Simon Goes Beep in the Night

From: April Moberg (aprilm@umd.umich.edu)
Story type: Ghost
Location: My grandmother's house; in Michigan
Source: Form Submission

About 3 years ago, while visiting my grandma for a weekend, my brother had an unexplainable experience. For starters, my grandma's house is over 150 years old. Other family members, aunts, cousins, my mom and my grandma have heard unexplainable voices, crying sounds,and even creaking chairs as if someone is sitting down into them. Since I myself had never heard anything, and because I think that my grandma and mom tend to over embelish their stories, I was a skeptic. I became a believer only after hearing my brother's story.

It was a Saturday night, around 11pm or so. He had gone upstairs for bed. There are 2 bedrooms upstairs, one with 2 beds in it for overnight guests, and the other was only used for storage of such things as christmas decorations, an old baby crib, and odds and ends. Both my mom and I have always felt a strangeness about that room. It always seemed cold, and it always seemed as if someone was watching us, whenever we were in the room.

Anyway, my brother was in bed, and my dad, who also slept upstairs that weekend, had not yet gone to bed. My brother said that while he was lying there, trying to go to sleep, he heard a "beep" sound come from the spare room. This was followed by another beep. My brother immediately recognized the beeps as coming from the Simon Says Game, which was in the spare room. He said that he just layed there, comepletely still and afraid to make a sound. The game continued to "play" for several minutes, as if someone was actually playing a game of Simon Says.

After a few minutes, my brother said that he heard my dad start up the stairs, to go to bed. According to his account, the beeping of the game stopped once he heard my dad on the steps. For a few seconds there was no sound coming from the spare room, and then there was a buzz-- the buzz that the game makes when the player does not play the melody correctly. My dad also heard the buzz and questioned what it was, but my brother was afraid to say at the time.

The next morning, he told me about. We went up to the spare room and found the Simon Says Game. It was on the floor, in its box, nothing unusual about that. We took it out and tried to turn it on, but it wouldn't work. Then we discovered that it DIDN'T HAVE ANY BATTERIES. Needless to say, we were, for lack of a better phrase, freaked out! If it weren't for the fact that my brother is a serious guy that's never been known to play practical jokes or admit that he's scared, I would have dismissed his story as a lie. But I have to believe him, because he's never given be any reason not to in all his 19 years.