676 Lisbon Rd

The following is true.



"Who in the hell is that?" 

The man in dark clothes was standing just behind my wife as she stood in the dining room facing me.  She was talking to me while brushing her hair before going to bed.  It was a Saturday night, around ten o'clock.  I was seated on a couch in the living room about fifteen feet away, reading a book.  The dining room light was off, but I could see them plainly from the light cast from the living room lamps.  At first, I thought an intruder had broken into our home, but I hadn't heard anyone breaking in.  But there he was, a man about six feet tall with dark hair.  He looked at me, then at her, and then unbelievably, he started to make gestures behind her back.   His arms flailed about, he grimaced his face-- he was making fun of her!  My mind was racing; who is this guy?  What the hell is he doing?  Where did he come from?  I was just about to jump up and rush him when I noticed he was standing through the dining room table.  Not beside the table.  Not behind the table.  Through the center of it.  Then he was gone.  My wife continued on with her conversation.  I just sat there.  I'd seen him before.

The house at 676 Lisbon Rd was an unassuming little dwelling in a small town that, like every other mill town in Maine, had seen it's better days.  Around one hundred years old when we bought it, it was on the small side, with four rooms on the first floor and three small bedrooms tucked under the eaves upstairs.  It sat so close to a very busy street that I felt I could reach out and touch the cars as they whizzed by.  It also filled up its house lot the way a turtleneck clings to a double chin-- not a whole lotta space.  A car parked in the driveway couldn't open both doors all the way without hitting the neighbors house and mine.  But it was the house we fell in love with.  (Maybe because we could afford it)  And it's where we raised our two children.  And it was haunted.

I was with my eight year-old daughter, walking our dog around town one late afternoon, when she turned to me and said, "Daddy, I think I saw a ghost in my bedroom last night."  I did recall hearing some thumping noises coming from upstairs the previous night, so I asked her why she thought that.  "Well, I thought I saw Tom [her little brother] in my room playing with my toys in the corner, but when I kept looking at him, he disappeared!"  "And that's not all," she went on, "sometimes, when I am looking up the stairs, I see two white legs without a body or anything turn and run into my room!"  I hope it's needless to say that I never mentioned the strange things in the house with her or her four year-old brother.  But, I too had seen those white legs.  The TV in the living room was against the half wall that the stairs ran behind.   Many times while I sat and watched another night of scintillating TV, I had seen a pair of feet start to descend the stairs.  I would think they belonged to one of my kids and would wait expectantly for them to come down, when the legs would turn and zoom back up the stairs in a flash of white.


Maybe those legs belonged to the youngster I saw with the Dark Man one night.  The three bedrooms opened up to a small area at the top of the stairs.  We all left our doors open, and night lights from the kids' room lit the landing in a soft yellow glow.  I awoke in the middle of one night when my wife got up to go downstairs to use the bathroom.  I blearily looked and watched her step into the hall-- and past the Dark Man as he leaned, inches away from her, against my daughters bedroom door frame.  I could see his eyes follow her with an ominous gaze as she went by.  Beside him stood a young child.  Doesn't she see them?  I thought.  The child looked over at me and walked up to the side of my bed, standing right next to me.  I didn't get scared by the spooks often, but that time I rolled over, and pulling the blanket over my head, willed myself back to sleep as fast as I could!

What makes a ghost?  Is it some traumatic event that occurred, trapping the soul of an individual here on our Earthly plane?  Could it be someone loved a place so much they didn't want to leave?  Who's to say.  But I think that if you're a jerk in life, you'll be a jerk as a ghost.  Just like the Dark Man.  I was alone in my bedroom one bright, sunny Sunday afternoon, sitting in a chair beside my bed when I saw him walk in.  He strode along the wall not six feet from me, heading toward the bedroom closet.  Just before he walked through the closed closet door, he turned and gave me a look that said, "Yeah, I'm here.  Waddya goin' to do about it?"  I left the room.

I lived in that house for fourteen years, and experienced many, many more episodes other than what I have just related.  I have since moved.  My daughter is grown and living in another state.  My now ex-wife has moved, too.  She rents the house to our son who splits the rent with some friends.  He called me recently.  "Hey, Dad"  he said, "Funniest thing happened the other night.  I was watching TV with my friends, when I noticed a pair of white legs coming down the stairs!  You ever seen that?  I didn't say anything to them, but I watched as my friends eyes would just start darting around...."

And so it continues.

Happy Halloween.