If you didn’t shout that line like the lyric of The Electric Slide song, did you even live in the 80’s? I guess most of you haven’t. I won’t hold it against you.

It’s not just a fun dance—yes, I know that’s debatable too—electric was the main/easiest thing for the spirits in my house to manipulate. In my last post you heard about the land line telephone, and how it rang endlessly at all hours of the night with no one on the other line.

Well that wasn’t the only system to go haywire at will.

My beautiful new house had all the bells and whistles, complete with a whole house intercom and radio system. You could listen to Top 40 while you vacuumed the kids’ rooms, or fill the air with the joyous sound of Christmas Carols during the holidays.

If you were locked outside you could press a button and the intercom would allow you to speak to members inside of the home to let you in. (How anyone thought this was a good idea in the first place, I don’t know.) Our friends would press the button just to harass us as a joke when they came over. The sound is still unsettling when live people do it.

But hey, it was a highlighted feature of the home. If you were lazy, you could press a button in your room and ask someone in the kitchen to bring you a bottle of water, so there’s that.

Yes, I know we have texting now. We had it then too, but this whole house communication unit was meant to be a luxury. You can guess where this is going.

One use of the intercom the spirits found particularly hilarious in the beginning, was to turn on the radio full blast, highest volume, throughout the whole house at 2 or 3 in the morning.

Good time, good times.

Don’t ever ask me why I don’t sleep well at night again. Being awoken to these things for the better part of ten years changes a person. Changes, yeah I guess that’s as good a word as any.

Another fun misuse of the system would happen at any time of day, but we mostly noticed it when the house was quiet, like as you’re watching television or doing laundry. You could occasionally hear the static hiss of the intercom button being pressed from outside (no it didn’t matter which unit) but no one ever said anything, and of course, no one was ever there.

Guess what I did? Yep, you got it right. Shut that mother off. Every individual intercom was switched off at the main unit and on the wall in each room. The same went for the volume.

OFF, OFF AND OFF.

You’re saying “wait a minute, that could be a short circuit, loose wire, surge, something easily explainable.” Well, not accordingly to any of the three electricians I had out to the house over the years. I asked them all, had the intercoms and phone line tested. All clear. You decide for yourself what you think. I did.

Wake up once or twice to hard rock screaming in your ears at 1:30 a.m. after you just put the baby to sleep, and I think you’ll understand the spirits have a dry sense of humor.

Is that it? Music and ghostly fingers pressing buttons outside the house to get in.

Oh, no. Wait, there’s more. This is where I give you my best game show hostess wave of my hand.

I spoke of the house alarm last post. As I’m sure you guessed, my alarm liked to go off for no reason too, albeit much less often than the other stuff. Apparently the ghosts are sympathetic to my false alarm charges. But when it did go off for no reason, it was ONLY in the middle of the night, and it was always the exact same window registering broken every time.

Eventually I had the alarm company come out and check the sensor. Looked fine. One or two more mis fires, and I called them out again a few months later, and had them replace the sensor altogether. Exact same alarm, still went off here and there.

Just so you understand the feel of this false alarm, it’s more than just a startle awake, choking on your heartbeat feeling. The window that would register broken is in the basement… in the farthest corner of the house…and I had to pass through the ultimate level 10 creepy part of the house in the pitch black by myself, in the middle of the night, to get to it.

For all the harmless stuff, there was a dark spot in the house, and cliche as it is, it was in the basement.

When I tell you I eventually felt like I was purposely being lured down there, I’m not lying.

So what did I do? Can’t turn the alarm off like everything else. You’re going to think I’m nuts, but I did it anyway.

I started making deals with the spirits in the house. Yes, you read that right. I—a grown ass woman— started to talk out loud to the otherworldly guests squatting in my house. You see the way I “saw” it (and I’ll explain my “feelings” and thoughts later) I had me a true war going on. The regulars that lived upstairs, and those that popped in downstairs to cause trouble.

Did I actually put that much thought into it? Upstairs, downstairs? Regulars and others? Walk down into the pitch black basement at 2 a.m. while your husband is out of town to verify the window isn’t really broken. You think of your children alone up in their beds above you, and creep slowly across the expanse of the cold, wood floor while the hair on the back of your neck and arms stands so tall your goose bumps hurt.

Damn right I put that much thought into it.

Is that really what was happening, a turf war? I have absolutely no idea, but that’s where my head was. Forgive me, I digress.

So I asked the regulars, the “good guys” to please try to control the riff-raff. I put my foot down and told them this was my house, I was the boss. I reminded them that they shouldn’t be there at all, and I could find people to make them all leave.

This tough chick stance actually became my platform when things got crazy, to remind them who was in charge. Did it work? The alarm still went off but not as much. Was that from my pep talk? Who knows, they had lots of other things to play with in the house.

The alarm was only a small drop of water in my haunted ocean, and the truth is, the spirits kept us hopping in a million other ways they probably give me a break on this one.

I still have so many stories to share, including apparitions, voices, footsteps, and my top 5 freakiest moments better than the movies that I haven’t even touched on yet.

Yes, I did see actual spirits in that house, and no, I’m not the only one.

Hit follow so you won’t miss any of the stories as I post them, and tune in next time for the Number 2 funniest/scariest thing that happened.