ANNA LUMPKINS GHOST

"I'm just a ghost in this house
I'm shadow upon these walls,
As quietly as a mouse
I haunt these halls."
- Allison Krauss, Ghost in This House

Tale from Mindi Weber

"My family and I moved to the small town of Utica in southern Indiana when I was in the fifth grade. Because everyone knows everyone in Utica, and it was quiet and safe, it seemed a good place for us. And this is where I lived when I met Anna Lumpkins.

Anna was an elderly woman who lived a little down the hill from me. She had a big white house that she lived in alone (except for her two dogs). On a few occasions Anna would invite me into her house and show me pictures of her husband, Bill, who had passed away sometime before her.

After a while Anna's health started to fail, and she couldn't remember things. Her family eventually put her in a nursing home, and she soon passed away. I was sad that she was gone, but when my dad said that we would be moving into her old house, I was overjoyed. I was fifteen years old at the time, and moving into Anna's house meant that I would have my own room.

A few months after moving in, I started to notice little things. The door that led to the basement was often standing open after it had been shut and locked. We could hear people walking up and down the staircase. Almost every time I came down the stairs, out of the corner of my eye I could see someone standing at the top of the staircase. At first I figured it was just a shadow, until my cousin Hollie noticed it.

It was right around this time that my younger sister, Amy, started to ask if she could sleep in my room. When I asked her why, she wouldn't tell me at first; then finally, after two weeks of this, she said that every night a man would come upstairs and stand at the foot of her bed, and he would watch her until she would fall asleep.

One day after school I came home to find the house empty. I was glad. I had been ill all day at school and wanted to just soak in a hot bath and take a nap. I went to every door and window to make sure it was locked. I also locked the basement door. Once I was in the tub soaking, I began to drift off to sleep.

There was a knock at the bathroom door, and then I heard a woman say, "Mindi, honey, don't fall asleep in there! I want you to get out of there, okay?" I couldn't figure out who had knocked on the door, The only one with the key to the house was my mother, and the voice hadn't been hers. When I stepped out of the bathroom, the whole house was dead silent. I called out to my mother, but no one was in the house. I searched every floor. I checked all the doors, and they were still locked.

A lot more happened after that. I would have dreams about Anna, and she would sit in a rocking chair and watch me. I hope it was her way of saying she was keeping an eye on me." -Mindi Weber