The Unknown Existence
I remember each and every chilling tale my parents would tell me. As a child, I always believed that these stories were lessons in behavior and listening to my parents, but I was still scared whenever hearing about them. The moment I mentioned doing an interview with her about haunted places, as her family had quite a few encounters with the paranormal, she looked me in the eye and told me the story of my abuela’s house. A part of family lore I had never known, my abuela’s haunted house.
The Hidden Familial Lore
I sat down at the dinner table eating freshly made stuffed peppers with a side of zucchini and squash, wafting through the air. My parents had already finished dinner and sat on the living room couch. “Hey mom,” I asked, “Do you mind if we do an interview on some of the ghost stories and haunted places your family had told you about? It’s a project for my Dual Enrollment English course.” Without hesitation, she looked me in the eyes and said “okay.” Before she could talk about the stories, I was familiar with, my dad brought up my abuela’s house.
A bit of context— Whenever my family visited Ecuador, we would stay at my abuela’s house with my abuelos, my tíos, and my two cousins. The house itself was an old two-story building with my tiá Carmen’s family running a small restaurant. Compared to the houses in the United States, this house’s foundation was made out of solid concrete.
My mom looks at him in agreement and tells me a tale I had not prepared myself for. My mom explained, “When my mom was really young, there was a lot of crime happening and young girls were getting kidnapped. So, my mom’s family prayed to God for protection over their family. They prayed and they prayed to God, and whenever bad people came and planned to do something to the house or whenever my abuela was leaving to go to school, they would run the other direction and wouldn’t come back.” My mom glanced at a puzzle piece she was holding and added, “We called them ‘La almita.’ I think in English it’s called eh… ‘lost souls in purgatory.’”
While my Tiá Carmen’s family didn’t mind living in my abuela’s house, there was one room that was almost never occupied and often closed. My mom says that “the room is where you could sense ‘La almita’ the most.” The room had become a guest room with two, which I believe are, double sized beds and one twin sized bed. In the room there was one religious crucifix and one or two paintings found on each side of the room’s walls with a one or two rosaries placed near the window. My mom said that “[her] sister doesn’t like that room, neither did Melonie or Alene. Alene told [her] that when she was putting something into the room when her family went to the marketplace. All was fine until something touched her shoulder and she just ran out of the room.”
After putting the puzzle piece down, she went to the kitchen to pour herself a glass of juice and continued. About a year ago in January, my grandfather had a medical emergency, and my mom had to go to Ecuador to ensure he was being taken care of by the medical staff and the appointments. While there, she was staying in that very room and on one of those nights, a sudden knock broke through the silence of the room. The knock came from the wall. This would seem normal. This should be normal. But the wall was made out of solid concrete and would only thud if someone were to knock on it, even with full strength. My mom thought to herself, “probably Alene or [abuela] got up and were walking around.” But when she opened the door to use the bathroom right after the knock, no one was roaming the living room that connected all the rooms nor awake for this to be someone else. “It happened another time in December, after we got back from Deleg,” my dad added. “When you guys were asleep, I heard the knocking again and so did your mom.”
I had my own takes on the house. I found it comforting and welcoming, but the room… It never seemed to sit well with me. I am mostly a sound sleeper and developed the habit of falling asleep the moment I lay down on a mattress, but whenever we stayed in that house, I would have a harder time sleeping in that room. A few times when I was alone trying to cool myself down from Ecuador’s searing heat, I felt like something was there, on my head or my shoulder. It didn’t feel like something was sitting there or even resting. It felt like the pressure of something or someone pushing down its weight on me. I would swipe whatever it was away, sometimes saying, “Not now, please,” and the presence would go away. If not, I would say the “Our Father” prayer aloud and the presence would go away halfway through it. However, this wasn’t when I was a kid though. This was from the summer of last year as my abuelo recently passed away just a few days earlier and we were attending the funeral.
The Dawning Realization
Once the interview ended, I felt a sinking pit in my stomach and a chill running through my spine. I have been told many stories of my parents’ run-ins with the paranormal before as a kid, but I had written them off as coincidence or simple ghost story like most internet users do for views. When looking back at it, it explained my abuela’s heavy devotion to her catholic faith, and with many of the religious trinkets, pictures, and in that room. There will always be somethings that seem off and on until someone dares to ask the question of its existence. So…what’s your inherited shadows?
