My mother was a single parent through my teenage years. I have two younger sisters as well. My mother worked three jobs at one time, she was always gone. Her first job started at 4:30 in the morning. She left the house before any of us were awake for school and wouldn’t be home until midnight. Yeah, she didn’t sleep for years.
One morning, I saw a dark figure walk past my open bedroom door down the hall. I called out, “mom”? The figure leaned back and poked its head into the doorway as if it were taking one more glance to answer my call and then continued back down the hallway out into our living/kitchen area. I got out of bed, not having heard the very loud front door close I imagined my mother would be in the living room gathering her items before leaving. I walked into our living area and found no one. Nothing. I immediately phoned my mother, she was already at work. I told her what had happened and explained that I was freaking out.
This was before cell phones, so my mother had asked me to take the cordless phone and check the entire house. Are the doors locked, front and back? Yes. Check my room, is it empty? Yes. The bathroom? Yes. Oh my gawd, mom, I know I saw someone… didn’t I? My mom calmed me down. Tried to explain that maybe it was sleepy stuff in my eyes throwing me off?!
Over the weekend when we had time to spend together, mom finally broke down telling me that maybe it was a ghost but it would be a friendly ghost. Mom went on to explain that the people who sold her the house did tell her that an elderly man had peacefully passed away in his sleep in it before we purchased it. My sister who is only 3 years younger than me decided to name the ghost. It was a kind, old man so his name would be “Henry”. Naming the ghost made it seem less scary for some odd reason.
After the first sighting and a name, Henry maybe felt a little more comfortable coming out because we started to ‘see’ him or his antics more frequently throughout our home after that.
Henry would shut the bathroom door if one of us girls left it open while using the restroom, this happened very frequently! We were a house full of girls so we never bothered to shut the door to our one bathroom that we all shared and locks were not an option especially in the mornings when we were all getting ready for school.
One day both my younger sisters were visiting with friends or doing their own things so I had the house all to myself. I decided to watch a movie. We kept our movies on the bottom shelf of a china hutch that my grandfather made for my mom. The door was heavy and preferred to be open as opposed to shut; what I mean to say is if you unlocked the door, it would naturally swing wide open. When open the one door (movie side) would hang in such a way as to block access to the hallway from the living room. I didn’t need to go down the hall, so I left the door open. While watching the movie, out of the corner of my eye, the door slowly swung shut on the china hutch and while it didn’t lock it was impossible that it would close on it’s own without some help. Chills ran up and down my spine, arms, legs, neck, etc.
I immediately phoned my mother at work again and said, “hey, sorry to call you at work but Henry just closed the door on the china hutch and suddenly I didn’t feel like being alone anymore”. Mom told me that she understood and was impressed with Henry’s strength to close that door. I agreed. We chatted until I told her that I felt better/safe again and went back to watching my movie with the China hutch door locked closed to keep Henry happy.
We moved out of that house when I turned 17 and as we were closing the front door for the last time on move out day, we all stuck our heads back inside and said, “Goodbye, Henry!” Even though Henry was a ‘friendly’ ghost, it was still scary as a young teen to come face to face (so to speak) with a ghost regardless how nice he was.
