It was 2:00 in the morning and I was just starting to fall asleep after spending an anxious hour tossing and turning when I heard the noise behind the left side of my head.
It wasn’t a terribly menacing noise–it was simply a sound like several glass bottles clinking together. It struck me as the sound someone would make if they were rooting around in a glass recycling bin. Not a big deal, except…I was staying in a reportedly haunted house with no glass recyclables anywhere on the premises.
I was terrified and spent the next two hours trying to talk myself into not being scared.
I don’t believe in ghosts, but when it’s 2:00 in the morning and I hear an unexplained noise when I’m trying to sleep in an allegedly haunted house, I definitely have big feelings about ghosts.
I assumed the lighthouse where we would be staying would reportedly be haunted (it’s a lighthouse afterall) but I did try to avoid learning about its haunted reputation before our stay. I gave my family instructions: “Don’t tell me anything about how the lighthouse is haunted until after we’ve left.” I studiously avoided mentions of the lighthouse hauntings and ghosts on the internet when I was looking up touristy information.
Once we got to the lighthouse, (Sherwood Point in Door County), I overheard my nephew and his wife reading aloud from the guest diary about the paranormal shenanigans that previous guests recorded. I didn’t hear anything too scary, in fact, the most reported ghost, Minnie, was the assistant lighthouse keeper who died in the house from a stroke (so no foul play, phew!) and she mostly just made noises. She had even been known to clean up after guests. But just the possibility that there was any type of a ghost (even Casper) where I was staying was enough to prime me for some nighttime scaries. (I was already inclined toward them so it didn’t take much).
The first of our three nights in the lighthouse was uneventful, but the second night felt spooky as we sat outside around the fire. I can’t quite remember if anything in particular created a creepy vibe, but I got freaked out when I saw my toddler great niece making jazz hands at the light house light–I thought she was waving at something only she could see. (Eventually I realized she was trying to “turn on” the light, an adorable trick she learned from her grandpa).
My brother and I were the last ones hanging out at the fire, and when I went inside, my nephew looked a little spooked. Something eerie had happened, but he respected my wishes and didn’t give me details.
In retrospect, maybe I should have asked to hear the story that night, because when I learned about it the next day, it didn’t seem too menacing. My family had been in the living room, when they heard a loud noise from the kitchen. When my nephew went to the kitchen to investigate, he found a box of graham crackers that had been on top of the refrigerator lying on the floor several feet from the refrigerator. Nothing else was moved or disturbed, and the box had been in the middle of several other boxes. So maybe Minnie just wanted a snack, and who could blame her? (In Buddhism, Taoism and Chinese folk religions “hungry ghosts” have insatiable spiritual and/or emotional hunger–graham crackers might at least help with a literal hunger). I don’t think I’ll ever encounter graham crackers again without thinking about Minnie.
Whatever Minnie may or may not have been up to, in the middle of the night, rationality and logic had no sway over me. I. Was. Scared. And I was extra ridiculous because my bed was in a little room without a door, and I just felt like I could NOT lie with my back to the doorway. Even then, I knew that made no sense, because if there was a ghost, why would it be stopped by a door?
Obviously, I survived the night with no disastrous consequences and only some sleep deprivation. We had a great family vacation and escaped with our bodies, souls, and graham crackers intact. In retrospect, any paranormal experiences we had just make great fodder for the family tales we’ll tell again and again.
I still don’t believe in ghosts, but my brain and my body and my heart aren’t always (ever?) in agreement, so I’m sure it won’t be long before I’m afraid of something supernatural again (I’m admittedly getting a little spooked just writing this and I hope Chad is home soon). And it does give me pause to have learned since my sleepless, freaked out night when I heard the sound of glass items banging against each other, that one of the reported lighthouse paranormal phenomenon is the sound of glassware tinkling together (okay, this “glassware” seems to be teacups, not bottles, but still…).
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