Ghost Story: My Grandparents First Home

by Hope
(ON, Canada)

I'm originally from the US, more specifically Virginia. My grandmother told me this when I was young. It always scared the crap out of me because I know my grandmother is not one to make things up.

My grandparents were married in 1942 when my grandmother was only 17. They both were born and raised in southwestern Virginia, in the mountains, and neither were very wealthy. They were very lucky when my grandmother's father found them a place to start their new life together.

The house was old and had been abandoned for a number of years, but when you're young and poor you take what you get. My great grandfather promised my grandfather to help him fix the place up. It was livable though with a good cleaning, so things like loose floor boards, old cabinets and the old chimney could be fixed a bit at a time.

The new couple settled down for their first night in there new home but my grandmother could not sleep. She kept hearing a baby crying. It was faint at first so she thought maybe it was a rabbit that had been caught by an owl but the minute she tried to roll over the sound got louder and more urgent. She couldn't figure out for the life of her where it was coming from. The old house was secluded so their nearest neighbor was a good five miles away. She woke my grandfather who heard it too. He went outside thinking maybe some poor woman had left her baby but they could find nothing. The crying was definitely coming from within the house.

Night after night they were either awakened by the crying or it started before they could even get to sleep. My grandmother went to visit a sick friend of her mother's in town. When the lady made a comment about how tired my grandmother seemed my grandmother said they hadn't been sleeping well in their new house. The lady asked why and my grandmother said that they kept hearing the crying. Her mother's friend asked where the house was. When my grandmother told her she said she went deathly pale.

"Well Ruth.. I know that house. That's a sad house. A family from our church lived there, a young couple with a newborn baby. The man was having a hard time of it. His crops weren't doing well and he had nothing at all to feed his family. They were a proud family and wouldn't take anything. He went hunting one day and was supposed to be back before dark. He never showed up for supper."

"Days and days went by. Then weeks. One Sunday we didn't see the woman and child in church. We went to check on her only to find her dead in her rocker.. the sight was horrible. She had killed herself with her husband's gun leaving a letter saying she thought he had left her leaving her so hungry and alone.... her husband was found dead only a few miles up the mountain the next year. He had broken his leg and been unable to get help. The strange thing was no one ever found that sweet baby."

My grandmother shivered at the story but she wasn't going to let the story scare her away from her home. She went home and went about her day forgetting to tell my grandfather the story. The crying still continued.

About a week later my grandmother had went to stay with her parents to be able to get some rest. She took some dinner to her father and husband the one afternoon and sat and ate with her. They asked her to stay a bit to sweep up while they pulled some old broken bricks from the chimney since it was getting cooler and they knew they would need the fire soon for the heat.

The men pulled a few bricks before my grandfather exclaimed "What the heck is this?" He pulled out a small box about the size of a shoe box. Inside were the tiny charred bones of a baby. My grandmother cried and told the men the story her mother's friend had told her.

The next day they gave the baby a proper burial and never heard the crying again.