Spirits At Night
Cayucos was a hauntingly quiet town, except during tourist season. As a small boy, I discovered and explored. There wasn't a part of town I didn't know, once you got north of the cemetery. I had visited all the old places.
You didn't hear about hauntings in Cayucos. As far as I knew, there weren't any. No ghost stories, except for occasional drunken sightings down at the local saloon. Yes, it was called the Cayucos Tavern, and had been the saloon for a long time.
Much of this town was as it had been ages ago. Maybe that's what the spirits liked about it. But then again, maybe they were unhappy about all this intrusion in their afterlife. After all, this was THEIR town. Would a ghost really fight back? Would they try to keep things the way they were? I guess so, when I look back at what happened. Let me share it with you::Spirits At Night
Aye aye, Captain!
by Gerald Craig
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There is a little town called Cayucos, on the coast of California. For more on the history of this town, CLICK HERE. It is half way between LA and SF. What is the significance of the location of this town? It was one of the few places where ships could dock in the old days before California was born. That is when I believe this whole thing started.
Cayucos was founded by Captain James Cass in 1867. Cass was an old sailor that established this town as a shipping center. With its protected cove, it was a perfect place to dock large ships on a long pier. Cayucos, named after a canoe-like boat the local Indians used on the ocean, quickly became the place for sea-farers to spend some time as they were unloaded or loaded. Sailors from around the world would make their way through here on their way north or south.
At times, Cayucos got to be rather rough. In the old days, law was taken into the hands of locals. Dummies were hung in effigy and as a warning that you better keep yourself under control. There was the old Cayucos Way Station, where the stagecoach would come and go. I had grown up part of my childhood in Cayucos, and came back to live there again. I was renting a home just a few blocks away from the old Way Station and downtown area. It was an old part of town, part of the original subdivisions.
The little home I rented was an old shack, but not as old as the town itself. It was the oldest little thing for a couple blocks, but a very modest little building. It was like someone built it as a second home, a place to come visit this oceanside play land. It was about 20 feet wide, and about 30 feet long. It had a box shaped, flat roof, detached garage, and two bedrooms.
Across the street, they had later built a Catholic Church. The old church, located closer to downtown, had burned just a couple years after my family had moved to town, which was not far away from where I was living at the time of this incident. I don't know if all that prayer from the nearby churches attracted spirits (after all, we were about a mile from the cemetery), if there was a graveyard at one time where this house was built, or if perhaps someone had found their doom nearby, but someone was not happy.
Everything was normal through the day, a quiet neighborhood. Each night we would go to bed, my girlfriend and I lived together, and things were very quiet. After a short period of time, I noticed that a piece of furniture was moving. It was the little chair sitting in the corner of the living room. For some reason, when we would wake up, it would be out of place.
Vibration could move furniture, and I had aquariums in the home. I thought maybe the pumps were causing problems through the floor. But, would an aquarium pump move a chair up to 3 feet from the wall? I had to find out. There are only two ways a chair would move. One was to slide, and the other was to be lifted. I gave some thought to the possibility of sleep walking. Was one of us getting up in the middle of the night?
Thus my experiment came. I wanted to find out how the chair was moving. I placed the feet of the chair in drinking glasses. My thought was that if it is lifted, the glasses would stay in place. If it slid, the glasses would move with it. That would give me the type of movement. Then I figured I would go a step further, and place a flat sheet of newspaper on the floor in front of it. If I was moving the chair, I would have to crinkle the newspaper when I stepped on it.
Ah, the trap was set, the plan was working. I would go to bed, and find a solution in the morning. Good night.
The morning came, and I was anxious to get my answer. I sped out to the living room with a smile, to find the chair... still in its place. "That couldn't be right", I thought. Maybe I had outsmarted myself in sleepwalking, and just slept through the night. How dare I outsmart myself!
Well, I would leave it for that night, and go about my day. We had to go someplace that afternoon, shopping or something. I just remember coming back when it was already dark. I had not left any lights on, and it had to be past 8 pm. I came in the house, put the groceries on the table, and went to feed the fish. Wait, something was wrong. The chair... it had moved while we were gone.
Worse than that, the glasses were still in place, and THE NEWSPAPER WAS UNTOUCHED. I stood there in amazement, wondering how that happened. Well, I think I pissed someone off doing that. We started to notice chills in the room at times. We would have the home nice and warm, and be sitting in the living room, and feel a chill all of a sudden. I remember one particularly cold strong chill when I was sitting on the floor watching TV.
A few days later, I was clearing out the fridge. We had leftovers, the neighbor had a dog. I was putting food on a pan to take next door for a treat. It was piled in the middle of the pan. Grace called me into the bedroom to look at some clothing and help her make a choice. I put the pan on the dining table. It wasn't in the center, but it was definitely in a safe place.
We were looking in the closet, when I heard a loud sound, like a pan falling. I came back out to the kitchen. The food was on the floor, but something was wrong. I didn't have it on the edge of the table, so why would it fall? If it had fallen, why was it now in the middle of the room?
It had to be picked up, carried to the middle of the room, and turned over deliberately. The pan was sitting upside down, right on top of it, where it was placed. How did that happen? I think this spirit was a bit unhappy with us, and wanted to make a statement. I cleaned up the mess, and the dog missed out.
This is the first time that the idea of spirits actually came up. Was it the spirit of the woman who had died in that home? Her son lived with her and had taken care of her for several years until she passed away. When he became older and ill, he spent his last couple of years in a VA facility. Had he come home? It was shortly after this that the most blatant event happened. This was the kicker.
You know how you will sometimes fall into such a deep sleep that you don't want to wake up? When you do start to wake up, or should wake up, you go into a dazed state, where your dream mingles with reality. That is when you dream of a kiss by Bo Derek when the dog is licking your face. I was in that kind of state, in the middle of the night, but no Bo Derek. The reason? Voices.
I was getting pissed off, because someone outside was rude enough to be talking loudly, right outside my window after midnight. I didn't want to get up, but I couldn't ignore them. It was cold, and I snuggled with the blankets a bit more, and that is when I felt Grace's hand on me, trying to shake me. She shook stronger, trying to wake me. I figured I would have to deal with these people outside now. I reached over and turned on the light.
"What's wrong? I need to look outside." I was irked.
"Did you see them?" she countered.
"No, I'm going to look out the window to see"
"No, not outside, in here, right there!" She pointed to the foot of the bed. Nothing was there. What was she talking about? She was obviously shaken, still trembling and scared. I got a good look at her, and her face was white as a sheet.
It had something to do with the voices I had heard. I asked her what they were doing. She told me they were standing at the foot of our bed, talking to each other. She saw them clearly in the light of the aquarium. I asked what they looked like. This was what put it all together for me.
She told me one was wearing a uniform. It looked like some sort of military uniform or captain outfit with the hat and medals. The short one was dressed in black with a small cap, like a tam. There were stripes on his arm. They sounded funny, too.
"Did one have an English accent, and the other one was speaking French?"
"Yes, I don't know what the short one was saying or if it was French, but he sounded strange."
I thought for a moment, and realized that these were the voices I heard. I turned the light off quickly and watched. They were gone for sure. I turned the light back on and comforted her. "Why didn't you wake me up?"
"I tried. I pushed you at first, but then I got scared. I couldn't talk. I was frozen and you wouldn't wake up."
She had been petrified, so scared by their being there that she couldn't move, couldn't utter a sound. She had that feeling we get in our dreams when we are frightened and can't scream, but this was no dream. This was for real. I felt for her. I couldn't imagine being so scared.
I comforted her, calmed her down, and assured her that it would not happen any more. She wouldn't sleep any more that night.
The next morning, I walked across the street to talk with the priest. I told him what happened, and he told me it was no problem. He told me to simply tell them to go away in the name of Christ. I followed his instructions, and for the next few months we lived there, things were back to normal. Well, about as normal as they could be, after seeing your ghosts face to face.
As far as the mother and her son? I will never know if the chair and pan were them. Maybe I had put my chair where he used to put his favorite easy chair. Maybe she was mad at us for inconveniencing her son. Maybe it was a totally different spirit. Maybe it had been a family graveyard under the home.
I always wondered if maybe that chair was sitting on top of a buried treasure pirates had placed there long ago. They may have been protecting their booty. Well, nobody will know, I banished them forever.
Current Picture of CayucosThat was not my last encounter with spirits. A number of years later, I got married. Lisa and I bought a home from her father. When Lisa was about 9 years old, her mother passed away from cancer in the home. There had been incidents in that home, such as a fire on the porch, and other little accidents. Her last few years were rough on her.
During this time, her husband, my father-in-law, did what he could to comfort her. He even bought her a special carpet. It was almost the size of the living room/entry room, red with gaudy gold designs on it. It delighted her, and it was special to her. It was so special, that after she passed away, he closed up the room and never used it, except for guests. They had even begun using the back door instead of the front, so they wouldn't walk on it.
When we moved in there, things changed. The carpet stayed, but I wanted to protect it. We had started using the front door, as a home was supposed to be used. "There was no reason," I thought, "to walk all the way around the house and come in the kitchen door, when the front door is right there." And so it was, things were back to normal.
I wanted to protect the rug from traffic, so I put a small area rug, about 2 feet by 3 feet in size, inside the doorway for people to track on. I thought it was a good thing, someone else did not.
Every now and then, the rug was moved. Who would move it? Lisa denied it, and our daughter was too young to move anything. Somebody else was doing it. I figured it out. Mom-in-law didn't like us covering her beautiful carpet. Well, she wasn't in charge any more, so she would have to live with it. I thought of stapling it in place, but that was too drastic. I figured she would get the message... eventually.
One day a friend stopped by. I noticed the rug out of place, so after I opened the door, I moved it back into place. He noticed what I was doing, so I took it upon myself to share that the rug had been moving, so I had to reposition it every now and then. He just smiled, and said it was okay.
I told him I was serious, that someone or something was moving the rug, and it was going on about every day now. He told me it was a nice try, but he wasn't buying it. The challenge was on. I told him to come back the next day to see again, and promised I wouldn't move anything.
The next morning, I opened the door with a smile, knowing he was going to have to eat crow. He saw the rug moved, and tried to explain it away. Something was making it slide, it wasn't being moved. Again, the challenge. I went outside and gathered four bricks, one for each corner of the rug. I moved the rug to the right place, and put the bricks in position. I was going to win this one.
Morning came again, and sure enough, he came in to see the rug. No, it wasn't in the other position. It was in the same position, just scrunched up! Obviously, the bricks were too heavy for her. Perhaps she had weakened with her illness. It looked like someone tried to pick it up in the middle, and the ends with bricks moved closer together. There was a large hump, or loop, in the middle of the carpet.
He stood there and looked for a minute, a serious expression on his face. I could see he was thinking. He didn't want to accept the truth. He again accused me. I assured him, with my most serious look, that I did not do it. He thought some more. He didn't want to come back any more. Of course, after I sent the spirit away, he started visiting again.
I should also note that my marriage is about as "banished" as that ghost lol. I have yet to have another experience with a spirit. I've had the usual chills, feelings, and uneasy quivers. I have yet to see, hear, or play with a spirit again... until I find another home that should be left alone. Wait a minute... did you feel that chill?
A Quick Note: Although this is a true story, I better let you know that contents are copyright 2006 by ME! If you want to use any of this, or have any questions just email me.
Copyright 2006 Gerald Craig
Original Painting by Charlie Clingman
