Filling in for Angela and Brian this week is Antaeus, an AMAZING writer and storyteller who has placed SEVERAL times in the WritersWeekly 24-Hour Short Story Contest. Thanks, Antaeus!

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When we lived in New Jersey, my wife, Judy, and I restored a 160-year-old house. It had a fieldstone foundation, plaster-and-lath walls, old cloth-covered wiring, and no insulation.

Our realtor told us (under disclosure) that the former owner had cats running all over the place. She said that when he died, they removed 30 cats and placed them up for adoption. She also said that the neighbors said the house was haunted. We weren’t looking for a 160-year-old house, but it felt warm and inviting, so we bought it.

A month after we moved in, we started restoring the basement. The fieldstone was about three feet thick, and the support beams sat on top of them. I found five cat skeletons on top of the foundation between the beams. Evidently, cats had crawled up there to die. We buried them properly under a large oak.

Often, after I gutted a room, we would hear meowing for hours that night. Our three cats would prowl the house looking for whatever was meowing.

One time, when I took down the plaster from a wall, I came across a rat skeleton nailed to the 2×4. That made my hair stand on end. When I went to remove it, it crumbled in my hands.

There were also quite a few times when we were watching TV, and a semi-transparent cat would walk through the room. Our three cats would go ballistic and fluff to the max. At first, we got goosebumps and freaked out, but after a while, it became just part of everyday life.

This went on for about three years before it stopped.

There was something about that house that we couldn’t explain. Whatever it was, it was benign, because we never felt physically in danger.

As we tore down and rebuilt more of the house, the meowing and ghostly visits became less and less frequent. When the reconstruction was finished, everything stopped.

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The first of our cats to die was Mushmouse. We buried her under the oak, wrapped in her favorite blanket. Mushmouse’s ghost traipsed through the house a few times after that. The other two cats did not react to her presence. We supposed she was saying goodbye.

The next cat to pass was Iggy. We were asleep when she came into our bedroom and howled. My wife sat with her the entire night. In the morning, she was gone. She, too, was buried under the oak, and would come to visit every so often.

The last to go was my boy Hobbit, my stubborn-headed best friend. After he died, we buried him between Mushmouse and Iggy under the oak.

Hobbit refused to go and hung around for a long time. We would see him out of the corner of our eyes walking through the house many times after he left. Tail up, chest out, just like when he was alive.

Three months after he died, my wife was closing the door to the spare bedroom, Hobbit’s favorite place to hang out, when she felt like she hit something with the door as it was closing. When she looked, there was nothing there.

A year later, we were still grieving for our pets. One morning, I walked out on the back porch and found three abandoned kittens sitting there. They all ran up to me and began climbing my leg. We gave them food and water, and waited for the mother to return. She never did, so we took them in.

Were they Mushmouse, Iggy, and Hobbit coming back to us? We will never know, but those three kittens filled a hole in our hearts.

EDITOR’S NOTE:

Angela’s beloved (and very old) dog, Baysha, died while being babysat by Angela’s mother. One of Angela’s sons had come into the room crying that morning, saying he dreamed that Baysha had died. Angela picked up the phone and called her mother. Sure enough, Baysha was gone.

Three days later, after the children had left for school, and the house was quiet, Angela walked to the bottom of the back stairs after hearing an odd sound coming from near the top of the stairs. At that time, they were living in a house in Maine that had been built in 1896. That was the same home that was haunted by a young boy spirit named Jonathan.

So, Angela walked to the bottom of the stairs, and right then, Baysha’s favorite type of ball (with a bell inside), came tumbling down the stairs, landing at Angela’s feet. Baysha never came to visit again after that, but Angela knew that Baysha had come to say goodbye.

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Antaeus is the author of the Charlie’s Tavern series, where the ghosts speak plainly, and the living rarely listen. You can contact him here: http://www.Antaeus-Books.com

Antaeus is an award-winning author of “The Prepared Citizen,” a situational awareness series. Raised in an inner city, Antaeus began working at age seven. He wrote his first poem at nine while cleaning toilets in a bar. Antaeus was a high school dropout at thirteen, working full-time to help support his family. At seventeen, he joined the Navy, where he finished his education. As a civilian, Antaeus spent most of his life working his butt off at a job he hated. Now comfortably retired, Antaeus volunteers his time and writes from a lakefront home in Southwest Florida.

Antaeus is also the first place winner of the WritersWeekly.com Spring, 2024 24-Hour Short Story Contest! Read his winning story here.

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