that we were the only two people there – in fact, we were the only two people in the building when we arrived.
My friend left to go down to the basement to do something, leaving me to de-construct an old bookcase that we were tossing out. I was working near the pulpit platform right outside the entrance to this area behind the chancel. NO ONE would be able to go in without passing by me.
I don’t know about other churches, but in our church no one ever likes to throw anything away. I thought about this as I disassembled the bookcase. A couple of people came to mind — people who are no longer among us – and wondered what they would say if they knew I was throwing out a perfectly good, dented, dusty, bulky, gun-metal gray, butt-ugly bookcase.
A couple of times I thought I heard my companion come back into the sanctuary and I turned around to say something. Both times, there was no one there. Of course, it did occur to me, based on my previous experiences in the church, that maybe – just maybe I might not be alone. I shrugged it off though. I had a lot of work to do and I didn’t want my friend to think I was totally nuts if I suddenly began going off about “feeling a presence.”
About ten minutes later, just as I was finishing up with the bookcase, I heard a door shut and foot steps . I froze. The sounds had come from the upstairs area behind the chancel – where I knew for a fact there was NO ONE. I stopped what I was doing and just listened.
Suddenly, my companion was back. I told him what happened. “Maybe it’s the ghost,” he teased. Actually, we both concluded that it was the acoustics of the building and in fact what I heard coming from upstairs was actually his movement downstairs that had somehow reverberated up.
It seemed logical.
After we finished up with our work in the storage closet, we started talking about some minor construction work that was going to be done in this area. My friend opened a small hatch in the wall of the hallway to show me how the electrical wiring would proceed. We were both crouched on the floor looking into a very dark, cobweb-draped hole under the pulpit platform. Honest to Pete, if this were a horror movie, this is the part where the red evil eyes would glare at us from the darkness, or the demented ax murderer who was hiding under the platform would jumped out at us. No, nothing like that happened.
Instead, I heard a knock on the wall.
“Did you hear that?” Oh, how I sounded just like Jason, Grant, and Yvette, the ghost busters on TV.
My friend pulled his head out of the hatch and we both were quiet. Then, suddenly, there were three rapid knocks that sounded just like someone was knocking on a wooden door. And it sounded to me like it was coming from upstairs, where I knew for a fact there was NO ONE.
My friend called out “Is there anybody there?” Nothing.
I can’t say that we rushed out of the area; in fact, we went poking around a few more dark, creepy areas in the bowels of the building, but I can’t say that I was anything but uneasy.
Finally, as we were leaving, I mentioned the knocking we heard. “See,” I said, “I don’t imagine these things.”
I’m sure my companion has already figured out the logical explanation for these knocks. I’m sure he’s probably right. There most likely is a logical explanation. However, I can’t help thinking that maybe there is someone still hanging around there didn’t like us throwing out stuff. And she or he was trying to let us know about it.
L. Gloyd © 2009
The previous accounts:
“Lemurian Flag”
L. Gloyd (c) 2009
“I Had a Dream….”
Based on a real dream…. Come visit the real Soul Food Cafe HERE.
Photo collage
L. Gloyd (c) 2009
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