If anyone had told me that a story like this could ever be possible, I'd have laughed in their face. I mean, yeah, I guess I knew there might be a chance that ghosts or spirits exist, but I've never seen one. To me, that means they don't exist. And the people who say they've seen one, well, most of them seem to be one card short of a full deck. So what were the chances that I'd encounter a ghost? Let's just say I never even considered it. And a ghost coming with an old chair from an estate auction? That's ridiculous. Or so I would have thought.
I know, I'm rambling. This has me really freaked out, though. I can't keep my mind straight. Let me go back to the beginning. I'll tell you the whole story, and you tell me if I am crazy. Frankly, I'm just not sure myself.
The auction took place last month. Yes, that's where I got the chair. It was a Tuesday, and I had the day off. The auction was just up the road at that old house that's been empty for a couple years. The one they've been trying to sell for a while, right. Yes, it is a great old house, but I think I've figured out why it hasn't sold. Anyhow, I didn't see much at the auction I liked, but I thought I'd stick around and see how things went. Right before the sale began, the auctioneer explained that the place was still for sale.
"But there is something I need to add," he said. "The place is reputed to be haunted."
Well, everybody laughed and made a few jokes. Somebody asked if there was a minimum bid on the ghost.
Now I had heard those ghost rumors before, and as long as I've been around here, no one has lived in that house very long. I thought that was because there were always renters there, though.
So anyhow, an hour into the sale, one of the runners brought this big old green porch rocker up from the basement. I didn't remember seeing it in the preview. I've been wanting one for my new deck, and it was in great shape, so I bid on it. I almost dropped out at $90, but decided to go one more time at $100. The other guy dropped out, and I won the chair.
"Good buy," said the auctioneer. If he only knew.
Well, I loaded up the chair and headed home. When I got home, I took the chair right to the deck. It looked great there. I did notice that the seat and back were a bit discolored, so I scrubbed it with soap and water. The discolored areas just wouldn't come clean. The discoloration was right where someone would have sat, so I decided a person with dirty clothes used the chair a lot, and the dirt was just ground into the chair. Oh well, it wasn't very noticeable, so no big deal, I thought.
That evening, I decided to sit in my new chair and watch the sun set. It had been a hot day, so I thought an evening on the deck would be nice. As soon as I sat down, I noticed the coolness of the chair. This was weird; the day was quite hot, but the chair felt almost cold. It did feel good, though, so I sat there and enjoyed it. And it stayed cool. After 20 minutes or so, it was still cool.
"An air conditioned porch rocker - very strange," I thought.
After going inside, I quit wondering about the "cool" chair. It wasn't long before the chair was on my mind again, though. Since it was so warm that night, I left the deck door open. Well, right before I fell asleep, I heard this creaking sound. It kept getting louder and louder until I was wide awake. I wasn't sure what the hell was going on, so I went out on the porch for a look. The noise was coming from the chair; it was rocking back and forth. As I stepped off the deck, looking for a prop to put under the rocker, it hit me; there was no breeze at all. I mean none. Why was this chair moving? I stuck a brick under the rocker, and it stopped creaking. Must have been a quick gust of wind, I concluded.
A couple days went by, and nothing unusual occurred. Occasionally at night, I heard the rocker rocking, but after putting the brick under it, that stopped. I decided to keep the brick propped under it whenever I wasn't using it.
A few nights later, I went through the same routine. Right before going to bed, I put the brick under the rocker. I hadn't been in bed for five minutes, when SMASH, a brick comes through the glass deck door. I mean I jumped. I grabbed my 12 gauge by the bed, and ran outside. Quiet; dead quiet.
No footsteps, no branches rustling in the breeze, no cars driving away. Stepping back on the porch, I heard the slow, steady rocking sound. The brick that was under the chair was the one that flew through the glass door.
Questions were filling my mind. "How did someone get on the deck without me hearing them? And how was that damn chair rocking again, with no breeze blowing at all."
Over the next few days, I entertained the police, the insurance agent, and the glass repair guys. No, there were no clues as to who smashed my door. The police figured some local kid decided to give me a real scare. A real scare. That cop doesn't know what a real scare is.
With the work going on, I moved the chair from the deck to the garage. I'll have to admit, the thought crossed my mind that the chair, somehow... No, couldn't be, that would be ridiculous.
So a week or so back, I ran into old Jack Kern. He's the real estate agent selling the house - the house where I got the chair, right. Well, he has lived around here forever; knows the town like the back of his hand. So I asked him if he had any luck finding a buyer for the house.
"No," he responds, "don't think I will, either."
"Why not?" I asked.
"The McDonald murder, of course. You never heard about that? Quite a story. About 10 years ago, old Bill McDonald died. He had owned that house for years. Bill had a tough life. Had two kids die, then his wife left him. Or so we thought. Well, when he died, the relatives were going through the house, clearing out his things. When they went down in the basement, they noticed this big old rocker stuck in the corner. When they turned on the lights and pulled the rocker out, they had the shock of their lives. They found a skeleton tied in the chair.
Turns out that Bill's wife never left at all. He killed her five years earlier, and kept the body tied in that chair in the basement. Ever since, people report weird happenings in that house. Guess I'll have to sell it to some unsuspecting newcomer - like you!"
"Jack," I gulped. I could barely speak. "What happened to that chair?"
"The chair? Hell, I don't know, maybe they burned it. Who cares?"
"Me," I barely whispered.
I stood there dumbstruck for a few minutes. Then I headed straight home. What had seemed unbelievable now made sense. The rocking, the cool feeling, the discolored area, the brick. I wasn't going to take any chances.
Arriving home, I headed straight for the garage. The chair was gone. I began to shake; really shake. The damned thing couldn't walk out on its own, could it? As I walked to the house, I heard a strange creaking on the porch. Sure enough, there it was - rocking away faster than ever. At first I was too scared to touch it; then I was too scared not to. I grabbed the chair, carried it to the brush pile back by the pond, and threw it on. I ran to the garage and got my gas can and some matches. I poured the whole gallon on the chair, and threw the match. I stood there, shaking, and watched the whole pile burn.
For the first time in years, I said a prayer. It took two hours to burn itself out, but there was nothing left afterwards. Nothing.
Yes, that was a week ago; and I still can't eat, sleep, or work. So back to my question. Am I crazy? You tell me. Go look on the deck, then tell me. Am I nuts?
"Crazy" is such a subjective term. To arrive at that judgment, one must rely on reality, on facts. And the fact is that there, on that back deck, gently rocking to and fro, is a tall, dark green, slightly charred porch rocker.