Trespass

We are officially in our new home, and I regret to inform you that it is probably not haunted.

probably

Or if it is, the spirit is very likely a poltergeist. Within our first week, we discovered that the microwave was missing a (very necessary) glass pane. The dishwasher, washing machine, and automated garage door opener all broke. We discovered that there is at least one switch in every room that does not turn on a thing. The other switches are all backwards. The toilet hinges are also backwards.

Poltergeist seems apt.

Still, we are learning to love this home, but it is an odd thing to occupy a new home, with its new shadows and remnants of the ones who lived here before.

For the first week, we are trespassers. We sneak around this new home pressing our hands on surfaces still faintly warm from their last occupants. We move things, push things around, throw and stow things. We catalog what is left. This former owner left some of her furniture, including a very cool grandfather clock (that was obviously involved in some intrigued by the sliding back panel). She also left her potted plants, which now in my neglectful care are wilting away.

Then there is the settling period. We take baths in this new tub. We wrestle the home for ownership by splashing paint on the walls and re-doing the decor. We learn the sounds of our cats feet on different distances of tile. And in that time, we discover new remnants, and each surprise beckons it’s own story.

Like the LED lights we found in the ceiling. Was this inspired by amorousness? A trip to Vegas? Was this about adding more warmth to the room? Or did you just see it on one of those home improvement shows?

Then, there is the hair. Not mine or my husband nor our cats’s hair. Hair that is long, thick and dark that I find in clusters in corners. Hair that was tangled in the drain of the washing machine, clogging it up. Or in the drain of the dishwasher, causing it to retain water. Or hair, hidden and wrapped around the faucet in the new bathtub.

It appears suddenly in a way that I am not sure it actually belonged to the the former owner. As I look down the hallway, I see a long strand that I must have missed on my earlier sweep and make a note to pick it up later.

Eventually, as we mark ourselves here, as we grow with the house, it will become our home. But as I sit here, beyond midnight in the dark, in my husband’s office with only the creaking fan above me for company, I wonder home many remnants I will leave behind one day. What is lost is never lost, it will be someone’s missing switch or clump of hair one day. And who knows what haunts I left in our old place? What stories a missing pen cap or hex key might create. Or my own clumps of hair.

See you on the flip side amigxs. 

    -La Queta

Want more on ghosts? Check out Haunted by Pain: On Ghosts and Trauma.

Want more on hauntings? Check out Living Through History In New Orleans.