The Ghosts We Grew Up With
The Ghost and the Light Switch
When my grandmother Donna was a young girl, her family moved to a small, crumbling hotel on the edge of Bellingham, Washington. Her father, a practical and hardworking man, had transformed half of the hotel into their home, leaving the other half—and its secrets—behind. It wasn’t grand or imposing, just a weathered building that seemed to groan under the weight of its history.
Donna and her sister Mary, only nine years old at the time, were thrilled and terrified by their new home. The hotel’s creaking floors, narrow hallways, and flickering lightbulbs seemed alive with whispers of the past. But it was the room at the top of the stairs that haunted their imagination.
The neighborhood kids had stories about the room. No one had ever explicitly told the girls to stay out, but something about it felt wrong. The door was always slightly ajar, as if inviting them in, but the girls never crossed the threshold. They’d heard the tale: years ago, a woman had been murdered in that room, and some claimed her restless spirit still lingered. Their parents dismissed the story as childish nonsense, but Donna and Mary felt otherwise. Every night, when they passed that room, the air seemed heavier, the shadows darker, and their hearts raced as if the ghost herself was watching.
Their father added an extra layer of urgency to their fears. A man of strict routines, he had rigged an indicator board in his bedroom to show which lights in the house were still on. If a light wasn’t turned off by curfew, he’d flip a switch, plunging the offending room into sudden darkness. The girls dreaded being caught out in the hall when the lights went out, stranded between the room at the top of the stairs and their own bedroom.
Each evening, after dinner, the ritual began. Donna and Mary would race up the creaking stairs, past the swinging bulb in the foyer that threw wild, flickering shadows onto the walls. The journey was always the same: a quick glance at the room at the top of the stairs, its door cracked just enough to taunt them, and then a desperate sprint down the hall to their bedroom.
Some nights, it felt like the house was working against them. The wind howled through the cracks in the walls, and the shadows stretched and shifted as though something—or someone—was moving just out of sight. The faster they ran, the thicker the air seemed to grow, until they finally slammed the door shut behind them, breathless but safe.
But there were nights when the fear was almost too much to bear. On those nights, the house groaned and creaked as if alive, and the room at the top of the stairs felt impossibly dark, as though it might swallow them whole. Once, Donna thought she saw the edge of a shadow that didn’t belong, lingering just inside the doorway. Mary insisted it was only her imagination, but the memory stayed with Donna long after the house had settled back into silence.
Their parents, practical as ever, brushed off their fears. “It’s just an old building,” their father would say. But Donna and Mary knew better. The room at the top of the stairs wasn’t just a room. It was something else entirely—a presence waiting in the dark, just out of reach.
As the years passed, the girls grew older, and their nightly races became less frequent. Yet the memory of those nights stayed with them, etched into the creaking floorboards and the flickering light of the old hotel. Donna would later tell the story with a laugh, but her eyes always betrayed her. “I’m still not sure if it was just a story,” she’d say, “or if there was something more in that old hotel.”
To this day, the haunted hotel on the hill remains a favorite tale in our family—a reminder of how two little girls, only nine years old when they moved in, outran the ghost in the room at the top of the stairs and their father’s strict curfew, night after night.
The Basement’s Grip
My grandmother Donna’s stories about the room at the top of the stairs fueled our imaginations as kids, leaving an indelible mark on my brothers and me. Her vivid tales of creaking floorboards, flickering lights, and restless shadows gave life to ghosts that felt all too real. When we lived with her as children, those stories inspired us to create our own house ghosts.
Our classroom and game room were in the basement, so we spent countless hours down there. But the room that truly terrified us wasn’t where we played or learned—it was the pantry at the far end. It didn’t even have a door, which somehow made it even more frightening. The room held the hot water tank and shelves lined with canned goods, but it always felt like it held something else too, something unseen. It was lit by a single bare light bulb with a string you had to pull to turn it on. The room was always dark and cold, with exposed concrete walls that seemed to absorb all warmth. To make matters worse, you had to step into the darkness to find the string and pull it.
Nothing was more petrifying to me than being asked to go fetch a jar of peaches from that pantry. The moment the request came, my heart would sink. I’d steel myself at the top of the basement stairs, take a deep breath, and descend into the gloom. By the time I reached the pantry, the shadows seemed to close in, and my imagination ran wild with thoughts of something lurking just beyond sight. I’d rush to pull the string, grab the jar as quickly as possible, and sprint back up the stairs with my heart pounding, never daring to look behind me.
Even though we knew it was just a pantry, the stories my grandmother told us made it impossible not to imagine ghosts lurking in its dark corners. Every time we escaped the basement and crossed into the bright safety of the kitchen, we’d let out a huge breath of relief, laughing nervously at how silly it all was. But deep down, none of us ever lingered near that pantry longer than we had to. Just in case.
That basement wasn’t the same old hotel my grandmother grew up in, but her stories brought a sense of mystery and fear that made it feel like ghosts could exist anywhere. Her love for sharing those chilling tales turned our everyday childhood into an adventure, where even ordinary spaces like a pantry could hide secrets and every sprint up the stairs felt like a small victory.
