the haunted estate sale

if you go to enough estate sales you will start to get to know the people whose business it is to run them - it's nice to walk in the door & have someone look at you and tell you the craft/sewing stuff is in the basement or down the hall in the bedroom on the right...although, that's never happened to me because I don't thrift that much! {wink - that totally happens}


anyhow, one of my favorite local teams is joni & steve - they're very funny & I always look forward to visiting with them for a little while after I finish shopping. recently I went to visit them at a sale they did of the contents of a house that had been lived in by the same family for several generations but as often happens all the things that have been carefully saved by past generations were no longer wanted & the house was no longer being lived in...well, by anyone alive.


first there were the old love letters...carefully saved but unwanted so put in a garbage bag, tied up & deposited out onto the curb by joni along with several other bags. next morning the bag with the letters had been carefully opened while none of the other bags have been disturbed.


then there were the kitchen cupboards...because there was so much stuff & not enough surface area to display things, joni & steve left many things in the cupboards & opened all the doors for people to see everything that was for sale, left the room and came back only to find all the doors closed.


at one point steve heard someone downstairs saying hello...went down & there was no one there.


okay...so yeah, there could be explanations for all that stuff, someone just happened to open that one trash bag saw what was in it & figured it was pointless going through all the bags so went along their way. maybe the hinges on the cupboard doors were loose & maybe what steve heard was a conversation drifting in from outside.


but what happened to joni isn't so easy to explain away. and the fact that she has no belief or interest in the idea of ghosts or spirits only makes it more believable.


while preparing for the sale, alone in the house with steve, joni was downstairs bent over something when she felt someone brush past behind her. she looked up & saw a figure go around the corner. she called out to steve who responded back to her from far upstairs...when she realized it wasn't him she freaked out & he came running down.


later they were going through some photographs & joni immediately recognized the woman she had seen...later, they called the family & mentioned what had happened. they weren't surprised - in fact the woman seemed almost happy they had gotten to meet her mother & told them not to worry, she was very friendly.


all I'm going to say is that is the story I was told...it didn't stop me from buying stuff, although when they told me I got goosebumps & when I left I said goodbye to them and to whoever might have been there who I couldn't see because I didn't want to be rude.


{all photos taken on my iphone with the hipstamatic app at the house during the estate sale}