The Baumhoff House
Two years after we moved in to our new house, a house my father and mother had built on property owned by my ancestors, my Catholic father called Holy Trinity Parish and asked if a priest could come do a blessing. It seemed very obvious to me, my dad and my brother too, that Peter Thoma (my great-great-long deceased grandfather) had taken up residence. The verdict was still out for my mother and sisters. He wasn’t a scary ghost. He was just kind of being an asshole. He’d move things. My brothers skis… the dusting supplies… my dad’s rosaries.
The priest came and left behind a vile of holy water. I wasn’t there for the blessing. In fact, I didn’t even know about it until much later. I’m not sure why they thought protecting me from knowing that getting rid of ghosts was less scary than talking about them being in the house. I was twelve.
Over the course of the next ten years things were calm. Yet, I never did feel entirely comfortable in my own home. I’d bolt up the basement steps every time I did laundry, convinced that one of my childhood dolls stored below them would reach out and grab my ankle. And, I was always, for some reason, anxious when I was home alone. We lived in the country. I’d always triple check the lock on the sliding door in the dining room, convinced that someone or some THING was always lurking. When you look out at cornfields in the dark, it’s not hard for the mind to wander.
By age 19, I had moved out and in to my first apartment. For two years I enjoyed college life away from my parents. But by age 21, still going to school and completely inept at managing my life, I moved back in. By this time, my parents, enjoying their freedom (I had left them an empty nest), had re-arranged the bedrooms. My mother had moved out of the room she shared with my father and in to my old room. She had also moved the bunk beds I shared with my sister in to my brother’s old room. That’s where I’d end up… at 21, sleeping on a bunk bed in my parent’s house. Winning!
One night, about a year later, I went out with my friend Val. I don’t exactly recall where, but if it was Val it was probably a bar where she downed at least six beers and I nursed one. After what I’m sure was a terrific night out, where Val would be asked to dance 18 times by cute guys and I’d watch, we left. I was always the designated driver, back before that was a thing. I crawled in to bed on the top bunk and closed my eyes about 2:30am.
I’m guessing I’d been asleep for an hour when I felt my dog on my bed. He was small, but the weight of him moving around by my feet was enough to wake me. I sat up and snapped “Ashes, go lay down.” With a swoosh of my arm, I pushed him off the bed. In an instant, I realized what I’d done and gasped. I’d essentially thrown a 12-pound toy poodle terrier mutt off the top of a bunk bed. I looked over to see if he was all right. Shockingly, he was okay. He lightly hopped towards the closet and seemed to disappear. I was confused. Still getting my bearings. Then I gasped again. “Wait. What?” Then I remembered. I was on the top bunk. How’d he get up here? And more importantly, Ashes had been dead for four years.
My head started to reel. I was leaning over the edge of the bed and it was at this point I saw her. The lady. It all seemed to happen in slow motion. My eyes found her feet. I could barely see them peeking out from under her long skirt. She wore black boots - the old-timey kind, with laces. Her skirt was full. It seemed dark. Maybe blue. There was a bit of light coming in the window helping me to see, but not enough to see clearly. She must have been wearing a bustle. Her top was the same color as her skirt. It was a dress. One of those turn of the 19th century dresses. Finally, my eyes met hers. She was smiling. Just smiling. Her pale skin and dark hair piled on top of her head was lovely. For a brief moment I felt comforted. But she was not alive. And in an instant, the smile that seemed warm and welcoming was the most frightening I had ever seen. She held out her arms to me.
I closed my eyes. I shook. I screamed, “Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave. Me. Alone!” I opened my eyes. She was gone. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught my clock radio. It was flashing. 12:00am. Yes, a clock radio. I’m that old.
I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I grabbed a blanket and went downstairs to try and sleep on the couch in the family room. I didn’t wake my parents. I’d tell them what happened in the morning. Maybe it wasn’t Peter, after all. Maybe it was his wife. God, what was her name? I can never remember. By morning, I was barely able to tell them what happened. I had other things to worry about. I couldn’t move. I was so overcome with fear that my body had shut down. My arms were heavy. Paralyzed almost. For three days I lay on the couch unable to use my legs without an assist from my mother.
My mother, the nurse, decided I had some odd strain of flu. After she died I found her report cards. She was a B/C student. Flu, my ass. I had no other symptoms. That ghost did this. My dad supported me and doused the house with another round of holy water.
For weeks I slept in the family room until my mother gave the ultimatum, “move back to your brother’s room (she could never call it mine) or move out.” I went back to the room and, without incident, survived another two years. With my act finally together (well as together as it can be at 24) I moved in to my own apartment.
It wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I had another experience. My mom was dead. My dad had moved in to a retirement community. I was left to keep the house clean between showings. My dad wasn’t well enough to do the work and my siblings all lived out of state. I’d have to go in alone. I hated it. Every time, I hated it.
One afternoon, while cleaning the dead flies out of the windowsills (the house always had an Amityville Horror level of flies in and around its windows), I smelled something strange. Was it incense? It smelled kind of like the incense from the church that they used over the coffin where my dead mother lay. Or was it smoke? I couldn’t tell. It was simply unfamiliar. It scared me. I gasped. Again. I knew my mom was here.
She and I had a tumultuous relationship, especially near the end. I was certain that if she really had come back, she wasn’t here to communicate “I miss you!” but rather, “I told you I’d haunt you, and here I am”. She was always threatening that she’d haunt us. “If you don’t clean up your room, I’m going to haunt you when I’m dead and gone,” she’d say.
I had a lot of pent up anger and so unleashed on her for the next 30 minutes. With that mysterious smell still wafting in the air, I grabbed my purse and got the hell out. I needed to get away from her and that horrible haunted house. As I opened my car door, I noticed Mr. Scholten across the street, waving at me. I waved back, “Hi Mr. Scholten!” And then noticing something really important, it all made sense. I laughed. “What a great day for a barbecue! I can smell it over here.”
I wasn’t talking to my dead mother. I was talking to dead meat.
This ghostly encounter surely made me second guess the first. There’s always an explanation, right? But as much as I try to rationalize it, I always come back to… if I had the flu, why didn’t I have a fever? And, I’d grown up with ghost stories. I mean my aunt was sitting in a room when a thimble just floated past her and occasionally she’d get pelted with buttons when no one was home. And while, sure, I was talking to the smell from a barbecue wondering if it was my dead mother, it was one of the most healing and cathartic one-sided conversions I’ve ever had.
Maybe my mom was there. Maybe she was saying, not, “I miss you” or “I want to haunt you,” but rather, “You know what, Teresa, you were right. There was a lady. I know her now. Her name was Catherine. And we’ll both be here waiting for you… with open arms.”
