Saturday, June 13, 2015

Missouri Hills

I have had tours that were completely made up of visitors from Texas, but I rarely have a lot of people from Missouri. Tonight was an exception, as almost half the group was from Missouri. Most of them were from the same family and their grandmother had a prize family story about a house she and her family had lived in over forty years ago.

The house was out in the hills. When she moved in with her husband and kids the landlord asked if she was going to stay. She said she planned too. He couldn't get anyone to stay for more than a few months. The day they moved in they heard a radio playing really low. She figured it was some kids down the lane, the closest neighbor. But when she and her husband got into bed later that night, he said "If you're going to listen to the radio, turn it up." She told him they had not unpacked a radio. Later he investigated the attic, no radio anywhere.

Routinely she turned off all the lights when she left in the morning. At the end of the day she would drive up the hill and the lights on the second floor of the house would be on. In the back seat her kids would say, "Mom, hurry up. See, we have visitors upstairs in the window."

One night a friend stayed over. When he came to breakfast in the morning he was shaking. He told her he would never come there again. She asked him what was wrong. A woman had woken him in the night and asked if he wanted a drink. He gladly got up and went to the kitchen. There was no one.

They managed to stay in the house for a year, but they finally did find the activity too unsettling. After they moved the house burned down.