We were not Angels!!!!!!

We lived in a house that was over 100 years old. The nails were hand-made, square ones. Very thick heavy, hand hewn doors, one of them was covered with marks where someone had tried to chop their way through with an axe!!

One of the bedrooms upstairs had a trap door in the ceiling. Also there was a metal bed, with a bullet hole through it!!

What a great place for a large family of kids, all with wild imaginations!!!!!

The bedroom arrangement was rather odd, one huge bedroom with two tiny ones across one end. My brothers shared the large room and my sister and I each had one of the small rooms. At night after going to bed, we would lay in the dark and tell all kinds of fantastic made up stories. Our ages ranged from 3 to 16, and we got pretty carried away sometimes.

My little sister was the most gullible and it was great fun baiting her. She had the bed with the bullet hole, also the room with the trap door.. One of the things we told her was that the man that had her room, had committed suicide and people that did that could not be buried, so his body was in trunk up in the crawl space over her head!!

Our old dog howled a lot. We had coyotes and wolves all around us on the ranch, he howled at them. But told her that he howled whenever evil spirits were around.. Also told her to keep her window closed whenever she heard the dog howl, because it could be the man’s spirit trying to return to his body up in attic.

One day she was especially ornery and got us all in trouble,(not really unusual) but we came up with great idea to get even...

One of the boys smuggled a long pole upstairs and put it on porch roof just out of my window. That night we lay and told stories as usual. She always joined in and usually scared herself silly without our help. Some one came up with the fact that the reason the animals were all howling so close and loud that night, was that they had all been possessed and the spirit of the dead man had entered our sweet old dog so watch out, tonight might be the night !!!!

I had pulled the case off my pillow and we tied it to the end of the stick and when everything was quiet, we were ready! The boys pushed the stick across to her window and made the end tap, tap, tap, on her window!! Wasn't long till the quiet night was awakened with a piercing scream-- followed by two or three even louder ones!! We quickly pulled in the stick, removed the case and quietly ran for our respective beds!!!!

Not a second too soon, here came Daddy, saying" What are you kids up too?" The boys sat up rubbing their eyes, saying "what is going on?" I called and said "Daddy, she is scaring me with all that screaming"!

Daddy comforted her and asked what in the world?? She said "old pup was trying to get into my window, he was taken over by spirits and she was afraid of him". Daddy could hardly keep from laughing and told her she was having a nightmare and to try to get some sleep. We were all setting up in bed looking soo innocent, and he told us would be morning soon, try to get some sleep..

Was long time before we could quit giggling into our pillows...

Copyright (c) 2008 Betty Coy. All rights reserved.