Post by Salzmank on Apr 5, 2018 20:12:43 GMT
“Like a Picture-Postcard”
The Loucks House? You mean the one in Corwin, just overlooking the coast? No, nothing. I mean, I spent years and years working there, and if there’s a ghost, I certainly never saw it. Sometimes Linda—Linda was one of the docents—would say she smelled something baking in the kitchen—like apple pie or that kind of smell—but that was pretty much it, except… Well, it’s not a ghost, but there was a spooky experience I had there. Sorta. Yeah, I know after that introduction I have to tell the story, Bill, but I’ll try to make it short.
I was managing the place at the time for the owner, and most of my job was just office-work—pretty much making sure that the museum was kept up and, more importantly, actually took in enough money. I changed the tour route a little bit, but it’s such a small house that I doubt anybody would have even noticed. This thing happened in the middle of the summer—a really, really hot day, not even a sea breeze off the water. Not many people want to come to a colonial house-museum on that kind of day—no air-conditioning—but there was this family that was going on the tour. Real picture-postcard kind of family: mom, dad, two kids (a boy and a girl, maybe twins). You’d expect to see ‘em in the example photo in a picture frame—in front of a house, playing with their dogs, all-American.
I passed by the tour group on my way to the office; Claire Walsh was the docent. I said hello and “welcome to the Loucks House, everyone,” and then went back to the office, not thinking much about it until Claire burst in about an hour later and said the kids had gone missing. I didn’t think I had heard her right: like I said, the house is so small that it’s pretty much impossible to get lost in it. She told me that the kids were with the tour group for most of the time but had been getting a little bored, especially in the heat, and run back to one of the rooms they’d seen before, Mr. Loucks’ study.
Understand that we had another one of our people, Murray, dressed up in colonial attire in the study. Claire and I went to him immediately, and he swore up and down that nobody had come back in the room. We had a docent at each door—nothing. So the kids still had to be in the house. It couldn’t be all that much to worry about.
I tell ya, we tore that place apart from top to bottom—looked in every closet, under every bed, everywhere we could find. There was nowhere in the house they could have gone. I even checked the attic, where they couldn’t have gone without setting off the security alarms, but they weren’t there; and in a fit of—what?—melodrama I even looked fruitlessly for secret panels or anything like that.
The weird thing was that the mother and father never even moved, or cried, or said anything. They stood perfectly still in the hallway, breathing gently. At one point, the father asked us if we’d found anything yet; when I told him that we hadn’t, he and his wife went quiet again. It was the lack of emotion that got me; the rest of the group had left by this point, and we were left with these two, completely unmoved when their kids had gone missing. Weird.
After an hour we gave up. Rationally, I supposed, it was possible that the kids could have been hiding somewhere (but where?), and they had escaped out the door when we went to look for them somewhere else. We decided to call the police but knew that we would have one hell of a time trying to explain this—but, right as Claire had picked up the phone, we heard a whimpering, like the sound made by a small dog. Yes—it was the sound a dog makes, followed by a child's laughter—coming from the attic. I rushed to the stairway and disarmed the alarm, then ran up—and there they were, playing with a puppy, laughing and giggling and smiling.
The mother, grinning, spoke as though the children had been missing only a few moments, not the better part of two hours: “Oh, there you are. Did you get lost?”
Honestly? “Did you get lost?” How on earth could they have gotten lost? The whole thing was like parenting out of the loony bin, and the children were just as unruffled as the parents: “Yes, mommy, but we found this doggy,” said the little girl. The puppy, at the word “doggy,” picked up its ears and ran off—down the stairs and (as Murray, who was downstairs, told me afterwards) out the door. We never saw it again.
“Many thanks for your help,” the father told me, and the whole family set off—picture-postcard again.
But I had checked that attic upside down and backwards, Bill, and God only knows where those children were or what was going on. I don’t know what happened there; all I know for sure is that, for a few months after, we would hear the whimpering of a dog and the laughter of children coming from the attic.
I was managing the place at the time for the owner, and most of my job was just office-work—pretty much making sure that the museum was kept up and, more importantly, actually took in enough money. I changed the tour route a little bit, but it’s such a small house that I doubt anybody would have even noticed. This thing happened in the middle of the summer—a really, really hot day, not even a sea breeze off the water. Not many people want to come to a colonial house-museum on that kind of day—no air-conditioning—but there was this family that was going on the tour. Real picture-postcard kind of family: mom, dad, two kids (a boy and a girl, maybe twins). You’d expect to see ‘em in the example photo in a picture frame—in front of a house, playing with their dogs, all-American.
I passed by the tour group on my way to the office; Claire Walsh was the docent. I said hello and “welcome to the Loucks House, everyone,” and then went back to the office, not thinking much about it until Claire burst in about an hour later and said the kids had gone missing. I didn’t think I had heard her right: like I said, the house is so small that it’s pretty much impossible to get lost in it. She told me that the kids were with the tour group for most of the time but had been getting a little bored, especially in the heat, and run back to one of the rooms they’d seen before, Mr. Loucks’ study.
Understand that we had another one of our people, Murray, dressed up in colonial attire in the study. Claire and I went to him immediately, and he swore up and down that nobody had come back in the room. We had a docent at each door—nothing. So the kids still had to be in the house. It couldn’t be all that much to worry about.
I tell ya, we tore that place apart from top to bottom—looked in every closet, under every bed, everywhere we could find. There was nowhere in the house they could have gone. I even checked the attic, where they couldn’t have gone without setting off the security alarms, but they weren’t there; and in a fit of—what?—melodrama I even looked fruitlessly for secret panels or anything like that.
The weird thing was that the mother and father never even moved, or cried, or said anything. They stood perfectly still in the hallway, breathing gently. At one point, the father asked us if we’d found anything yet; when I told him that we hadn’t, he and his wife went quiet again. It was the lack of emotion that got me; the rest of the group had left by this point, and we were left with these two, completely unmoved when their kids had gone missing. Weird.
After an hour we gave up. Rationally, I supposed, it was possible that the kids could have been hiding somewhere (but where?), and they had escaped out the door when we went to look for them somewhere else. We decided to call the police but knew that we would have one hell of a time trying to explain this—but, right as Claire had picked up the phone, we heard a whimpering, like the sound made by a small dog. Yes—it was the sound a dog makes, followed by a child's laughter—coming from the attic. I rushed to the stairway and disarmed the alarm, then ran up—and there they were, playing with a puppy, laughing and giggling and smiling.
The mother, grinning, spoke as though the children had been missing only a few moments, not the better part of two hours: “Oh, there you are. Did you get lost?”
Honestly? “Did you get lost?” How on earth could they have gotten lost? The whole thing was like parenting out of the loony bin, and the children were just as unruffled as the parents: “Yes, mommy, but we found this doggy,” said the little girl. The puppy, at the word “doggy,” picked up its ears and ran off—down the stairs and (as Murray, who was downstairs, told me afterwards) out the door. We never saw it again.
“Many thanks for your help,” the father told me, and the whole family set off—picture-postcard again.
But I had checked that attic upside down and backwards, Bill, and God only knows where those children were or what was going on. I don’t know what happened there; all I know for sure is that, for a few months after, we would hear the whimpering of a dog and the laughter of children coming from the attic.