02/08/2022
The House On Grasshopper Lane
by Chelsie Greenfield
**Based loosely on true events, All names and locations have been changed for security**
Let me start by describing the neighborhood in which this house sat. It was a small little town, nestled quietly away from the hustle and bustle of the nearest city. The community was one of the ones you hear about where everyone knows everybody and they've all lived there their whole lives or have relatives who have. The house I'm going to talk about was one of the oldest houses east of the tracks. It was a three bedroom cottage on the South West corner where Grasshopper Lane and Fourth Street met. The yard was enclosed by a short chain link fence which had two gates. One gate stretched across the driveway and was just wide enough to allow one vehicle at a time to pass through, the other gate was a smaller one made to walk through. Just inside the smaller gate was a narrow path that led from the gate to the front porch. The porch was the same width as the house and deep enough to house a picnic table to one side of the door, there was four support columns holding the very front up and a short railing that crossed between the columns. The wood was all stained a dark hunter green to contrast heavily against the bright off-white cream color of the plaster on the house. There were two smaller windows and a big bay window to the left where two of the bedrooms and the kitchen were and one big bay window on the right where the living room was. Just around the left corner of the house was a separate two car garage with those old wooden garage doors and separating the garage area from the back yard was and old irrigation ditch, long since dried up. A small arched footbridge crossed over the dried up ditch into the yard. The back yard was big enough to maintain enough produce in a garden to support the family and have room for the kids to play. In the very center of the yard was a tall willow tree with a makeshift rope and wood swing hanging from one of the lower branches.
In this house lived a young couple. The husband, Gene, age twenty-two, had lived in the house across the street on the South East corner his whole life and his parents still live there. He was a tall, lanky, dark haired man who had just recently returned from training with the US Navy. The wife, Anne, age nineteen was a short blonde woman. They had a little girl that was only a year old, Her name was Cecilia Anne.
For the first few weeks in the house everything was calm. The shadows were the first things they experienced, followed shortly by the footsteps in an empty hallway. They would see shadows move in the dark corners of the garage and try to explain it away thinking they were seeing things due to lack of sleep. Anne being a new mother and Gene working the graveyard shift every night. They tried to tell themselves that the footsteps in the hall were pipes banging in the cellar or the old wood floors settling with age. When they had thought they were comfortable with the sounds of the house, the awoke in the middle of the night one night to hear rag time style music playing, as if from a victrola, from the attic. Gene hurried into the attic, expecting to find someone hiding out in there. He searched the dark, empty attic but found nothing. The music in the attic became a regular occurance. Some nights it would be softer, violin music. Other nights it would be rag time or even jazz. Every time it was from the attic.
Just like when they were getting used to the shadows and footsteps, the moment they were comfortable with the music, the experience that tipped Anne over the edge happened. She was just getting to bed, she had turned the volume on the baby monitor to the highest setting and had just turned her bedside lamp off. That's when she heard the voice. It was the voice of an old woman, speaking softly, coming from the baby monitor. Worried for Cecilia Anne, she ran down the hall to the baby's room. Only to find that no one was there and the baby was sound asleep. She tried to brush it off, thinking it was just her mind playing tricks but she heard the voice again a few nights later. This time it sounded like the woman was arguing with a man. It was very uncomfortable for the young mother at that point but they couldn't afford to just up and leave their home. The mother researched similar activity and learned how to use certain herbs to cleanse the air of a home. After burning an incense made of sage, rose, thyme and cinnamon the activity seemed to have ceased.
Until there was relationship issues between the couple. That's when things really amped up. Gene had started to be hostile towards Anne and Anne had caught him in the arms of another woman. They tried to work things out but to no avail. Gene had changed too much.
One day while working on his vintage 1952 step side truck, Gene had heard an eerie laugh while he was under the truck just before the stand the truck was on gave way and the truck fell on him. The neighbor had watched the truck fall and somehow (probably adrenaline) made it over just in time to help Gene get out before there could be any real damage.
That same week, Gene was crossing the road to his parent's house to borrow a certain tool from his father. It was always his habit to close the small gate behind him when he left the yard. Somehow this time the gate had opened while he was halfway across the street and Anne's cocker spaniel dog came running after Gene. Gene made it across the street but the dog didn't. A neighbor in a big blue eco line van narrowly missed Gene and ran over the small dog.
Things were quiet for a few weeks after that but then one day, while Gene was out with his friends and had left Anne and Cecilia Anne at home, Anne was locked out of the house unexpectedly.
She had gone out to the porch to bring something in and left Cecilia Anne inside the house. Suddenly things went too quiet. That type of quiet where you can't even hear your own heartbeat. There was a feeling like they weren't alone in the house and then the front door slammed shut and locked. Anne knocked on the kitchen window for what seemed like five or six minutes trying to get Cecilia Anne's attention before Cecilia Anne finally came running to the window as if something had scared her. Anne tried to calm her down through the window and then used a squeeze-it bottle that was on the picnic table to try to show the baby how to unlock the door. Cecilia Anne finally got it and Anne rushed in to hold her.
That was the last straw for Anne. She told Gene that they needed to move. It took a few years before they could get a new place. Cecilia Anne was six years old by that point. During those years, Cecilia Anne would complain about voices that only she heard, she would play with kids that weren't really there and would claim to see a little girl that looked just like her swinging on the swing.
A few short weeks after they had moved out, the house was bombed and blew up. The bomb was planted where Cecilia Anne's bed would have been if they had stayed. The bomber was never caught and the house was rebuilt. The only part of the original house that is still left is the swing in the back yard.
It's said that on a warm, summer night that the swing will move on it's own and a little black dog will run up to the fence before disappearing...
