We Called Him Leonard

Name:            Pam
Email:           pamilu2@yahoo.com
Location:        Fresno, CA
Type:            Ghost
Date:            Thursday, February 24, 2000
Time:            01:31 AM

When I married my 2nd husband, my daughter was 3 yrs old. She was a calm child, had always slept through the night since born. We moved into Dick's house and put Krissi in the bedroom at the front of the house, her step-brother was just across the hallway. Our bedroom was through the living room and off of the family room. Every night for 3 or 4 months, Krissi would knock on our bedroom door and ask to sleep in our bed because something was staring at her from her bedroom door. Finally, I moved her into David's room, and put David in the 4th bedroom. We left "her room" as a spare room. Krissi never woke through the night again. 

I noticed that every time I would put the groceries away in the pantry, I would find them all moved around from where I had placed them. I blamed my 14 yr old step-son David. 

One evening while washing dishes, I felt a presence behind me, but in the reflection of the window no one was there. 

Our cockatiels would be sitting on their perches in the big wrought-iron cage and suddenly "fall" to the bottom, and angrily climb back up and ruffle their feathers as if they had been pushed off. 

That spare room always had a peculiar coolness to it, even in the heat of summer in Fresno. After moving Krissi out of it, my husband informed me that his ex-mother-in-law claimed something pushed her out of bed in that room and she had broken her arm in the fall! I was now concerned that we had a ghost. 

I learned more...the man who once lived in the house with his wife and 3 daughters, was killed in his own dune buggy, and the daughter who had Krissi's old room was severely injured with a split skull. At 3, the "thing" that my daughter described was dressed in riding wear (black jacket, helmet, black goggles, gloves) and she called it a "gorilla". 

Now I KNEW it was Leonard...the man who had been killed. He was back to check on his little girl. He was around all the time. I opened the door to the "room" to vacuum one day, and a fast-moving white cloud-looking ball swooshed out the door, around the vacuum, and disappeared in the hallway. 

One evening as I was propped up on the sofa reading, I got a "blow" in my ear, I just shrugged and told my husband that I was reading. It happened again, and I said a little more sternly, "Dick, stop it." When it happened a third time, I jumped up and looked behind me (the sofa sat in the middle of our huge family room) and no one was there. I ran to our bedroom, looked out the window and could see Dick in the workshop in the backyard!! 

Another evening, I needed to go to the grocery store and told Krissi to get her shoes on. She was in her "new" room and as I was walking through the living room to get her, that "room's" door SLAMMED in my face. Now, it's mindful to note that our hallway carpet was very thick and that door had not been sawed off at the bottom to fit, so it wouldn't close unless pushed hard. When it SLAMMED, I thought my practical-joker husband was in there. I asked David where his father was and he checked the workshop and Dick was out there! I asked David if he heard that door slam, and he had. He ran to the room and thrust open the door and it was dark and cold in there. 

I had had enough. I phoned my grandmother and asked how to rid a ghost in the house. She told me what to do. The next day, I went into that room, performed the ritual and immediately felt the room "warm-up". No more Leonard. 

A couple of years later we moved. I went back to see our paraplegic neighbors who lived across the empty field from our old house and they said they were having some strange things happening around their house...like Joyce's iron-lung chains rattling, but when they wheeled down there they weren't moving! They had company one night and everyone heard someone "walking" on the flat roof. Everyone ran outside but no one was up there. I realized then that "Leonard" had inhabited their house after he was forced to leave ours. 

I haven't been back. (All first names are real, these incidents are true, and I truly believe every ghost story.)