What Only a Child Can See

In 1995, my husband, young son, and I moved into a duplex off-base in Altus, Oklahoma. I didn't see a ghost, hear voices, etc. but there are several things that happened in the year we lived there, mostly centered around my son, that still bother me to this day.

Nothing was obviously wrong with the place, but little things started to add up. The dishwasher leaked--except when someone came to try to fix it. A microwave a month old just stopped working. Some nights I would be in bed still awake and hear a faint noise, like a tapping or dripping sound, over the baby monitor. At least twice I got up to check it out. Once I got to his room, everything was fine. One night, he woke up very agitated, so I took him back to bed with me. My husband left very early in the morning for work, so it was just the two of us when I woke up. I was facing the wall, and my son was lying in the middle of the bed. I could hear him making little sounds, and I turned over to say good morning. He was staring straight up, seemingly at something above him, with his hands in the air opening and closing his hands like he did when someone reached to pick him up. As soon as that thought hit me: "he sees something that is reaching for him," I grabbed him and took him out of the room. I later dismissed it as overactive imagination.

A few months later my husband's parents came to stay the weekend with us. We had them take our room, and we slept in our son's room. That night, our son woke up crying, which woke me up. I took him out of his crib to try to comfort him back to sleep, but it wasn't working. He was getting more upset the more I tried to soothe him. He finally got to the point that he could barely breath he was screaming so hard---it was the worst sound. These were screams that came from the pit of his stomach and nothing could calm him. I thought maybe he was having a nightmare (but do babies have nightmares?), so I turned on all of the lights, laid him on the floor, and tried to talk to him, tried to get him to open his eyes and see me, but he just kept screaming. Finally, I said, "something is definitely wrong with him. I don't know what, but I want to get him out of here and to the hospital." My husband agreed. We picked him up and started to grab our coats, when my son just stopped. He looked around, and even tried to get down to go play--he was fine. It made no sense.

One night we were all sitting watching TV, when my husband suddenly said "Jen, what is he doing?" I looked at my son who was sitting at the end of our couch. He turned around and looked into the kitchen, then looked back at me and my husband. He turned and looked back into the kitchen again, then back to us. "He's been doing that for about 10 minutes now," my husband told me. I thought maybe the mop leaning beside the refrigerator had caught his attention. I had my husband take him into the kitchen and ask him what he was looking at. He didn't point to the mop. He pointed straight ahead toward the back of the kitchen. My husband began to walk towards the back wall, and my son kept pointing straight--above the sink toward the window. As they got closer, my son's finger started to drop from straight ahead lowering toward the floor. My husband gave me a concerned look and took our son out of the kitchen. My husband was getting very uneasy, but surely there had to be a logical explanation. I took our son back into the kitchen--he was holding on so tight his little hands were white-- but I tried to put him down in the kitchen to see if he would show me what he was looking at. As soon as his little feet hit the floor he tried to bolt from the room. I took him back to the living room and sat with him on the couch. I tried to put him down on the floor in front of me. He wouldn't have any of that either--he grabbed back onto me and wouldn't let go. My husband and I kept looking at each other trying to figure out what was going on with him, when my son's gaze finally shifted from the kitchen. It appeared that he was watching something that we could not see moving slowly from the kitchen, through the dining room, and stop in front of the hall closet. That was it. I picked him up and said I'd had it and I wanted to leave, NOW. Again, as soon as I said I wanted to leave the house, my son was instantly fine again. He wanted down and to play. We left for awhile anyway. I had to get out.

Then, the episode when my son began screaming inconsolably happened again. It was the second time our in-laws came to stay with us and we slept in his room. When those stomach-pit screams began again, he wouldn't open his eyes, and he couldn't be comforted, I again said that I wanted to take him out of the house. Yet again, as soon as I said it out loud, he stopped.

Since he couldn't talk then, I never knew what it was that made him scream that way. I've never asked him if he remembers that house--surely he was too young. I probably will never know if there was anything in that house, or if it was just coincidence. If there was something there, it did not like us being in his room, but did not want my young son to be taken out of the house, either. I do know that after we moved out, I never heard drips or taps over the baby monitor, I never heard my son scream like that ever again, and he never watched something that we could not see move across a room.