My First Ghost Encounter

In the early 80s, I lived with my aunt and grandmother on a small, 5 acre berry farm in Port Orchard, Washington. I moved in with them to fulfill a promise that I had made with my late uncle. He asked if I would like to live with my aunt if something were to happen to him. Being a child of three or four I didn’t know what death was, so I agreed. One rainy day he was tending to the berries and caught cold. He died of pneumonia a few weeks later.

Living there, I always had an uneasy feeling going to the bottom floor of that split-level house. It was my uncle’s refuge, his “man cave” as they could call it now, where he spent much of his free time in his recliner watching basketball games on his large Zenith TV when he wasn’t tending to the berries. After his death, my aunt had the TV moved up to the living room on the upper floor sometime after I starting living with them.

A small jar of Vick's VapoRub

One night my aunt and I were watching sports on that TV. I remember that it was sometime in the fall because it was around 7PM and it was already dark. My grandmother had turned in for the night. I also remember that the Seattle Super Sonics were playing, my late uncle’s favorite basketball team. Sometime in the middle of the game, the intense smell of Vick’s VapoRub started to come from the stair well next to the couch my aunt and I were sitting in. The smell was so strong; it was as if someone brought a jar right up to my nose. My uncle used Vick’s to ease his congestion when he first became ill. As the scent lingered, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. My aunt had noticed the scent, too, and she started to speak to whomever it was, ”Honey, we are doing well. You can go back and rest. Go now, go back and rest.” As soon as she said those words, the scent disappeared about as soon as it had started. We went to bed shortly afterward as if nothing happened, and my aunt woke up my grandmother to tell her about what had just happened. We didn’t finish watching the game.

We never talked about it very much. I vaguely remember my aunt talking to my grandmother about it the next day. The incident rarely came up in conversations with friends or relatives. As a child, I didn’t quite understand what had happened. But after having had a few similar experiences, I have a better understanding: It was the spirit of my uncle coming to visit. Maybe he was wondering where his TV went? Maybe he was curious about the game? Maybe he wanted to root for his favorite team one last time? I don’t remember if that date had any significance to him or to my aunt. Could it have been their wedding anniversary? Was it my late uncle’s birthday? I will never know.

Spirits of the deceased sometimes linger for whatever reason. His last worry was the berry farm before he died and might have been why he remained, and quite possibly in the lower level where he spent so much time watching TV

Later on, after moving out of that house, I heard other reports of his presence, especially in the lower floor. My aunt remarried and her new husband moved into that house with her. He would find all the lights on in the lower floor when no one had gone down. A cousin, told his mom about a customer looking for berries in the house, who he described as an old, bald man, coming down the stairs to the lower floor. It was summer and berry picking season, so it gave his mother the chills. The man that my cousin described fit my late uncle’s description to a tee. My uncle had died some years before my cousin came to live in the US. In fact, my cousin was born after his death. The same cousin also saw a man in overalls and a straw hat walk into the pump house by the pond where they got water from to irrigate the berries plants. Again, matching my uncle's description. During Thanksgiving another year, a relative saw his image sit next to her in a large mirror. It vanished when she turned to tell my aunt.

I haven’t heard of any other sightings of him within the past few years. He might be at peace now that the berry bushes no longer there. Where there were once rows for berries, trees now grow. I wonder if he misses them.