Update on that Haunted House

My grandmother has been on the tip of my nose as of late-yes a little more than usual, because, she my aunt and uncle have been in rare form lately. I always wonder if my family has a sense of etiquette and feel I am unworthy of that, or they just simply don’t. They group family up into two categories, those they deem worthy and those they do not. I don’t think the worthy group gets treated the same way…but I could be wrong.
Her latest is calling me up hysterical saying “Oh, I thought you had the baby and didn’t tell me!”
“Why?”
“Why?!? Because it’s close to your time! That’s why!”
Then my aunt gets on the phone and starts quizzing me about names:
“Do you have a name yet?”
“No.”
I won’t go there. They hate every name I pick. When I named my daughter Adrianna Maria, they asked why didn’t I pick a girl’s name that people knew like “Mary Alice”? When I named my son Francisco Augustine, they went on and on how they never heard a name like that. They would ask family “you like that name Fernando Augustina she picked for the baby?” With another boy, I wanted Maximilian (my husband vetoed it) and they told me I couldn’t name the baby that because kids will make fun of him and it’s a “Jew name?” What? The things they say! I know we are going back a few generations with these people to another time, but…actually, I don’t even know. When I named my daughter Felicity Rose, they said I must have picked Felicity after the girl in the picture (the TV show Felicity), and why didn’t I name her Mary because she was born on Immaculate Conception? I said I did. I named her Felicity Rose-the Rose is after the Rosa Mystica. “The wha’? I don’t know what you’re sayin’.”
A few months ago my grandmother said I should picks a saint’s name. I told her I’ll keep that in mind.
To continue the above conversation, “you need to name the baby after your uncle, he’s good to you.”
“I have to go now.”
So, as harsh as it sounds, I think it takes a special level of incredible self-absorption to live in such a creepy, haunted house and never, ever notice the dang place is in the very least, a bit odd.
Update Story
I think I mentioned previously, in my grandmother’s apartment, there is a back hallway that leads to the bathroom and the three bedrooms. In this hallway there is a “hotspot”. You have to go through it if you want to go to the bedroom. I think I mentioned how one time out the crack of bedroom door, I thought my grandmother walked by, and when I opened the door all the way, she wasn’t there.
A few months ago, we were visiting. My oldest was in the middle bedroom, lying on the bed, and doing nothing (as teenagers are quite good at). The bedroom door was open behind her. In front of her was a TV that was not on. She was looking in the TV.The rest of the family was congregating in the dining room. As she was looking in the off television, she saw a figure of a tall, older man walk down the hall past the door. She heard the footsteps go directly to the back room and heard part of a conversation with a man’s voice. The only older gentleman that was in attendance that day was my Uncle Jimmy, who does not fit that description, but still she had to check. Uncle Jimmy was not of course in the back room, but was perched at his usual spot at the head of the dining room table where he has always sat during family get-togethers, at least in my lifetime.
She walked into the dining room, as white as she had seen a ghost-pun intended. She started stammering “I just heard…or saw…I never believed you…I just…”
“Tell me later.”
Everyone who has stayed at this house cannot walk down that hallway. My husband who never had a single thought about things ghostly or paranormal will not stay there. He said he never believed in ghosts, not that he was a skeptic, but again, it was a topic not on his radar until going to my grandmother’s. His description of going down that hallway is not only the same as everyone’s but kind of funny: “You have to go to the bathroom, but you don’t want to because you have to go down that hallway. You finally get the courage up to go, and you practically run because you feel someone is looking at you or right behind you…so you don’t look up either because you don’t want to see anything. You finally run into the bathroom and close the door. When you are doing your business, you spend the whole time staring at the door knob because you know whoever was there is going to start jiggling the door knob.”
Recently my brother, the Marine, was home for break at Christmas to New Year’s. He relayed a story of standing in that bedroom, this time not looking at the TV, but just through the door. A tall, older man walked by. He kept the story to himself because he thought there must be a more rational explanation, until Dree told hers.
I was amazed when they compared stories, the degree of details they had about the man-he was wearing a coat, outdated fashion, but not too old. Somewhere between the 40s and 60s period. He was older, but not as old as our uncle-in his 40s.
They would never allow Ghost Hunters to come investigate. I doubt they would find anything, because many of us have been there numerous times without such extreme sightings. Jason would tell us all that when we walk down that stretch of hallway, everyone in the world that goes there suffers from an over-active imagination-even if we do not anywhere else in the world.