As best as I can remember ...

As best as I can remember, I was somewhere between 5 and 6 years old when this took place.

We were living in Kingston when the farming got bad. The way I remember it, the landowner only wanted to let my father have half of the land that he had been farming.

My father found a farm close to White, Georgia, that was a better deal The man who owned the land got disabled, and he told my father he could farm as much as he wanted. So from Kingston we moved to White. The house was huge, with six rooms on the first floor and four on the second floor. My sisters went though and picked out their room. They wanted the second floor. My mother told me I would be on the first floor. I tried to get her to let me sleep on the second floor, but to no avail. I knew that they wanted on the second floor so they could giggle and laugh half the night. You know the way silly little girls do.

Things went good for a while, then bad things began to happen.

It started with me being accused of messing up the girls’ room. They said that they made up their bed and I came up and threw the covers onto the floor. I tried to tell them that I had not done it.

Then, during supper when we all were at the table eating, we heard a noise that sounded like someone was dragging something down the hall. My father got up and went to check. He came back shaking his head. “You girls get up to your room and straighten it up.” They looked at each other, then the oldest girl said, “We cleaned up our room and made up the bed this morning.”

When the girls went up to their room, I followed. I peeped though the door and saw what our father had seen. The covers on the bed were thrown all around the room. I saw them look at me. I began to say, “I didn’t do it” when my oldest sister came over and put her arms around me. The others followed, saying they were sorry they had accused me of messing up their room. They knew this time that I had not been in the room.

Back at the table I listened to them talk about the room and the bed covers thrown onto the floor. At that time I thought it was funny.

That night I went to bed in my room. One of the settees that my father made was in my room. The cushion on it was much softer than the mattress, and I would pull a piece of the covers from the bed and, with a pillow, would sleep on the settee.

I had just gotten asleep when the door opened and my sisters came into the room. They saw me on the settee and one of them whispered, “Can we sleep in your bed? We are afraid to stay in our room.” I said yes, and snickered as they crawled into my bed.

I was awakened the next morning by my mother, who was demanding to know why the girls were in my bed and I was on the settee. She left the room saying, “I will see you young ladies at breakfast.” I sniggered again and she said, “Young man, I will want to know why you are sleeping on the settee instead of the bed.”

It worked out all right. The girls’ bed and stuff was moved downstairs into the empty room. I would sleep on my bed instead of the settee. The door at the top of the stairs would be locked and no one would go there. From that moment on, the upstairs — and the soft settee — were off limits.

But one night I was lying in bed when I heard someone in the hallway. Thinking it was my father, and wanting a drink of water, I got up and looked out into the hall. I saw what I thought was my father go into the kitchen. So I went to the kitchen, where the water bucket was.

Back in those days, the hydrant was on the back porch and at night a fresh bucket of water was brought into the kitchen. There was always a dipper in the bucket. I didn’t see my father in the kitchen so I went over to the bucket and got the dipper full of water. I really don’t know what happened next. I turned the dipper up to take a drink when all the water poured out on me. I took a towel and tried to clean up the water. The front of my clothes were wet. I started back to my room when I thought I saw my father going toward the front of the hall. I couldn’t let him see me wet, so I sneaked back into my room and hung up my clothes to dry. With my birthday suit on, I went back to bed.

The next morning, the subject was why was us kids were running up and down the hall making noise. My mother wanted to know who spilled water in the kitchen. I held up my hand. She never said anything else about the water. I told my father I had seen him in the hall. He assured me that he had not been in the hall at all last night. I wonder even now who I did see.

You could lay awake at night and hear things in that hall. One night at supper we heard something and, thinking it was the dog, my father went to check. He came back and said, “The dog is not in the house.”

Another time, my mother and father had gone over to Cartersville for something and left us kids there alone. It was on a weekend and the crop had been gathered and we knew that they was ready to move out of the house that we were living in. Even though it was cool, us kids were out in the yard. It was starting to warm up and we were out under a tree where my father had placed some of his furniture.

I was rolling a tire around in the front yard when one of my sisters called me. I went to her and she pointed toward the upstairs window. I had rolled the tire before I saw what she was pointing at. The tire rolled down against the front porch and stood up. Nothing on either side to hold it up. There in the window was what looked like an Indian in full headdress. I don’t recall ever playing with that tire again.

We gave our parents a blow by blow as to what we had seen in the window. We were informed that we would be moving from there in a couple of weeks. My mother always said that the house was haunted. I don’t recall that my father ever said anything about it, but I remember that us kids were sure glad that we moved.

Was the house haunted or am I remembering things that didn’t happen? I don’t think I remember anything more clearly down though the years than the man looking out the upstairs window. I can still close my eyes and see him. LONIE ADCOCK Jim Powell of Young Harris