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Mowery House Mystery

by RhapSody
(Cleveland, TN)

MOWERY HOUSE MYSTERY

My husband and I purchased this old farm house. The main part of the house was built before the Civil War with the remainder completed after the war was over. It had remained in the Mowery family for many generations prior to our ownership. The house had been empty for several years.....the last remaining heir, Jerry Mowery, was reluctant to sell. A few years earlier, Jerry's mother, a 89 year old woman, suffering from dementia and other health problems, went missing from the home. After an entire neighborhood search of the house and surrounding property, her body was discovered at daybreak by my husband. She was lying, face up, at the bottom of a fifteen feet deep well, which was just outside

Jerry Mowery, the son, made us a deal on the farm we could not turn down. All was well until things began to get a little disturbing for me there. The house was in desperate need of repair so we began our restoration prior to moving in. It was a labor of love and we wanted to keep the house as original as possible. A few things were unnerving for me as our project began. Furniture, clothing and other items that had belonged to the Mowery's were still in the house. Jerry Mowery, the son, had removed everything he had wanted to keep and told us we could have anything left in the house and barns. A few beautiful antique pieces of furniture, three fireplaces with ornate mantles and crystal door knobs. What a beautiful place! I guess, if you're not looking for something to be haunted, you make up explanations for strange things that occur in the beginning. I know I did but in private, I thought I was losing my mind at times.

I would have tools that I was working with disappear if I turned my head or left the room. No matter where I’d look, I would not find the paint roller I had just been using a few minutes earlier or the hammer I had used to remove a stray nail from the wall I was painting. Then, just as magically as the items disappeared, they would be back where I left them. I thought I was absent minded with my tools and became very frustrated as the remodelling continued.

During the week, I would go out to the house to do painting or whatever things I could do. My hubby could only work at the house on the weekends so I was pretty much alone out there, except for the kids. My son was six and my baby girl was three years old. I would drop my son off at school and go to the house to work until time to pick him up in the afternoon. In thinking back now, my daughter would talk about people she had talked to at the old house. I just figured she had a vivid imagination at three years old and didn’t think anything about it. I remember her telling me about the old man at the barn or the old woman working in the flower beds outside.

Then, there was this door to the right of the fireplace in the dining room. It was a closet with shelves and hooks where an old coat, hat and apron hung on the door that opened. Numerous times that door would be open when I went through the room, then be closed when I came back through. I didn’t think a thing about it at that time. The thought never occurred that someone who had passed away could be doing it.

As time progressed and the house became near completion, I begin noticing the coat, hat or apron would sometimes not be hanging there. I’d search the floor of the closet to see if anything had fallen off the hooks and would find nothing. The real shocker was when we completed our renovations and I began cleaning up the place. I wanted to paint the insides of the closets and put down shelf paper in the closets that had shelves in them…….like the one in the dining room that also held the coat, hat and apron.

There was also an old tool box with an assortment of very old tools inside. It was clear that Mr. Mowery had kept his tools in good order as none contained any rust or dirt. The closet was full of spider webs, dust and odds and ends that people store up throughout the years. Jars of canned goods, bars and bars of this old timey soap called, Oxydol with Lye. I figured she must have used that for doing the laundry or cleaning. Heaven knows I wouldn’t want to use lye in my bath!

I dragged all the unusable stuff and toss them into a large trash can and carried the things I thought were worth keeping onto the shelf on the back, screened-in porch. After using my vacuum to clear out all the webs and dirt, I gave the closet a good coat of paint. I wanted to get another coat on before I put down my pretty floral shelf paper but knew it would have to wait until the following day because I had to pick up my son at school. I left the door to the closet opened when I left that day and honestly didn’t think about it when I returned the next day and the door was closed. It did not dawn on me that anything was out of the ordinary as I opened the door to begin painting the closet again.

As I pulled open the door, I was startled by something that kind of rustled and moved when the door was pulled opened. I jumped back as if I had seen a mouse or snake. The real fear set in when I saw the coat, hat and apron hanging in their old place on the door of the closet. It was time to pick up my son at school and meet my husband at the house to measure the doors and windows for new trim. I pondered how I could get out of going back in that house without giving my husband this crazy story.

I could think of nothing to tell him and I knew that I would have to face my fear sooner or later. I also knew that I would never be able to go into that house after dark for as long as we owned the place. I was scared I might see something that would make my foolish fear of ghosts be known to the world. It amazes me to this day how my husband was never aware of my real fear of that place.

Following the closet scare, nothing more happened during the renovation of the house. I was grateful for that but I was still on my guard. I watched for anything out of the ordinary.

Not much time passed before things began to happen. We were on the eve of Christmas and I had the house decorated to the hilt. Since it was so cold and we did not have the insulation upstairs, we usually kept the doors from the foyer closed into the living room and downstairs master bedroom. There were times when we used the fireplace for ambience; we had to open the living room door because it would get too hot.

It was on this particular, late afternoon that I had the fireplace going and the door into the foyer from the living room open. Afternoon drifted into evening and it began to get dark outside. I plugged in the outside Christmas lights and the children and I sat on the sofa in the living room watching, "It's A Wonderful Life," on television. Both the children fallen asleep by the time the movie had ended. The grandfather clock in the hallway chimed the hour was eleven in the evening. . .

From my position on the sofa, I could only see into the foyer if I turned my head to the right. I could see reflections of lights in the foyer from my peripheral vision. Our family poodle, Sugarbabe, jumped onto the sofa and curled up beside my daughter. I went to the kitchen and thought I heard my hubby’s truck pull into the driveway in front of the house. I had just turned off the kitchen light and entered the living room when I heard the front door open and caught a glimpse of someone going past the living room door.

I walked on over to the sofa and sat down beside the children, wondering why my hubby would be going upstairs. I know I heard the footfalls on the steps as he went up the stairs because Sugar’s head followed the sound on the living room wall as the sound of the footfalls went up to the landing . I figured he may have had a present for me that he did not want me to discover until Christmas day so I just sat there on the stairs and waited for him to come back down to join us. I waited and waited and waited.........at least fifteen minutes passed and I was beginning to wonder why he had not joined me in the living room.

I stepped into the foyer and looked upstairs. It was dark upstairs, he had not turned on the landing light. I called to him a couple of times and he did not answer. I finally decided to ease up the steps more and yell, thinking he could not hear me from where I stood. It occurred to me as I called to him again, the dust on the second landing steps was still there. Since we didn’t use the upstairs, I only dusted the first landing stairs. I stopped and yelled louder to him. I noticed my shoes left prints in the dust on the steps but there were no other prints from where he had gone up before me. It took a moment for my brain to grasp this but the reality hit me hard and I was enveloped with fear like I had never felt.

I turned and ran down the steps as fast as I could, slipping on the bottom step and landing on my hiney on the foyer floor. I jumped up, ran into the living room, slammed the door. I could not think. The dead silence was broken by the sound of my hubby’s truck pulling into the driveway.

By this time, I was on my feet and in his arms trying to tell him what had just happened. I begged him to look on the stairs and see where my lone footprints marred the dusty steps. I knew there was no person upstairs because there were no footprints in the dust but I wanted him to check the upstairs all the same. Of course, he found nothing. Only my footprints in the dust.

I don’t know if he believed me or not but I know what I experienced and I know it was not my imagination. Needless to say, I no longer wanted to live in the house. ~~~

Do you think there could be any ghosts still lingering around that site???