The Ghost of Mrs. Mitchell

Not Our Mrs. Mitchell

We can't seem to avoid ghosts.  As our strange life adventure continues- my wife and I have moved 5 times in 3 years- we have discovered there may be more ghosts floating around us than anyone ever thought possible. I blame it on the old houses and properties in the Northeast United States.

I may also have to blame those prescription meds I take for RLS.  There are serious side effects to the drug Mirapex such as the ability to sense the presence of ghosts or to believe your hallucinations actually are ghosts. I was leaning towards the drug side effects as the source of my problem.  Then we moved into Mrs. Mitchell's house on East High Street in Bangor, Pennsylvania.  Mrs. Mitchell is dead.  Kinda.

The Pastor's House

Let's review the history of our ghosting experiences before we discuss Mrs. Mitchell.. We lived for three years in a Methodist church parsonage that was built in 1890.  It was used as a home for the clergy, a school for children, a makeshift church, and a rental home.  We don't know if anyone died in the house and we did not research its history beyond what the locals told us. The house is located on Division Street in Portland PA.

One late night, sometime after midnight, Waterbunny wakes me up.  The room smells like coffee. Our bedroom is upstairs in the front of the house.  The kitchen is downstairs at the rear of the house. There is no coffee maker in our bedroom. This isn't the Holiday Inn.
  "Are you making coffee?" she asks.
  "No."  I reply.
  "Why does it smell like coffee in here?  Did you leave the Keurig on?"   she asks.
  "I don't think it's possible to leave a Keurig on."  I reply.
  "Go check the kitchen. The smell is really strong," she suggests.
  "Okay"  I reply.   The kitchen is fine.  No new coffee in the keurig. No smell either. By the time I crawl back into bed the odor is rapidly fading into nothing
   "Nothing happening in the kitchen." I tell her.
   "That's weird." she states. The next time the odor was ham. Then it was potatoes.  The Methodist ladies are very busy with church dinners in the afterlife.

I had other experiences there and the believers call them residuals. I would wake up and think I saw several shadow shapes running around the bedroom. They were kid sized and would be gone in seconds. Then one night, a truly dark shadow spirit arrived who started following me from house to house.  That ghost is menacing, stands at the foot of my bed, a tall dark shape.  I do not like this one at all.  This ghost wants me dead.  He or she has tried to smother me in my bed.  Or it's my sleep apnea. Or Mirapex.  Getting older is not for the faint of heart, Waterbunny says.

The Hamilton House

When we moved to a newer ranch house in Sciota, we noticed a bedroom door with the lock on the outside, not the inside.   Then my dark spirit arrived to greet me again.  And she continued to visit me every morning at precisely 3 am.  I could hear her coming down the hall, dragging her chains, or bones, or something ugly that scraped the floor.  Then the room would drop 10 degrees.  Then she would get very close to me.  A few times I slept past the 3 am visit and she would come into my dream and tell me that she was waiting for me to die.  Sweet lass.

One time I woke as she entered the room and I saw her!  The white rags of some sort of lab coat hung off her frame, she was translucent and she was ghoulish to the core.  She was reaching out to me when I woke up and yelled and she vanished without a trace- not even a bone left on the floor.

This became a nightly event.  I would wake up within 5 minutes of 3 oclock am and wait for her to drag her crap down the hall to our bedroom.  One night I had my phone set up to record sounds, an IR meter, and video camera and a laptop waiting for her..when she arrived in the room and the temperature dropped 10 degrees I made my announcement:
  "And now I am coming for you, with all the technology I can find to catch you and end this haunting!"

 I swear I could feel the cold air suck right out of the room.  A good friend later came over and burned sage and smudged stuff up and then gave me crystals and herbs to carry around in a pouch.  It's all good.

Before we moved out my friend suggested I leave a shirt behind to keep the spirit focused on my scent. My scent?  I use Axe deodorant.  My scent matches every man whose family shops at Walmart.  I hung a sleeveless tee in the closet.  I bet the new renters were wondering why we left one shirt hanging in the closet. Ghosts aren't very smart if an old shirt in an empty house can fool them.

We learned the house was once a farmyard where something really bad happened. No one seems to know what that bad thing was.  As for the bedroom door with the lock on the wrong side.  According to locals in the know, the previous owner had a teenage daughter who liked to sneak out at night and get into trouble.  So he switched the doorknob around and locked her in her room every night.  Rapunzel Rapunzel let down your hair about two feet and I will rescue you from the ranch-style house in Sciota, PA.

Our Seattle Apartment

Not a thing. Zilch. Zero. Nada.   I think my spirit follower got confused by the time zone change.  Or maybe the Continental Pass was too high.  I know I didn't appreciate that part of the trip very much. It might have been the shirt.  Although I swear that spirit followed us a far as Wyoming.  Something was outside our door in that hotel at 3 am and it was sniffing for my scent. Our dog Tashi growled for the next 2 hours.  Creepy.

The Robinwood Shadow People

When I returned from Seattle alone, I spent several months with relatives. Mom and Dad actually.  It was a wonderful experience re-connecting with my parents. Mom has been spectacular and helpful in ways I will be forever thankful.  The entire upstairs is empty now and more than one nephew or niece warned me about the ghost in the cubbyhole.   Bah.  I've fought off a demon who followed me to Wyoming.  The cubbyhole is behind a door too small for a three foot child.  Bah. 

I didn't expect the Shadow people.   I contracted pneumonia around Christmas time and was given a nebulizer and told to take breathing treatments every 4 hours.  More often than not, I would drop into a light sleep during the treatment and the shadow people would show up to visit.   Mostly they would stand around and talk at me, sometimes four or five at the same time.  I didn't recognize any of their faces.  The shadow people were strangers to me.  

But they always were talking at me in loud rude voices.  One night a gentleman appeared. He looked like a cross between Danny Kaye, the Artful Dodger, and that comedian who starred in the series about firemen.

"Hey, hey, how are you there?" he half-yelled.  Maybe shadow people think we are deaf in this world.   

I never answered back that I remember.  At that moment a young brunette woman walked into the room and turned and walked down a hallway that suddenly merged with the bedroom.   

"Follow her. Follow that one. She has the answer. Follow that one."  said Danny the Dodger Leary.

Then he smiled and tipped his top hat, threw back his scarf and I woke up staring at the wall where Dennis the Leary Kaye had just been.

Fifty Ghosts in the Upstairs Hall

One night the hallway outside the bedroom filled up with ghosts.  There were so many that they couldn't get past each other into the room. When one made it, another grabbed him and pulled him back.  It was an epic battle of ghosts, shape shifters, and dark spirits that I knew I had to record it on film.  I kept the lighting super low to get the best shot of the ghostly battle.  I think this house is sitting on top of an underworld entrance, or a Native American burial ground, or this is what happens to a video when there isn't enough light obtain a decent picture.  I believe the correct word is digital degradation.  I prefer to think of a ghostly battle at the entrance to my bedroom door.

Circles of Light Shoot From My Eyes

 The first night I was at my folk's house, my 85-year old father fell in the living room and injured himself to the point where he couldn't get up and he couldn't yell loud enough for anyone to hear him..  It was 4 am.

Could have been from a Starship 

At the same time, a white circle of light entered my bedroom from the window,  travelled down the wall and entered the inside of my eyes! Everytime I opened my eyes, circles of light shot out from both my eyes like smoke rings  and travelled down the wall in both directions.  The feeling of this light in my eyes was of complete calm and serenity.  I didn't understand.  I blamed it on the drugs.  I believe in Angels now.

Mom called for me an hour and a half later when she found him and we called an ambulance.  He's fine. But I will never forget the message that was being sent from an Angel and how badly I misinterpreted what it meant.  My dad doesn't believe in God.   He is in for a huge surprise one day.

Mrs. Mitchell's House

Since we moved into the East High Street house, Mrs. Mitchell has pinched us, run her fingernails up and down the blinds while we lay in bed with the light on, shook my Pappy's sleigh bells, stuck a sliver of glass into my big toe, scared the dog so badly she climbed up on Waterbunny's head and relieved herself, added beats to the minute on my dj mixer when there is no music playing (in fact she is doing it again at 77 bps),  banged pipes, knocked on walls, and spoke to Waterbunny in a male voice and hummed for me in a sweet female voice.

The first few nights she was so active we thought we wouldn't be able to stay. Then the landlord told us how Mrs. Mitchell  was seen by previous tenants who described her perfectly.    Ugh.

She likes to open a bedroom door at the end of the hall. Finally, I closed it so securely it may never open again.  Since the door has been closed she has been much quieter.

After everything else Mrs. Mitchell isn't very scary at all.  On a hot night when she enters the bedroom, her chill cools the room- air conditioning without the electric bill.

I told my mother about Mrs. Mitchell and mom said, "if she gives you any trouble, you just call Nanny down on her head.  Your Nanny won't put up with that.

I've threatened Mrs. Mitchell with that.  She hummed an old wive's tale as soon as I turned my back.