My great-aunt died in a house fire in 1999.
My aunt and I came back to help clean up the house and to be with my other great aunt who survived the fire.
GG died in October, so the days were short and it got dark early.
We had just come home from the hospital after making sure BB was all right; it was pitch dark, but my mom's house had the porch light on and the outside basement light on.
We pull under the carport, open the doors, and out of the tree in my aunt's yard came what I can only describe as thousands of bats or birds; it was just a huge sudden rush of silent black coming at you.
Even in the dim light from the two outside lights, they were easily seen; they were not birds or bats. What they were is very hard, if not impossible, to describe.
Shadows is as close as I can get.
Thousands of silent shadows are flying at you.
As suddenly as it started, it ended.
They just disappeared somewhere between the tree and the carport.
We quickly got my kids in the house, and we didn't go out the rest of the night.
If my aunt ever had activity in her house, she never said.
I know that when I was 4 I saw a headless man walk out of a bedroom in her house. I know that I could not go into either of her bedrooms or the back enclosed porch without being so scared when I was small I would literally wet my pants.
Even her bathroom terrified me.
I do remember that the bedroom doors would open and shut by themselves.
Other than the headless man, I don't remember ever seeing anything, but her house absolutely terrified me in a way my grandmother's more active house did not.
My great-uncle died of a massive heart attack in one of the bedrooms.
Neither of my aunts ever slept in the bedrooms; I always thought it odd that they slept on couches in the living room.
I still have nightmares about her bedrooms. As old as I am, as long as the house has been gone, I still have nightmares about her bedrooms.
