Summer With Beth

To start out, I am on the edge of turning 15 and already a firm believer of ghosts and the power beyond. This story takes place in the Summer of '01 on the outskirts of a small town in Missouri.

I live with my grandparents, and my parents are everything BUT divorced. One year my mom volunteered to take my older sister, my younger sister, and I for a summer at her house. She lived with a younger room-mate, Jake. My grandmother decided that it was okay, so at the end of May, we started to pack.

Bored on the car drive to her house (we live in Kansas about 4 hours away), my older sister, Stacey, asked Mom for a scary story. After all, my mom does tell the best scary stories, including the one of the whil-o-wist haunting in our family and the ghost of my great great great great grandfather visiting my uncle. But this was a story of the house she lives at. Before her, it was her father, my grandfather, lived there, and before him was the builder of the house, but he died a good 30 years before my grandfather moved there. And this is how my mother told the story.

"Before your grandpa lived here, an old man and his daughter lived in the house. The house has a living room, a breezeway, kitchen, dining room, restroom, and one bedroom, quite like any other house during those times. And like any other house-holds during that time, it was custom for the children to sleep in the attic, which is Jake's room now. Well one night, the girl heard a noise down the stairs, and decided to investigate. Well, the girl and her elderly father were black, and the KKK was still around back then. It seems that the KKK had found where the 2 person family lived and decided to rid the house of them. The girl walked down the stairs into the dining room to see them dragging her father out. Trying to stop them, she grabbed ahold of one of the KKK members, but they threw her against the wall, the one where the piano is now. Knocked out, they dragged her outside and drowned her in the stream, and killing her father as well. The house is very well haunted now, it seems more by the little girl than the father."

"How old was she?" I asked. (FYI: I am Nykoal, my little sister is Kristi, and my mother is Brenda.)

"Well, actually, she was just about your age, 10 or 11 years old, Nykoal," Mom said, making me smile.

A few days later, my mother, Stacey, Jake, and I were playing the drinking game in the dining room, except of course, Stacey and I had cans of soda. Hungry, I forfeited the next game and got up to make myself a Sandwich, leaving the mustard jar on the piano and continuing the game. After quite a few cans (from every person present) the power went out, so we lit a candle and just talked at the table. We looked over towards the door, since it was banging open and shut during the storm, and saw the mustard jar fly off of the piano onto the ground.

"See, told you it was haunted," mom said, picking up the jar and putting it in the fridge.

That was just one incident. After we had stayed for a month, Stacey and I had found an easy way to sweep. Instead of sweeping the dirt into the dustpan like usual, we would sweep it under the rug that was under the table in the dining room. Stacey and I walked off after completing the daily task to listen to music (we had no TV.) Later, whenever mom came home from work at Denny's, she called us into the dining room.

"Very funny, girls. Now please sweep this up," she waved her arm at the dirt that was lined all around the outer edge of the carpet.

After we told her what we had done, she just raised her eyebrow. "Maybe she wants you to do it right from now on," she said, of course talking about the little girl. My mom, as well as Stacey and I, believed in the power beyond.

It became a daily custom for the little girl, who we named Beth, to help remind us what was right. We couldn't set anything on the piano, which was against the wall where Beth was slammed by the KKK, if it belonged in a different place. Because it would fly off and hit the floor every single time. Although, when we tried Kristi, she stayed put, crying. Stacey, being 4 years older than me, and I eventually decided to sweep the dirt into a dustpan, as the same occurance would continue every time.

Those were the only two things that would occur in that house, untill the last week we stayed there. Stacey and I shared the attic, Jake had the living room, and Kristi and Mom had the bed room. Stacey and I were upstairs, getting ready for bed, when the window slammed shut, then opened slowly again. Stacey and I looked at each other, then walked over to the window together. There were two small hand prints on the glass, and a small peice of torn fabric on the sill. We told mom, and again she she said the house was haunted.

So by now we have been out of that house for over 3 years. Teens vandalized the house, and eventually it was closed up and illegal to go to. I still have the peice of fabric, and after reading about others experiences, I hold it, wondering if my summer with Beth measures up to the experiences of others.