Visiting Aunt Gertie
By Sybrina Hodges
I don’t expect you will believe what I am about to tell you, but as real as I am living and breathing, the following events happened to me – something so terrifying that I have only spoken of it four times over the past twenty-four years. Even as I write these words, just knowing that I will have to talk about her sends chills down my spine.
I was sixteen in the summer of 1987 and like most teenagers in the small town of Hurricane, West Virginia, I liked to hang out at the gazebo in the center of town on the weekends. Excitement rarely occurred at the gazebo, but it was a nice place to congregate with friends. Sometimes we would sneak wine coolers and smoke cigarettes, but for the most part, we just talked about what happened at school that day or talk about so-and-so. One Friday night I was hanging out at the gazebo with a group of older boys. Terry was a year older than I was. He was tall, skinny and his face was covered in acne. His greasy hair hung over his face and large flakes of dandruff were peeking out between the oily strands. His younger brother, Charlie, was a year younger than I was. He was shorter than his brother, Terry, with the same greasy hair and pockmarked face. The only other person present was Alan Porter. He was three years older than I was. Alan was a jolly, heavy-set man with a receding hairline and kind blue eyes. He had a great sense of humor, and he and I could often be found hanging out at the gazebo.
Charlie had acquired some wine coolers, but because of our age, we were unable to consume them at the gazebo and were left trying to figure out a safe place to go in order to drink them without getting into trouble.
“We could go to Aunt Gertie’s,” Alan offered. Terry and Charlie both exchanged a frightened look and promptly stared at their shuffling feet.
“It’s awful late to be going out there. Are you sure it’s safe?” Terry replied. Alan chuckled and began walking to his car.
“It will be okay. She won’t mind. Now get in the car and let’s go!” Alan squeezed his large frame behind the wheel and started his baby blue 1980 Plymouth. Puffs of blue smoke barreled out of the tailpipe as the rusty engine sprang to life, filling the air with the smell of burnt oil and gasoline. Terry called shotgun and Charlie and I got into the backseat. The smell of engine grease and cigarettes permeated the inside of the car. The tattered backseat was filthy but, I didn’t care. I settled in and sat back to enjoy the ride.
“So who’s Aunt Gertie?” I asked as I lit a Winston. I had never heard of her before and assumed she was related to Alan in some way. Alan laughed and Charlie said, “You’ll find out soon enough.” We began to cruise through town at the mind-bending speed of twenty-five mph. Alan turned onto Sycamore Road from Main Street and began heading away from town. Houses of all sorts passed by my vision until all signs of life seemed to fade into the darkness. About five miles outside of town, we reached a span of road that was dark and empty of life. To the left lay a densely wooded area and to the right, a desolate field overgrown with weeds and wildflowers that seemed to go on forever. The car slowed down and we made a right turn onto a long, narrow, gravel driveway. I observed the weeds hitting the car on either side and noticed the center of the road was overgrown as well. It was obvious the driveway was rarely used.
“Who lives here?” I asked suspiciously.
“No one lives here anymore,” Alan said. “I have been taking care of the place for a while now. It’s cool, don’t worry.”
We drove on until we reached the end of the driveway. It was about nine o’clock in the evening and very dark, as there were no street lamps to light our way, only patches of pale moonlight. As Alan parked the car, I took in what surroundings I could see. The driveway ended at the back of the old, white two-story farmhouse. Large trees littered the yard, fingers of tree moss reached toward the damp earth. The house faced the main road; however, I was unable to make out any details of the front of the house. At the back of the house stood a detached garage with peeling, white paint and blacked out windows. Creepy, I thought.
We did not exit the car right away. It seemed as if they were waiting for something and I was getting a little creeped out. The low rumble of the car sounded loud in the night air as I anxiously waited for what would happen next. After we had sat in the driveway for about five minutes, Alan shut off the engine and exited the car. The rest of us followed. The house was dark and ominous, staring out at the world as if in defiance of some unknown slight. The place had such a sinister quality to it, and the heavy atmosphere began to make me uneasy. No one said a word, which was odd to me. The only sound was that of our feet crunching on the limestone gravel as we made our way to a door at the back of the house. Cheap, flimsy curtains covered the paint-splattered windows. The old, wooden back door had a large window that required another cheap curtain to cover it. After inserting the key and turning the lock, Alan slowly turned the knob and opened the door onto a small eating area off of the main kitchen.
Before entering, Alan reached inside and turned on the light. Pale, yellow light dimly lit the room. Ribbons of frayed wallpaper hung from the walls and littered the floor in front of a 1950s style chrome-legged dining table. As I entered the room, the musty smell of the old house reminded me of a cellar, cold and damp with a hint of apple butter. Knick-knacks of all sorts were scattered over every surface area of the table and shelves in the room. Tiny beagles, collies, and poodles stared at me with big, sad eyes and Precious Moments children knelt among the dusty shelves. Doilies of all sizes were haphazardly placed here and there. Jars of jellies, and God only knows what else, were lined up along the back wall on the table. Cracked linoleum crackled under my feet as we made our way into the outdated kitchen. Various kitchen appliances from eras long past sat haphazardly on chipped Formica countertops, worn from years of use. It was odd to me that no one lived here for I could see signs of everyday life everywhere I looked. Dishes were placed indiscriminately in a dish drainer. A half-empty bottle of pink Palmolive dish liquid sat on the porcelain sink. There was even a dishtowel hung over the handle of the oven, just like my mom hung hers. Nothing had been packed up or covered with dustsheets like normal people did when they moved or shut up a house.
We made our way to the next room, a dining room, complete with a cherry wood dining table. The table was covered with an old-fashioned lace tablecloth. There were six place mats, six dinner plate settings, six flatware settings, and a hideous centerpiece of leaves and some warped version of pink, silk roses, all covered in a layer of dust. What had happened to the people that lived in the house, I wondered. The dining room passed into a living room in front of the house.
Alan turned on the only light in the small room, a small side-table lamp that emitted a vague glow that barely managed to chase away the darkness. Terry and I sat on the couch, an olive green monstrosity. In front of us, stood a wooden coffee table empty of items except for a massive bible at its center lying open. The tasteless room décor dated to the early 1970s, wooden stick furniture swimming in olive green, brown, and orange.
Over the fireplace on the bulky, wooden mantle sat pictures of people of various ages, some in nice, expensive frames and others in cheap, plastic frames of assorted sizes. As I gazed at the faces, one stood out from all the rest. It was a black and white family photo, framed in antique silver and the face that stared out of that frozen moment in time was devoid of any human emotion. Blank, black eyes stared through me as if they were speaking to me alone, lacking any sparkle of life. Her hair was severely pulled back from her wrinkled face, tufts of it sticking out from behind her ears. Her mouth, smeared with dark lipstick, was only a grimacing line drawn through the stiff set of a stubborn jaw. It was a face of evil. The hair on the back of my neck stood up and a chill went through me. My throat felt parched all of a sudden and it was hard for me to swallow. I lifted shaking hands to brush the hair from my eyes and tore my gaze from that blank stare.
“Alan, who is that in the picture?” I asked.
“Which one?”
“The picture of the old woman there on the mantle. Who is she?” I repeated.
“Oh, my God! Look at the bible!” Terry screeched. All eyes were drawn to the bible on the coffee table. I could not believe what I was seeing! The pages were turning! Slowly at first, then they picked up momentum and were moving fast, as if a fan were blowing them; however, there was no fan, no wind, nothing that could have initiated it. I looked at everyone’s faces and saw complete shock and disbelief stamped in their eyes as page after page of the bible turned. I could not swallow. I could not breathe. My whole body shook with fear, yet I could not move. Suddenly, the pages stopped moving and there, sticking out of the center fold of the bible, was a newsprint article. I was unable to keep myself from retrieving it from the book.
“It’s an obituary,” I whispered. I stared at the yellowed slip of paper. The announcement stated that a gentleman had passed away suddenly. Although there was a picture of the man, it was hard to make out his features.
“That was her husband,” Alan said. “It’s time to go.” I placed the obituary back in the bible. He didn’t need to tell me twice! I was all too happy to leave that house. We all jumped up to leave. Terry’s face was white and his lips looked blue in the dim light. He was shivering as if he were cold, rubbing his arms and hugging himself. Charlie was in the kitchen and moving rapidly toward the exit. Alan seemed to be calm and in control. He smiled at me as he helped me walk through the house, assuring me that everything would be okay. I was terrified and he knew it. If he had not assisted me, I would have ended up in a puddle of terror on the floor, unable to move. We quickly made our way to his car. I couldn’t get in fast enough. Alan made his way to the back door, reached in to turn off the light, locked the door, turned toward us, and then he did something strange. He took off his tie (Alan always wore a tie) and began wiping his hands with it. As he slowly walked toward the car, I noticed that his face had no color and his eyes looked wild and full of fear. He made his way over to the passenger side of the car, to Terry.
“Are you okay, Alan?” asked Terry. Alan slowly shook his head “no” and continued to methodically wipe his hands on his tie. I was so scared at this point that I had to really work at controlling my bodily functions. I tried to see around Terry, but every time I leaned over, he would move so that he blocked my view.
“I want to go home,” I said. I was terrified. I was finally able to peek around Terry’s shoulder and I saw Alan’s hands. There was something smeared on them and he kept rubbing at it trying to erase it from his skin.
“What is that?” I said, out of breath now.
“I don’t know,” Terry said. “Alan, get in the car and let’s go. Come on, man. I’m scared shitless.” Alan slowly opened the car door, glancing over his shoulder at the back door of the house. He quickly got behind the wheel and we kicked gravel as we sped towards the main road, towards safety, towards sanity. As we drove away, many thoughts raced through my head. What the hell just happened back there? I mean, I knew it was supernatural, that it was a ghost. Alan turned onto the road at neck-breaking speed. We sped towards town as if the devil himself were racing toward us. Not one of us looked back. I couldn’t. I was afraid of what I might see following. Could ghosts follow you home?
After dropping the brothers off at home, Alan steered toward my house. We did not speak for a few minutes. He stared straight ahead, his tie still wrapped around his right hand.
“What is on your hands?” I whispered. It seemed as if he was not going to tell me, but he finally sighed and said,
“I don’t know but, it looks like blood.” His voice shook as he told me, and neither one of us has ever spoken of it again. I sat back and watched silhouettes of homes pass by, twinkles of lights in rooms where people were doing normal things. Suddenly I longed for my bed, the comfort of the heavy quilt my aunt had made me. I longed for the safety of home. I am never going back to that house, I thought. Oh, how I wish I had listened to myself that night.
Over the next several weeks, the four of us would go to Aunt Gertie’s; however, I did not re-enter the house, most times choosing instead to sit in the car ready to go at a moment’s notice. I was intrigued, yet scared out of my wits! It was exhilarating. How many people could say they had experienced such a thing? Each time we would experience small phenomena: a face peeping from the upstairs window, a ghostly figure walking from the overgrown garden at the back of the house. I remember one incident that still boggles my mind to this day. It happened on one of our regular visits.
“Wanna see something cool?” Charlie asked me. We were standing outside the house between the back door and the garage. Charlie’s scroungy hair hung over his eyes. He was bouncing from one foot to the other, hoping I would bite. The evening was approaching, making it difficult to see through the dense trees behind the house. I hated being there after dark. I had an overwhelming sense of dread and wanted to leave. Despite my foreboding, I reluctantly replied, “sure.”
“You see, if I throw a rock up there at that window, the rock will come back! Just like somebody threw it at me,” Charlie said.
“That’s ridiculous, man. No way,” I said. Charlie smiled his big, goofy smile and picked up a small, limestone pebble. Glancing at me to make sure I was paying attention, he tossed the rock at the window, her window. Nothing. The rock hit the gable above the window and bounced off, forever lost just like I knew it would.
“Ha!” I yelped, pointing my finger at Charlie. “I knew you were full of shit!” As I laughed at Charlie, I felt a hard tap on the right side of my head. “Ow! What the hell was that?”
“Rock came back,” Charlie replied with that stupid grin of his.
“Whatever, Charlie,” I said. I tried to laugh it off yet, could not shake the fact that something had hit me from above. I looked up at the second floor window. Old fashioned, lace curtains hung over the window, the kind my grandma had when I was a little kid. No light peeped through and the window appeared to be tightly shut. Wait! Did that curtain just move? Fear prickled the back of my neck.
“Come on guys. It’s time to go,” I said and almost ran to the truck. I did not return to the house for several weeks after that incident; however, about a week before my high school classes started, I was hanging out at Peabody’s Pool Hall, a popular teen hangout in town. I had met up with a friend, Lisa Lewis. We had been playing pool for some time when Lisa began tugging on her finger.
“This damned ring is messing up my shot!” She tugged and tugged at the ring on her middle finger. Lisa had huge, chunky rings on every finger on both hands. The culprit causing her problems was a massive, hideous ring. She tugged and twisted the ring to no avail.
“Screw it,” she said.
“Well, look who’s here,” I heard over the noise of the crowd.
“Hey, Alan. What’s goin’ on?”
“We got some beers and we were gonna go out to Aunt Gertie’s and drink ‘em. Do you guys wanna come?”
I really didn’t want to go, but Lisa was all for it. I wanted to chicken out because it was late, almost midnight, and I had never been out there that late at night. Weren’t spirits more powerful after midnight? Lisa hadn’t ever been there at all. What if she freaked out? Maybe nothing would happen. Yeah, right. I was not ready to go home yet and if Lisa went, I would be stuck alone, so like word vomit, the words tumbled forth from my mouth.
“Sure, let’s go. Sounds fun,” I said and walked outside to the car.
On the way to the house, Charlie filled Lisa in on what we had been experiencing over the past several weeks. Instead of freaking out, Lisa was excited and couldn’t wait to see the ghost. We reached the driveway and slowly approached the house. Lisa was quiet as she took in her surroundings. Alan pulled the car in the driveway between the house and the garage. Lisa wanted to go inside and check things out. Terry and I chose to stay in the car while Alan and Charlie took Lisa in the house. For the life of me, I could not understand Alan’s lack of fear or why he would want to go in the house after all that had happened. Terry was in the front passenger seat while I remained in the back seat behind him.
The night air was damp with the fog that lay along the hollows. The smell of wood smoke and wet leaves hung in the air. Tall, black trees reached their spindly arms toward the dark sky. The only sounds I could hear were the incessant chirping of possibly millions of crickets and my heartbeat, fast and hard.
“Oh, my God. Oh, shit.” Terry said it over and over at just above a whisper as he looked straight ahead. I looked at the back of Terry’s head, too afraid to look beyond his shoulder, too afraid to see what had caused a grown man’s spine to shiver as if an electric current had traveled from head to tail and back again. “She’s there,” he whispered. I felt the blood drain from my face and I was taking in small, shallow breaths, afraid, so afraid. I didn’t want to look, but I could not help myself. I had to know what he was seeing. He reached across the seat and honked the horn. HONK! HONK! The sound was deafening. And there, just beyond the right front end of the car, was Aunt Gertie. I had never seen her as vividly as I did that night. I remember every detail as if it happened yesterday. Her hair was matted to her head and face with what appeared to be blood. She was covered in it. Her face streaked with it. She wore a navy blue, calf-length dress with big, gold-tone buttons on it. She was so real, so solid. She was not ghost-like this time. It was like something out of a horror movie. I could not believe what I was seeing, yet there she was, staring at the back of the house. The moment that I looked at her face, she slowly turned her head and seemed to look right at me. It all happened in a matter of seconds, but it felt like it occurred in slow motion and went on for hours.
“We have to go! We have to go now, Terry!” I said as loudly as I dared. I had the sudden urge to urinate and my hands shook as I grabbed his arm. Alan, Charlie, and Lisa burst from the back door of the house.
“What the hell is going on out here?” Alan yelled.
“Get in the damned car now, Alan! Get me the hell out of here!” Terry said. By now, the three of them had noticed her. Lisa began screaming and they all jumped into the car. Alan’s foot hit the gas and we spun out in the gravel as we raced away. Lisa kept crying and looking at her hand. I tried to console her, but I was in no position to be positive at that moment either. It felt like every hair on my body was standing erect and my stomach felt heavy. When we could no longer see the empty darkness behind us and we returned to civilization, Lisa turned to me.
“My ring is gone. The one I couldn’t get off earlier. It’s gone.” She sniffled and lifted up her bejeweled hand and sure enough, her middle finger was bare. We just looked at each other for a minute. Although the ring wasn’t an expensive ring, I could see in Lisa’s face that it held some sentimental value to her.
“Maybe it fell off or something,” I said, although I didn’t believe myself. I had seen how Lisa struggled to remove that ring. How could it have just fallen off? Where could it be? I didn’t know. We informed the guys what had happened and we all had made a pact to go back to the house the next day to look for it. We agreed to go in the afternoon while it was still daylight. It would be my last visit to Aunt Gertie’s.
The house was not so sinister in the daytime. The sunlight filtered through the trees, dappling the house and yard with light. The house seemed smaller, less threatening. Although I didn’t think Aunt Gertie would make an appearance during the daylight hours, I refused to go inside the house at first. We split up, Lisa and I searched the driveway while Alan looked inside the house. I carefully perused the gravel looking for a red sparkle, hoping to find the ring quickly and get out of there. Out of the corner of my eye, something flashed in the sun. I walked over to it and picked it up. To my horror, it was a large, gold-tone button! I quickly closed my fingers over it. Could it really have fallen off of her dress the night before? Was that physically possible? I shoved the button in my pocket, choosing not to tell anyone what I had found. I was terrified to even speak it out loud for fear of Aunt Gertie. What if she wanted it back?
Alan convinced Lisa to search the dining room area in the house. Somehow, the daylight dispelled a lot of the foreboding I felt and I agreed to help her. We could not find the ring. Giving up, we went into the living room to look around.
“I didn’t make it this far into the house last night, so it is pointless to look in here,” Lisa said. She and I began to look at the various pictures around the room. The pictures on the mantle seemed to be in different places, though I could not be sure. I closely examined the pictures, picking them up, putting them down.
“Well, I think we should get out of here. Your ring isn’t here. You must have lost it somewhere else,” I said, turning to her.
“Oh, my God!” Lisa said as she pointed behind me. Once again, the hair on the back of my neck stood up.
“What, Lisa?” She was still pointing behind me, one hand over her mouth, her eyes wide. I turned toward the mantle and there, where I had looked just seconds before, was Lisa’s ring just as pretty as you please. I knew I had not placed the ring there. It was impossible that the ring was sitting there. Impossible! I ran toward the back of the house, racing to escape that place once and for all. Lisa followed closely behind and we both hurried into the back seat of the car.
“Did you find it?” Alan asked as he approached the car.
“Yes, we are ready to leave now. Alan, please, let’s leave now,” I pleaded. Without asking any questions, Alan quickly locked up the house and we promptly left. I was never to return to that house.
Later that night, as I laid awake in bed, curled in a fetal position, terrified of shadows and jumping at every foreign sound, I remembered the button in my pocket. I quietly crept out of bed, careful not to wake my family and searched in the dark for the jeans I had been wearing. I reached into my pocket and closed my hand around the cold metal object. What if she wanted it back, I thought. What if she came to get it? Terror coursed through my body and my heart pounded in my ears. I didn’t live that far from that house. She could easily find me. What was I to do? I looked at the clock. It was late, after 1:00 a.m. Tap. Tap. Tap. Was that someone at my window? Consumed by paranoia, without thinking of the consequences, I tugged on my jeans and threw on a t-shirt. I carefully looked out of my window. Only the night sky and my mother’s rose bush could be seen. No one was there. I slowly raised the window and popped out the screen. I stopped, listening for my mom and dad. Surely, they had heard all of the commotion, but all I heard was the sound of my rapid, shallow breathing. I quickly climbed outside and ran to my bicycle. My destination was about a mile down the dark, country road. I was consumed by fear yet, determined to rid myself of the button.
Repeating the Lord’s Prayer under my breath the entire way, I finally came upon the old, brick church. I skidded to a halt at the steps at the front of the building and retrieved the button from my pocket. I carefully laid the button on the steps of that church, praying to God for protection from evil. I sat down on the steps and cried for about ten minutes. Relief that it was over overwhelmed me.
I never returned to that house off Sycamore Road. Many years later, I ran into an old friend of mine that lived near the old farmhouse. He told me the house had been torn down years ago and a new subdivision sprawled out over the property. I thought to myself that even though the house was gone, she must still be there haunting the property. I wonder sometimes if anyone sees her still, in that navy blue dress with one gold-tone button missing, covered in blood. I remember that summer so vividly, the events embedded in my mind, sometimes haunting my dreams. I have had other ghostly experiences since that summer, but nothing comes close to the phenomena of that summer in 1987 when I learned without a doubt that we share our world with other beings, beings that may or may not want to be seen.
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