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Art’s House
Living with a ghost in the attic
By Sarah Simmons

It was a peculiar house with pink shag carpet and a large over grown yard that sat on a quiet street. After we viewed the rooms on the first floor we made our way up to the attic to the third bedroom. Most strange was the shooting pain in my hand that happened both times I climbed the attic stairs. The feeling was weird enough for me to ask the realtor if the place was haunted. He just laughed at me along with my husband (at the time). I laughed at me too. It was a ridiculous thought. My husband liked the neighborhood and it was in our price range, so we bought the house anyway and the attic became a place I just didn’t need to go.

A few months after we moved in we realized the neighbor kid called our house the “devil house”. We just assumed it was because our house was red, but we learned from the little girl’s father that it was because Art had died in the house. We bought the house from Alice, the sweet little old lady who was Art’s wife. One day the other neighbor announced across the fence that it was so nice I was putting a vegetable garden in the same place Art used to have his before the arthritis in his hands got so bad.

After six months all the appliances in the house had consecutively broken down and my husband had had enough. It was just me, the dog, and Art. Art became a nuisance. He spit up in my friend’s water glass one night with some kind of disgusting old person, ghost goo. Art was an early riser and my bedroom was directly below his attic room. He liked to walk around at 6 a.m. and I could never fall back asleep.

It’s easy to convince yourself when your living alone that someone is in your house, and that person is of flesh and blood. It’s harder to convince yourself there is a ghost living in your attic. Art did not exude any kind of evil presence; it was just that you could feel his presence. At least some of us could. I pretty much narrowed it down to the dog, all my friend’s dogs, my dad and me. I was fed up. I decide to take action or continue on the path toward a psychotic breakdown.

A friend of mine found a “space clearer” that her hairdresser had used. I called the woman and set up an appointment. We decided on the following Sunday at 6 a.m., since this was when Art was most active. After a Saturday night out on the town, 6 a.m. came early. I wasn’t quite prepared for what ensued.

The woman who arrived looked like a soccer mom, and she brought a friend. I was picturing someone a little spookier. Space clearers don’t do a ton of ghost work, and she thought it would be nice to bring someone who was clairvoyant. They started hauling in some drums, some music some herb wands and candles- you name it. They put on some music, lit the candles and opened all the doors. Then the friend asked me to come with her while she talked to Art. We went down to his tool shop in the basement where Alice had left a ton of his stuff. She immediately connected with Art. She was rocking back and forth and I wanted to run. She said that Art was looking for Alice. He couldn’t find her. He didn’t understand why I was sleeping in his bedroom and what did I do with his hammer?

I couldn’t remember where I put his hammer and the whole thing was too crazy so I went back upstairs to see what the space clearer was up to. She was spending a lot of time working with the couch. I guess it had a very strong emotional aura, good and bad. It was a very old hand-me-down couch so I believed her. Once it was “cleared” she said, the “whole feeling of my space would change.”

Meanwhile, the clairvoyant woman went up to the attic and found out that Art hung out there because it was above his bedroom. I guess ghosts like to hover over their old spaces. She told Art that it was time for him to go and that he needed to go to the other side and “make a space” for Alice. Alice would be joining him soon. He just had to go wait for her and make sure she had a space. This was all key lingo into making Art leave, and thankfully it worked.

But Art wasn’t the only one she found in the attic. There was a little boy hanging out in a small room with a window under the attic eaves where I put all my boxes. This little boy was not a ghost. He was most likely living somewhere alive in the world, and it was his “child spirit” left behind. His presence was so strong in this room that his spirit lingered. Apparently he might have been abused and spent a lot of time in the small room as a child hiding. She said I should put a bouquet of herbs and flowers in there so that the space became happy again. I never ended up doing this because I felt it was a little unnecessary, the boxes didn’t need to feel happy.

After about two hours of all this, the space was officially cleared. I felt completely sane again. I tell people that even if it was all in my head, it was a lot cheaper than counseling and the sanity rewards were immediate.

I found Art’s hammer a couple of months later in the garage and gave it away. I had been instructed to remove all of Art’s things so that he was less attached to the house. It has been four years and he hasn’t been back. I’m moving again and I’m hoping the next house won’t have a need for any “space cleansing.”