The Landlady's Tale — a Halloween tradition on Freerepublic since 2002

The following story was told to me by the woman who rented my parents their first home in California when they moved to Sacramento in 1939. A devout Catholic (so much so that although she had been divorced by her husband, she did not consider the divorce valid and did not remarry until her husband died many years later) the landlady swore on her Bible, in front of my sister and me after she told us the story, that it was absolutely true. She was quite serious about it.

In the 1970s, I personally confirmed some of the more mundane parts of her story. The events she described occurring in the early 1950s had been reported in the local newspapers, and although there was now an empty lot where the house and a gas station once stood, the house did exist. I will call her "Irene" because that was really her name.

Irene is dead now and I have rewritten her story as a short story, almost exactly as she told it.

It was September, 1920. The Smith family was moving from San Francisco, where their youngest daughter Irene had lived her entire 15 years, to their new home in Sacramento, where Irene's father had his new job. The job was probationary at first so Irene's parents had rented a house instead of selling the San Francisco house and buying another in Sacramento. If the job did not work out, they wanted to move back. Irene's father had found a great bargain. The house was a three story Victorian complete with attic and basement located only seven blocks from the State Capitol Building. It was located on a corner lot in an upscale neighborhood of other stately Victorians. The rent was much lower than usual for the neighborhood.

Their new landlord explained to Irene's parents that he was merely the agent for the owner, his sister, who had "moved back east, because of her health" several years earlier. The owner's brother was apologetic that they could not have the entire basement for their use, but, he explained "The back storeroom of the basement is packed full of some of my sister's belongings that she hasn't sent for yet. You can have the other two basement rooms for your belongings."

The house had big, airy rooms with large windows. The first floor consisted of a huge kitchen with walk-in pantry and breakfast nook, a formal dining room with oaken hutches and sideboards built-in, a living room, and a separate "sociable parlor" for entertaining important guests. The front entry led into the wide staircase wrapping around a central core and was open from bottom to top, giving a clear view of all landings and stairs.

The second floor held the master suite for Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the bathroom, another bedroom destined to become Mr. Smith's office, which would double as a guest room, and a small storage room. The third floor had one bedroom with a walk-in closet that Irene would share with her 22 year old adopted sister, Nita, and Nita's two and a half year old daughter. The attic was actually an unfinished space on the third floor that could be made into more bedrooms.

Nita and Irene got along very well. Although Nita had been adopted by the Smiths by the very informal method of literally being left on the Smith's doorstep 22 years before, she and Irene could not have been closer. Irene had been a 12 year old maid of honor when Nita had married her childhood sweetheart, just before he shipped out as a "Doughboy" to Europe where he tragically died only weeks later in a foxhole, just four months before his daughter was born.

Irene had been given the option of sleeping in the guest room with her father's desk and files but she much preferred sharing the big double bed with sister (and best friend) Nita. Nita's little girl would sleep in a crib in the room with them.

The five members of the Smith family all had their jobs in the move. Mrs. Smith directing the workmen moving the large furniture from the horse drawn drayage cart to the house, Mr. Smith hanging family pictures, Irene and Nita unpacking the fine china and putting it into the built in hutches in the dining room and "The baby," which is how they always referred to Nita's daughter, was heavily involved in everything, getting in the way, skipping, laughing. It was a hectic but homey scene. The trouble started that very first day. The family was absorbed in the mundane tasks of settling in. The baby was left to her own resources and was skipping around the house, watching this, watching that, asking questions and generally having loads of fun.

She skipped past her mother and aunt and went by herself into the kitchen. She had not been in there very long when she started screaming... loudly and piercingly.

Nita dropped one of her mother's heirloom plates, shattering it on the hardwood floor, and dashed into the kitchen with Irene close on her heels.

The baby was standing, petrified, screaming, and shaking her head from side to side. Nita dropped to her knees as she hugged her daughter to her, trying to comfort her. The baby was inconsolable. For over an hour Nita carried her and rocked her in her arms before the child quieted and finally fell asleep. The baby never could tell them what caused her terror and even in later years, she would waken screaming in the night, then start saying "No, no, no, no, no, no!” over and over. She could only vaguely describe a room in her dreams that Nita and the other could recognize as the kitchen. The child would never again walk into the kitchen alone as long as they lived there... which would not be that long.

Strangely, none of the other events that occurred in that house would ever bother her.

That evening, an exhausted but satisfied Smith family retired for the night. They had gone out to dinner because the kitchen had not been completed enough for anyone to cook. Nita carried the sleeping baby up to the third floor and put her in her crib. She and Irene took turns taking baths and watching the sleeping child. It was about 10:00 PM when the lights were turned out after all good nights had been said.

The bedroom Irene and Nita shared with the baby was square. The headboard of their big double bed was on the wall with the door to the landing. The baby's crib occupied the inside wall next to the landing door and the wall opposite the bed had two large dormer style windows. The wall to the right of the bed had the walk-in closet that was large enough to hold a couple of dressers and some trunks. The door to the closet was right next to the head of the bed and next to it, closer to the windows, was a large dresser with a basin, a pitcher, and 'thunder-mug,' a bed pan.

Both girls were very tired after a day of hard labor and fell quickly asleep. Several hours later, Irene awoke with the distinct feeling that someone was watching her. She got up and went to check the baby who was fast asleep. As she turned around she was surprised to see that Nita, who was a deeper sleeper than she, was also awake.

"I'm sorry I woke you... I tried to be quiet," Irene apologized, "I know how tired you must be."

"You didn't wake me," Nita answered, "I woke just before you got up. Were you looking at me? I felt someone was watching me."

"Nita! That was what woke me. I thought the baby was awake," said Irene, as she climbed back into bed and pulled the covers up.

The girls lay there and chatted about the events of the day and what lay ahead in Sacramento. Irene and Nita talked girl talk for about fifteen minutes, when without warning...

The sound came from the closet door on the right. Both girls turned, startled, toward the closet.

The last knock had just knocked when the closet door swung open! The girls stared. Just as suddenly...

Both girls jumped out of bed, screaming. Nita rushed over and picked up the baby and both ran out yelling for their parents.

Mr. Smith came dashing out of the second floor master suite in his nightshirt with his big Colt .45 Army revolver and ran up the stairs, meeting the panicked girls on the way down. Both pointed up stairs, turned and fled to Mrs. Smith, who pulled them into her bedroom and shut the door.

Mr. Smith continued up the stairs to find an empty room and closet. He searched the attic, checked the windows, turned on all the lights and searched every room, checked every window, and even took a light down and searched the basement. Nothing.

"There's nobody here except us!" he called out as he approached the master bedroom.

"No, Daddy, there was someone in our room... in the closet!" Nita cried. "Look, I've searched the entire house. Everything is normal and there is no one here. It was probably the wind." Mr. Smith stated.

Mrs. Smith offered her opinion. "It's a new house for you. You're not used to it, so it's strange. You let your imaginations run away with you. You probably had a nightmare."

"Nita, it was a dream." When Momma made up her mind, it was made up and NOTHING could change it. "Go back to bed. We have more work in the morning. Go to sleep."

"I'm going to turn off the lights and go back to sleep. You girls do the same." When Mrs. Smith made up her mind, Mr. Smith's mind was also made up. He clomped off to shut off the lights.

Both girls trudged back upstairs. "It's only the wind." Nita said, trying to convince herself.

Nita put the still sleeping baby between them on the bed and both got out their Rosaries and started praying. Irene was certain she would not sleep a wink for the rest of the night. She was wrong. Both of the girls fell asleep before they could complete their prayers and slept soundly.

At breakfast, 'Topic A' would have been the events of the previous night but Mrs. Smith's mind was made up and she would brook no disagreement: "It was a dream."

The second night in the house, the girls went to sleep having talked it out between themselves and decided it HAD to have been a dream. Sleep came quickly because it had been another full day of settling in.

Both girls awakened with the same feeling... someone was watching them. Irene grabbed her Rosary and just held it. A few minutes after they awakened... Knock! Knock! Knock! ...and the closet door swung open! And then... Knock! Knock! Knock! ... the door swung closed!

Again, two screaming girls grabbed the baby and dashed out the door, awakening their parents. Mr. Smith again, searched the house, and again found nothing.

The next night was a repeat of the previous nights. By the fourth night, Mr. Smith refused to get up a search. Mrs. Smith had decided that maybe the girls were doing this deliberately because they didn't like Sacramento and wanted to return to San Francisco. On the fifth night she had had enough.

"If you girls disturb my sleep one more time, you will NOT like the consequences. We are staying."

"Momma," cried Irene, frustrated, "we aren't making this up. It really happens."

"NO MORE! We're staying... get used to it. I don't want to hear anything more about it."

Nita bought a clock and they found they always awoke within a few minutes of 1:35AM and the door would knock three times, open, knock three times and close at 1:38AM. It was like clockwork. It got to be routine.

They discussed it with everyone except Mrs. Smith. She would not allow the subject to be brought up at all. Mr. Smith was certain it was a phenomenon of weather... the wind. Others were sure the girls were making it up or joking. Dreaming was another popular theory.

In late March of 1921, a friend of their father's came to visit one weekend from Stockton and was to be "put up" in the guest room/office. In after dinner conversation, while Mrs. Smith was finishing in the kitchen, the subject of the closet door was brought up. The visitor did not believe them.

"Tell yer what. You gals take the guest room. Ah'll sleep in yer room tonight... and I'll prove yer wrong."

The girls agreed, even though Mrs. Smith would object to changes in sleeping arrangements—if she knew about it—especially for this purpose, and the guest room only had a single bed. The two sneaked downstairs with the baby after Mr. and Mrs. Smith had gone to bed and the guest went up to their room.

The girls slept through the night for the first time since moving into the house. The next morning, they sneaked back up stairs to awaken their guest so they could exchange rooms again and, more importantly, learn what he experienced.

On the floor of the landing, they found his hat. The door to their room was wide open.

The bedspread was strewn across the floor toward the landing door and the bed was pushed at an angle away from the landing door. His Model A truck was gone from the street in front of the house.

Irene's father was perplexed. His friend never answered Mr. Smith's letters and he never again came back to the house.

Years later, Irene saw him in eating in a Sacramento restaurant. She approached him and asked him what happened. Obviously distressed, he refused to tell her and told her never to ask him again. He then got up, dropped money on the table, and walked out, leaving his half eaten lunch.

Several months passed. Irene and Nita were completely used to the phenomena. It was even a bit boring. Knock, knock, knock, door open; knock, knock, knock, door closed. Ho Hum. However, they never slept through it and the baby always did.

Mrs. Smith would not hear anything about it and Mr. Smith ignored it. Everything changed on the night of June 7, 1921.

That night, about 1:40AM, Mr. Smith had a 'call of nature' and got up to go to the bathroom.

As he left the master bedroom, he glanced up the stairs and caught a glimpse of a man standing on the landing. He darted back into his room and grabbed his old revolver and charged out, yelling at the top of his lungs. The girls, still awake from the closet door event of the evening came out to see their father in his striped nightshirt brandishing his gun, dashing around the house opening doors, and turning on lights looking for a burglar.

Mrs. Smith decided that Mr. Smith had been sleep walking and dreamed the whole thing.

The night of June 8, 1921. Mr. Smith cleaned, oiled, and reloaded his revolver with new ammunition before going to bed... and he loaded his shotgun for the first time. Mrs. Smith was not speaking with him.

His theory was that someone, perhaps a previous tenant, had free entry to the house and he was going to catch him.

Over Mrs. Smith's objections, Mr. Smith left the door to their bedroom open and he propped his shotgun next to it. The revolver was laid ready on the nightstand.

Two minutes later the closet door SLAMMED open without knocking! A bloodcurdling scream, the most terrifying sound Irene had ever heard, echoed out of the closet! SOMETHING DARK ran out of the closet, around the bed, opened the door to the landing and slammed it behind it!

Both girls were so frozen in fright they could not move to go check on the baby!

Mr. and Mrs. Smith, hearing a horrible scream coming from upstairs, awakened with a start. Mr. Smith jumped out of bed and grabbed the revolver. As he dashed out the bedroom door he hit the light switch for the landing. To his shock, he saw a man, covered in blood, carrying a knife, running down the stairs from the third floor landing!

With visions of his daughters lying dead in their bed, he raised his revolver and took aim. Mr. Smith roared out, somewhat shakily. "Ss... Stop! Or I'll sh..."

In mid word, the man vanished! He disappeared in plain site with nowhere to go. Gone as if he had never been there!

Mrs. Smith was climbing out of bed to find out what the commotion was all about.

After recovering from his shock, Mr. Smith dashed up the stairs and slammed open the girls' bedroom door to find two very frightened girls frantically saying their Rosaries and clutching the beads. The baby was still sound asleep in her crib.

Mr. Smith awoke a neighbor who owned a phone and the police were called. They found nothing and chalked it up to a burglar that Mr. Smith had scared off.

Mrs. Smith latched onto that explanation and adopted it as her own. She spent the night demanding that Mr. Smith wake the neighbor again to call a locksmith to replace all the locks on the house as soon as possible in the morning. The girls' story was again dismissed as just another nightmare.

Mr. Smith moved the desk out of his office and moved the girls' furniture and clothing in. They would never sleep or even go into the room on the third floor again.

Mrs. Smith refused to even consider moving. Mrs. Smith was adamant... a burglar was NO reason to move out. The police would catch him and everything would go back to normal. She thought moving the girls into the office room was a bunch of nonsense, but if Mr. Smith didn't mind having his office on the third floor, all right.

Two days later, Mrs. Smith came in from a day of shopping with some friends and lay down on the sofa in the living room. As she lay there, she looked over toward the kitchen.

"Why there most certainly IS... I can see him plain as day..." Suddenly, Mrs. Smith screamed! "Oh, MY GOD! I can see right through him!"

The Smith family left the house within an hour, never to return. They stayed in a downtown hotel for three weeks while Mr. Smith found and bought a house. Movers packed and removed their belongings from the house to which Mrs. Smith refused to ever return. ------ Many years passed. Irene grew up, married a fairly wealthy man with interests in Real Estate and she, herself, became a Real Estate agent and later a property developer.

No one ever lived in the house for more than about 10 months. Almost everyone who lived there moved out within a week of June 8th. All were gone by the end of June.

In the late-1930s, the brother of the owner cleaned out his bank accounts and moved out of town, abandoning the properties in his charge. No one knew where he went and he was never heard from again.

The neighborhood fell into disrepair as the city grew eastward and it soon became an area of broken down houses. Many of the once stately Victorian homes were converted to low-income multi-unit apartments and the neighborhood drifted into a slum. The house stood empty for years.

One day in the early fifties, Irene, now a very wealthy woman who owned several hundred rental homes in Sacramento, noticed that a tax lien auction for the property was listed in the paper. Out of curiosity, with no interest at all in buying the property, she attended the sale.

The eventual winning bidder was a property developer friend who was also a development competitor of Irene's. She approached him.

"I'm going to demolish it. The location is ideal for a motel I am planning to build," he said. "There is a lot of traffic on this corner."

"I don't think I would build a hotel on that site," said Irene. "I don't think it would work. It's not a good idea. Not on that site."

"Let me buy you a cup of coffee and I will tell you a story about that house. I know a lot about its history."

They went to a cafe down the block and she related her tale. He was not impressed. . . except with her chutzpah.

"What are you trying to pull... if you wanted this property why didn't you bid on it?"

"No, you're misunderstanding my intent here," Irene said. "I would not own that property if you paid me to take it!" Irene kept insisting she had no interest in the property but just felt that he should know about its history. HE, on the other hand, was convinced she had some strange business plot going.

"I don't believe in that junk... and I'm surprised a hardheaded business woman like yourself would even spout such malarkey. I am going to build my motel." He left in a huff.

Several months later he called Irene at her office. "Can you meet me?" her friend said, "Something has come up. Oh, my God Irene, has it come up!"

They met at the Senator Hotel dining room and Irene's friend was obviously agitated.

"Two skeletons actually. It'll be in the papers tomorrow. I told the police about your interest in the house. I think they want to talk to you."

Along with the bodies, the police found a tin box containing a .45 Colt Single Action revolver and a worm-eaten, handwritten confession from the killer. As the story was finally related, the owner of the house had lived in the house with her younger brother in the early part of the 20th century.

The writer of the confession wrote how, on the night of June 8, 1902, a little after 1:30AM, he was awakened by a terrible scream from his sister's upstairs bedroom. He had gotten out of bed, taken his old army revolver out of the nightstand and ran out onto the landing where he saw a man with a knife, covered in blood, running down the stairs from the third floor. He shot and killed the man on the stairs.

Running up the stairs to his sister's bedroom, he found her naked, brutally stabbed dead body in the closet next to her bed. After covering her body with the bedspread, he went down to his room to put on some pants to go get help.

As he dressed, he wrote, he thought about his future. His sister owned everything, a legacy from her deceased husband, and HE was not included in her will. She was childless and was leaving everything to charity.

Instead of getting help, he carried both bodies to the basement and buried them in the wall. He moved a lot of furniture in front of the wall.

He announced to the neighbors and friends that his sister was not well and had gone back east to live with a nonexistent sister. He continued managing her properties as he had been, but now for his own benefit.

When he found he couldn't keep it up anymore, he made the decision to leave... but his conscience made him leave the confession which, along with the gun, which he would place behind the same wall where the bodies were buried. He wanted people to know what happened, and that he really didn't do anything wrong.

Except for the ghostly story Irene related, this was all duly reported in the early fifties in the local Sacramento newspapers as an old crime that solved itself.

The medical examiner's office determined the skeletons were those of a young man and a middle aged woman.

The motel was never built... instead a gas station was erected on the site. It was never successful for very long.

When I researched this story in the late 1970s, after Irene's death, the gas station had been demolished and lot was empty, a home for derelicts sleeping in bushes. *

I again repeat that Irene swore this all happened as she told me it did. I recall seeing the goosebumps that rose on her arms as she told the story. I get goosebumps when I retell it even today.

Mr. Smith died in the 1930s but Mrs. Smith was still alive in the mid sixties in her late nineties and I knew her. She lived on her own in the same apartment building as Irene. She was still a no-nonsense type. After Mr. Smith's death, she had gone back to work... as a store detective for a large department store chain.

My mother once asked her about the events related above and she confirmed that it happened as Irene told it. She then said she didn't want to talk about it ever again... and excused herself to go to evening mass.

* (A corner of a California State office building now occupies the site. — A.W. Smith, 2012)

Actually I have a true story. About a week ago I had a very vivid dream that i was lying in bed. At least my perspective was lying in bed but maybe a foot higher that normally would be the case. The dream was very short. I don’t know how long it lasted, it wasn’t a running dream but more like a scene that was revealed to me. A snap-shot lasting maybe 15 seconds or less.

The dream was through my own eyes. I was laying in bed, except slightly higher, looking to the bedroom door. There were three people. The first was a man standing a few feet in the room, in the doorway behind him I think was a woman and behind her standing in the hall I think was my wife.

The man and women were medical personnel. The man was holding a medical box in his right hand and was looking down at me (somewhat under me) with a calm unusual expression.

I woke up and knew in the dream I was DEAD and the people were medical emergency called by my wife.

I didn’t tell my wife about the dream. I figured it is silly. I had full medical check-ups last year including EKG and I am fine. But what if the dream is something real? A premonition?

There was one thing I couldn’t understand about the dream though... In real life there is a rectangular table standing between the bed and the doorway, yet in the dream the table was not standing there. A few days ago it occurred to me that if I turn the table 90 degrees and pushed it back to the wall (left of the door) then that would resemble the scene. And it does! I laid in bed and looked to the door and that IS exactly the scene minus the people and my sight being about a foot higher.

Then I thought I better move the table back. If the table stands in the way blocking the scene then there is nothing to worry about. But then I thought what if I am supposed to pass on, by a fatal heart-attack or something in my sleep but here I am messing it up?

I don’t want to die but if I am supposed to die then it would be unholy for me to be screwing it up. Why else the dream?

I decided that for the good of mankind and all that is natural and holy I would leave the table against the wall.

However yesterday my wife told me she got a freelance job offer for two months in Munich and that I would be looking after our daughter alone for that time.

I told her fine, help me move the table...

My dad died last year.

My dad left his house to me, and my nephew and I live there. Many friends of nephew have mentioned seeing an elderly man with a white beard in the house or outside on the driveway.

Two of these people never saw or met my dad while he was alive. We’ve shown them pictures of the old man, and the ghost has been identified as my father.

The ghost has never shown himself to me. I suspect it is because when alive he scoffed at the mention of ghosts, saying it was rubbish. Oddly, twice I have been alerted to future house fires, about an hour in advance, by the smell of my father’s tobacco pipe and always at the location where it would start (he knew I detested smoke).

If he is here as a ghost then he is looking out for our safety.

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