As one of the most alleged spiritually active days of the year approaches, a Tebbetts woman reflects on her encounter with a ghostly being that has inhabited her home since the late 1970s.
In the late 70s, a Tebbetts resident had just moved into her home, which was thought to be more than 100 years old. She didn't receive a "warm' welcome, either, as she quickly began to notice she and her husband were not alone.
The woman, who asked to remain anonymous and to be called Marie, recalled her first uncanny encounter with her unworldly house guest. Marie said that was sitting on her sofa with her back against big double windows that face her front porch.
"I heard a little girl skipping rope and singing, and you could hear the rope going through the air," Marie said. "You could hear her little feet hitting the front porch, and she was just going "la-la-la-la-la-la' type of thing. Well, there aren't any kids that lived even at that time - there weren't any kids around."
Marie glanced out the window and saw nothing. Curious as to what she heard, she went outside and looked around her house and still did not find the cause of the sounds. When Marie's husband came home, she told him what she had heard and he laughed.
"Neither of us believed in ghosts," Marie admitted. "He laughed and he said, "I guess we have a ghost.' I laughed and I said, "Yeah, I guess. I don't know who it could be.'"
About three weeks after, Marie saw something else she could not explain in her home.
"The curtains on the windows would ... let me say to put those curtains up, you'd have to get up on a ladder or chair because they're high up, and they'd become unhooked on one side and they'd just be kinda hanging cockeyed on the windows and it'd happen in one room," Marie explained. "Well, the next day, we'd come home from work and after we had fixed that, it might be in another room."
The same strange occurrences continued in three other rooms for another three weeks.
"Every once in a while the shades would just go up for no accord and then it stopped and nothing happened for a long, long time," Marie said.
After the incident with the curtains, she and her husband thought something wasn't right.
"We started thinking, "Well, maybe this ghost thing is real,'" Marie said.
Marie kept an open mind about the possibility of her home being haunted as time passed and she continued to experience the inexplicable.
One evening she was at sitting at the dining room table alone while working on a project.
"I see some movement out of the corner of my eye, and I look up and a little blonde-haired girl, about 6 or 7 years old, floated passed the door," Marie recalled. "Her eyes were closed, and I think she had a ribbon in her hair ... I could do a painting of it honest to God. She was solid until you got down just a little bit below the waist, and then she was just mist."
Marie said the apparition was wearing an ivory-colored dress with little puffed sleeves, and that the dress could have been from any era for a child that age.
"It didn't scare me, but I went in looking for her and obviously could not find her," Marie said. "She just disappeared, but she floated right by that (front) door."
Whatever Marie saw was not afraid or shy to make itself known during the day, either. One morning she was sitting on her sofa and she had her feet propped up on her coffee table while drinking a cup of coffee and reading a book.
"I hear this little "ca-chink-ca-chink-ca-chink' and I thought, "What is that?' and I look and this button has fallen onto my coffee table out of thin air," she said.
Marie recognized the button but could not recall where she had seen it. She later determined the button was from the last dress in the back of her closet.
"This actually happened twice but with different buttons," she said. "It happened with a little white button again after that."
Marie asserted that there was "no way' the button could have stuck to the bottom of her foot because of the location, and insisted the object must have fallen from a distance.
The ghostly interactions continued, as Marie recalled a time shortly after that she was putting on makeup in the bathroom and heard voices emanating from the "den' room.
"I walk into the den and the TV set is coming on, and I'm standing there looking at the TV set," she explained. "I look about 5 feet away and lying on the sofa is my remote control lying there all by itself and the TV set starts changing channels."
Marie called her sister, expressing disbelief as she described what she had witnessed. Her sister told her, "I think you're being visited."
Marie said the erratic channel changing persisted for five or six minutes until she turned the TV off.
The ghost seemed to like books, too, as one of the latest haunting in the past few months involved some books that inexplicably fell off Marie's piano.
"There was no physical way they could've done it without help because of the way they were propped up on a slant and they were out in the middle of the room," Marie said.
Marie shared more spooky details of her seemingly permanent house guest. Over time, Marie realized that most of the weird noises and sightings occurred shortly after a child - similar in age to the ghostly little girl - has been in her house. Marie is also not the only person to have experienced some type of paranormal activity. Workers from the neighbor's house allegedly saw a rocking chair on Marie's front porch swaying by itself on a calm day with no wind. Marie also knew an elderly woman who inhabited the residence before she did who also claimed to have experienced something bizarre.
"While she (the previous occupant) was here by herself, I can remember her calling my mother one night asking my mother to stay with her because she kept seeing faces," Marie said.
Marie also said she talked to another woman who was a child at the time she lived there. Marie asked her if she had seen anything weird happen and divulged what happened.
"She said one time she was in one of the rooms and her mother was standing there talking to her and she said she looked up and the mother didn't see, but there were things flying through the air," Marie said.
Despite the daunting activity Marie has experienced living in the Tebbetts home, she does not believe the spirit - or whatever "it' is - has malicious intentions. Although she claims to be visited by the presence of one little girl, she does not deny the possibility of more entities based on her sister's experience in the home.
"I got home (from work) and she said, "I got really spooked out!' She said she was in one room trying to sleep and she said, "I keep hearing these women talking, and I could hear them carrying on a conversation, but I couldn't understand what they were saying. It was really weird!' I laughed and said, "I know, I've been hearing it, too!"
Although Marie or her sister were unable to distinguish what the women were saying, it seemed like they were in another room talking, as she could hear the murmuring of their voices.
Marie is no longer a skeptic of the supernatural and believes she shares her old home with a friendly ghost.
"I'm an educated person, but I have always felt like the human beings were presumptuous to think they knew everything that happened in the world," Marie said. "Different civilizations for thousands of years have talked about supernatural beings. I didn't really believe in them but after what I've experienced what I've experienced, I do now."
Marie said she has not attempted to contact the spirit, but she was contacted by a member of a paranormal society from Jefferson City that wanted to investigate the property. Marie declined because "she (the spirit) was quiet at the time and I didn't want to get her upset and going again."
Marie said she wants to look into the history of the property and research more previous owners, but she "has never gotten around to doing it."
She told the Sun that she watches paranormal TV shows, although she hates to admit it, "just for grins."
"I think that for the most part they're not real, but when I'm bored stiff I might turn one on," Marie said. "One of the reasons I do is because you can learn a lot of history about places when you do. Do I believe that some of the stories are true? I think that there's been a lot of experiences but as far as the presentation on TV, I think a lot of that is bunk."