John & Vince Had Been Dead for a Long Time, but That Didn't Stop Them From Eating Pizza...
For years I've been telling anyone who would listen, my story about the haunted house in New London, CT I lived in back in 1969. When I was a self-employed plumber, a lot of my customers enjoyed the stories I told while I worked in their homes. Michael and his wife Denise were mesmerized by that ghost story…
I did plumbing work for a local bank, and that's where I met Michael, who, at the time, was the bank's vice president. He and his wife bought a small, older home in Brockton, on the Holbrook line, from a widow who lived there for many years with her husband and for ten years after he died.
The older woman insisted that people were breaking into her house, taking clothes out of her dresser drawers, and scattering them on her bed. Everyone figured she was either senile and hallucinating or just making it up. But when she started stacking things in front of the front door to prevent break-ins while she slept, and the family found out about this strange behavior, the house immediately went up for sale. When Michael and Denise went to see the house for the first time, the front door was barricaded shut, and they had to wait for the old woman to clear the entrance in order to get in…
With two young daughters, ages three and five, Michael and Denise needed more room than the original house had. They decided to put on an addition with a two-car garage under, that included a full bath, laundry, and a kitchen, and they needed a plumber. I gave them a great price to do the work, and I was hired.
When I first began working for them, their two young daughters were home, and mid-morning, they'd come into where I was and ask me if I wanted some hot tea and a muffin. "Of course," I'd say, and they'd pour some imaginary tea from a small plastic teakettle into a small plastic teacup and put a make-believe muffin on a small plastic plate. I'd play along and pretend to sip the tea and chew the muffin, telling them how good it was. Minutes later, Denise would walk in with some real coffee and a homemade muffin on a nice serving tray with a matching cup and saucer. That's when the girls would start giggling, and then they'd run out of the room with their imaginary stuff.
The addition came out great, and because the original house was old, there was still a lot of work to do in other areas. Over the next couple of years, I did several repairs in the old kitchen and bath, put in a gas water heater, repaired their boiler and fixed leaks in the baseboard, installed a whole house water filter and a gas log, replaced their outside spigots and some old cast iron drain piping. There was always plenty to do, and I enjoyed working for them despite the 45-minute ride from Norton.
There was a small kitchen in the walkout basement that, at one time, was the only kitchen in the house. There was also a small den, a playroom, a boiler room, and a backdoor that opened up into a beautiful backyard.
One night, I got a call from Michael, who said he came home to a lot of water on the basement floor in the boiler room. While we were on the phone, I asked Michael to look under the boiler, water heater, and water filter for leaks, and he said there were no visible leaks. I asked him to check the piping clipped to the bottom of the floor joists above, and again, there were no visible leaks. I suggested that maybe the foundation had cracks and perhaps water was coming up through the floor… Michael said no. That's when I laughed, and tongue in cheek, I offered my professional opinion, "Maybe you have a ghost in the house?" Michael and I both laughed.
I reminded Michael that there was a threaded galvanized drain pipe behind the refrigerator downstairs that still needed to be replaced with PVC, and if he wanted to replace that pipe, I could look around then and try and determine where the water was coming from…
Almost two months passed before Michael called to set up the pipe repair. While I was on the phone with him, I asked him how he made out with the water on the basement floor, and he said, "You were right…" I responded, "Right about what?" He replied, "That the house has ghosts…"
Michael said he came home one afternoon and went into the basement to check the floor for water, and everything was strewn all over the place, a big mess. When he looked out the back door, there were close to 50 cats sitting in the backyard, staring at the house. Later that night, he said the garage doors started going up and down on their own, and small appliances on the kitchen counter were coming on, even ones that weren't plugged in. He called an electrician, and after witnessing the supernatural events firsthand, he was speechless and hightailed out of there quickly…
Michael said he and Denise first began getting suspicious when after eating breakfast, their clothes were suddenly arranged on their bed, right down to socks and underwear. I interrupted and said, "Then the old woman wasn't senile after all, someone or something, was laying out her clothes, and she had every right to believe someone was breaking into her house…"
I still suspected Michael might've been fucking with me, but he wasn't the type of guy to do that; he was more on the straight and narrow. He said he and Denise went to a unique gift shop in North Easton, "Women of Wisdom", that has Psychics, Mediums, spiritual books, jewelry, and other paraphernalia, and after hearing Michael and Denise's story, Katy, the owner, and a medium, went to their house to determine exactly what was happening there…
Holding a small pendulum on the end of an eight-inch chain in one hand and then closing her eyes and going into a trance, Katy conjured up her spiritual advisers and determined that the original owner of the house and surrounding property, had a will and testament that named his two grandsons, John and Vince, as beneficiaries. After both boys died in freak accidents in their teens, their father inherited the property. She said the boys didn't get along with their father, and after they died, their spirits refused to leave the property. When their father passed, he tried to get his boys to go with him and crossover to the other side, but they wouldn't. Katy said a fight broke out in the basement, and that was why everything was in disarray and went on to explain that cats have a heightened awareness of spiritual activity, and they gathered in the backyard to witness the battle between the boys and their father. She said the water on the floor was John's way of letting everybody know he was there. John died in a drowning accident, and his younger brother Vince was killed a few years later in an automobile crash…
Michael definitely one-upped my ghost story, and in doing so, he had my attention. He said John and Vince were sending written messages to them on their home computer and that their two daughters could see both boys clear as day and that Denise could sense their presence.
At one point, the boys started leaving hand-written notes around the house that cited several things that only family members would know, like activities that had taken place at birthday parties and other family gatherings, claiming they had even gone on family vacations with them. John told them which pizza and Chinese food places he and Vince liked best. Michael said he could put a slice of pizza on the counter and it would disappear in a wink of an eye. Katy said the spirits of the two boys used their energy to make the pizza disappear as they did with other foods. Their favorite candy was Tootsie Rolls, and everyone in the family watched the contents of the wrappers shrivel up as the two boys devoured them. John's favorite number was 17 (he died at 17), and his favorite band was Aerosmith. Vince, the younger of the two, was quieter and not as vocal as John. According to Michael, John was incredibly smart and could learn any computer program instantly, and he spent a lot of time in chat rooms communicating with people who had no idea he was a spirit and not a living person…
John told them that after the old woman's husband died, his spirit hung around in the attic, a place where Katy said a lot of spirits hang out for eternity or until they're ready to crossover to the other side…
Michael and Denise looked up the house's original owners, and Katy had everything right. They found out where the boys were buried and visited their gravesites. After some research, they discovered an obituary and contacted the local newspaper and the writer who wrote the original article about John's drowning.
The writer, in his late 80s by then, said he remembered writing about the accident; it was the first story he covered after he was hired by the newspaper fresh out of college. Pictures of the two boys revealed they both had red hair, the same as Michael and Denise's two daughters.
John described in great detail, the automobile accident Michael had been in several years ago, including the time of day and the intersection where it occurred, and that it was he who prevented Michael from being badly hurt. Michael said the details of the accident had always been a mystery, he never saw the other vehicle and didn't remember hitting the brakes, but his car swerved, somehow came to a stop, and the damage was minimal…
John told Michael that when one of his daughters left her sweater at a house they stayed in up in Maine, four hours away, and it suddenly appeared on the kitchen counter in Brockton, confusing everyone as to how it got there, it was him who retrieved it. Katy said that everything done in the spiritual world takes place in nanoseconds and that it was difficult for the living to comprehend it. John told Michael and Denise that while they were vacationing in Maine, he and Vince met the spirits of a girl named Mary and her dog and that they'd come to Brockton several times to celebrate Halloween. At one Halloween party, John, Vince, and Mary spelled their names on the coffee table using candy corn. I would've loved to have been there to see that…
Once I heard all the details about John and Vince, I was a little tentative about going over there to fix that drain pipe. I asked Michael to ask John and Vince if they liked me. I figured they'd been staying in that house since their deaths, so they would know me. The two boys were in the room and began typing on the computer that they liked me a lot, and that they'd been watching me work around the house for years… "Okay," I said. "I'll be over tomorrow morning at 8:30…"
I put together a little gift bag for the boys which included a family-size bag of mini tootsie rolls and a cassette tape of music I made for them that included several Aerosmith songs and the Beatles' "I Saw Her Standing There" (She was just 17).
I arrived on time, and after Michael and Denise let me in, we all stood in the foyer and talked for a while before going downstairs, and that's when we heard a loud bang that came from the basement. We looked at each other and laughed, and then I handed Michael the gift bag, and the three of us headed downstairs…
When we got into the old kitchen, an unopened box of Reynold's Wrap aluminum foil was on the floor in front of a shelf. We all agreed there was no way that box fell on its own, and then Denise said it was a sign and that the boys were gone. She said they usually get on the bus and go to school with the girls. Apparently, spirits suck the energy out of humans, energy they desperately need, and there's no one better for them than young children who have an abundance of it.
After I finished replacing the pipe, Michael, Denise, and I talked for a while, and then I left them an invoice for the work I did. Before the economy tightened up and everything became C.O.D., I always gave my customers 30 days to pay.
Michael called me later that evening to say John and Vince enjoyed the tootsie rolls and the music and that John was typing up a thank you note to me that he'd send along with the payment. I could hardly wait.
A few days later, I got the check in the mail along with a separate envelope containing John's three-page note dated "Friday, October 17, 1996…
John's handwriting wasn't bad, especially for a spirit who had been dead for quite a while…
John sure loved his punctuation marks!
John and Vince were both good, fun-loving kids, despite being dead…
Amalia was Denise's best friend, and she was also a customer, one of my favorites. She's Greek and believes in the "evil eye", so when her best friend's house had spirits, she refused to go over there until they were gone via some type of spiritual cleansing or exorcism. At one point, Denise told Amalia they had performed a ritual and that John and Vince were gone, but they weren't, and I knew it…
One morning, I went to Amalia's house to install a cold water feed for her new refrigerator's ice maker. I cut in a tee, and soldered in a ball valve and a tubing adapter. I turned the water in the house back on, but I hadn't installed any 1/4" tubing yet when Amalia walked downstairs to see how I was doing. As we stood there talking, Amalia said Denise told her the spirits were gone, and she had absolutely no reason to doubt her. I didn't really want to be the one to tell her the truth for fear of repercussions, and I knew John and Vince could be anywhere in a matter of nanoseconds, and for all I knew, they followed me to Amalia's house… Even knowing all that, I couldn't resist telling Amalia the truth…
I looked around the basement before I leaned in close to Amalia and said, "They're not gone; they're still there…" At that precise moment, the ball valve suddenly opened and began spraying water all over the basement. I jumped onto my stepladder and shut the handle quickly. Both our eyes were wide open in shock and disbelief. I believed John and Vince were in Amalia's basement, and they weren't happy with me…
I shook my head from side to side and whispered to Amalia, "We've got to be very careful; they're everywhere…"
When I got home that afternoon, my wife greeted me with, "I got burned by the hot water coming out of the sink." I couldn't believe it, because we had three young children I set the max outlet temp to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, ten degrees below the maximum allowable in Massachusetts, and the shower to 112 (code). There was no reason for her to get burned. I went downstairs to look at the plastic adjustment dial on the water heater, and someone had removed it, turned up the temperature, and haphazardly slipped it back on crooked. I re-set it, placed the dial back on, and was left wondering if it had anything to do with what happened in Amalia's basement…
The next morning, on my way to a job, suddenly, a can of silver spray paint bounced off one of my shelves and was flying around the back of my van uncontrollably, spraying everything in its path. I had to pull over and grab the can to make it stop. There was absolutely no explanation for that…
Then I received a phone message from Amalia that she smelled gas in her kitchen… By the time I called her back, she already had the Gas Company there, and they pulled out the gas stove and found a leak in a spot that was under a factory-installed cover plate that no one could access without special tools. There was definitely something unexplainable going on, and I just knew it had something to do with John and Vince; I just wasn't sure what…
I went to "Women of Wisdom" that night to talk with Katy. I explained my connection to John and Vince and told her about the things that'd been happening lately to Amalia, my wife, and me. I brought the note John had written, and Katy asked, "Where do you keep it?" When I said it was kept in a drawer in my night table, she warned me not to keep it near anybody, to wrap it in black cloth and put it somewhere away from everyone, preferably in the basement, which I did. Then Katy took out her pendulum and went into a trance to consult her spiritual advisors…
Although her hand and fingers remained still, the pendulum was spinning like an amusement park ride, and in perfect circles, as she held the chain between her thumb and index finger. Three minutes later, when the pendulum stopped spinning, and her eyes opened, she started explaining that everything that occurred was no accident. Apparently, John and Vince's father wanted his boys to crossover so badly, he decided to use me to facilitate it. He knew if unexplainable things started happening to me, I'd go to see Katy, and she would tell me what to do. She said that's why everything happened the way it did, and that's why I was there talking to her…
Katy told me I had to talk to Michael to tell him it wasn't healthy or safe for his two daughters to spend so much time with the spirits of John and Vince. Then she warned me that John and Vince really loved me too and if something went south where they were living, they wouldn't have any problem coming to my house. I was immediately concerned they'd come to my house and suck the energy out of my three kids…
Katy sold me an inexpensive rope necklace with a black stone and said it would protect my heart from evil spirits and prevent John and Vince from attaching to me. I still wear it to this day, it's on right now…
What was I supposed to do? Telling Michael that John and Vince had to leave was not an easy conversation to have over the phone. I had to give it some thought…
The following day I had a job to do first thing in the morning in Walpole, and I only had a couple of customers in Walpole, so I rarely went there. I took Route 27 and then turned onto Highland Ave, heading towards Route 1. Just as I turned onto Highland, I saw Michael's car coming the other way. Freak coincidence? I don't think so…
I immediately pulled over, and so did he. We were both wearing dark sunglasses, and neither one of us removed them; in fact, there was a strange vibe between us, almost like he already knew I had something very important to tell him…
I got right to it. I told him about all the crazy shit that'd been happening and that I went to see Katy. I said, "Michael, Katy told me to tell you that you have to get John and Vince out of your house because it's not healthy or safe for your two daughters to be around them." He looked at me without any emotion and said, "Okay." And that was it. We both got back into our vehicles without saying another word and went our separate ways…
I hadn't heard from Michael for a couple of months when he called to invite my family and me to a 4th of July barbeque at his house. I couldn't resist asking him if John and Vince were gone, and he said they'd been gone for a while…
On the day of the party, everyone was out in the backyard except Michael, Denise, and myself, we were standing and talking in the small den in the basement. I looked around, and all the furniture that had previously been upstairs, where John and Vince stayed, was now neatly arranged downstairs. I asked Michael and Denise if John and Vince were staying in the basement, and they reiterated that they were gone, but I knew they weren't…
I don't remember going back over there to do any plumbing work or to socialize either. They knew I knew, John and Vince weren't gone, and it wasn't just a hunch…
Every once in a while, I'd be driving in my plumbing van with the radio blasting, and an Aerosmith song would come on, and suddenly the volume would go up on its own. Normal volume, even for me, a product of the '60s and the '70s, was 8 (digital), but when Aerosmith came on, I'd watch the digital volume zoom right up to 17 without any outside help…
Call me crazy, but when I knew John and Vince were in my van listening to Aerosmith, I never lowered the volume until the song was over. It happened frequently for several years, and then it stopped happening altogether. Maybe they finally crossed over to the other side to be with their father?
It's been at least 20 years since I last spoke to Michael, Denise, and Amalia…
Yeah, it's all fucking true!
Here's one of John's favorite bands performing one of my favorite tunes. Do yourself a favor & turn the volume up to 17…