Cabbage Patch Dolls and Nutcrackers

My Grandparents have lived in an old Victorian style home in Cleveland, GA, USA, since I was around 8 years old. I am 23 now. There are many things that have happened in that house, but I will try to make this as short as I possibly can.

Even before they had fully moved in, there was an occurrence. There was a plumber there doing some final touches in the master bathroom. Big B and Papa (that's what I have always called them) were scheduled to move in that day. My Papa pulled down the long gravel driveway just in time to see the plumber bolting out the door and racing to his truck. He looked very frightened when Papa rushed over to see if he was okay. The plumber refused to go back in and even had Papa go and get his tools for him! My Grandfather found this somewhat amusing especially when the plumber said that they shouldn't move into the house. This plumber would not say exactly what happened, but I don't think he was imagining things!

The first experience that I remember having is with a friend that I invited to come up and stay the night with me. We were in the guest room playing and we were around 8 or 9 years old. The guest room to me (and the rest of my family) is the scariest room in the house. My friend Heather and I decided to play house with our newly bought Cabbage Patch Dolls. There is this big Armour in that room. It opens up top to where you can hang your clothes and on the bottom there are drawers (if that makes sense). Well there was plenty of room for our dolls to sleep in the top part and that was going to be their "bed". So we put the dolls in the top part of the Armour all cuddled up next to each other, closed it and laid down to pretend to sleep for it was "bedtime". Suddenly we heard two loud knocks coming from where our babies "slept". We jumped up immediately and opened the Armour. Our dolls had gone from cuddled up closely to being on separate sides as far apart from each other as they could get. They couldn't just roll apart and end up like that. They would have had to roll over at least 3 times to get that far apart from each other. Also, their positions were completely different. We had them hugging each other and they were flat on their backs with their arms at their sides when we discovered them. We grabbed our dolls and ran out of the room. We told my Grandmother what happened and she looked at us as if it didn't come as a shock to her at all. She said the same thing happens to her around Christmas with her nutcrackers she puts out every year.
Big B told us that she arranges her two nutcrackers facing straight ahead on each end of the fireplace. They stay that way all day until at some point during the night. The next morning she goes in to check on them and they are in the middle directly in front of the fireplace facing each other, nose to nose!
My Grandmother, Big B has always heard voices in the downstairs foyer at night. To her it sounds like a small get together. A low murmur of voices, the faint sound of glasses clinking etc... My cousin and I were sitting in the "red room" (named for the red walls) when my Aunt's purse (that was sitting in the hallway where my Grandmother has heard the voices coming from) slid from one side of the hallway to the other. For some odd reason both of us looked over at the same time right before it happened. I realize that this is getting to be very long so I will save the rest of the stories for another time, but I will leave you with one final one.

First let me say that my Mom has always been the skeptic of all of us. She thought we were quite ridiculous with our stories until one night very recently. My parents were sleeping in the notorious guest room. My Mom claims she woke up feeling startled. There was a treadmill being stored in the room and she glanced at it only to find something that horrified her. She saw a man wearing old fashioned clothes standing on the treadmill as if it were a sort of podium. She says that the way his hands were gesturing she just had this feeling he was a teacher giving a lecture. He did not appear to see her, but he seemed to be seeing his class and he was very involved in teaching whatever the subject was. Ever since then my Mom is a believer and we never thought that would happen. I would like to say that NOT ONE of my family members (especially my Grandparents) believe that the ghosts are dangerous or evil. Of-course they do like to mess around sometimes like moving the pillows around on the couch and turning up a corner of the rug repeatedly. Big B is always straightening everything back up only to come back and discover it has been messed with again. I guess that they have a sense of humor, but they aren't threatening in any way.

Well that is all for now. Hope you enjoyed it. There are many more occurrences that I would like to share but I will save that for a later date. New stuff happens there every day after all!

Thanks for reading!