Right after I got out of fourth grade my parents moved us all into a two story house with a huge attic and two small attics. I just had to have the upstairs room. It faced the south, had three window, a closet almost big enough to be another room and the way into the attic was through my closet.

The main attic was attached to two smaller attics with crawl spaces. One of the crawl spaces went along under the windows of my room. I’m glad I never had to use them. It was creepy enough when I had to crawl under that house to fix a pipe under the tub. Daddy was always having me fix things even when I had no clue as to what I was doing.

Within a week of moving in, the neighborhood kids were wanting to know if my house was haunted by old Mr Rogers. They said he had died in that house and he loved practical jokes. I never found out if he really died in that house or not, but many people around town told my family of some of the stuff Mr Rogers pulled. The kids also told me that my house was built on top of an old cometary. I found out many years later that was not true.

One day while I was downstairs in the hallway with mother, we heard this thump drag thump drag sound coming from upstairs in my room. We both knew that no one was supposed to be up there. We went up and checked. The sound literally stopped as we entered my room. No one was there. No one was in the attic or the other two rooms upstairs, not even our mischievous cat.

We waited to see if the sound would happen again. Nothing happened. It was days later when I was in my room alone and heard it again. It sounded like the thump drag was going from the big attic to the little attic under my windows. But I didn’t see a thing. I was alone. By the end of the summer both my parents and my sister had heard it and we all were sure that the sound came from the same place every time. It was really creepy when I was woke up during the night by this thump drag thump drag.

Even though it was creepy and happening only in my room, it was rather cool to think the house was haunted. So I just had to invite the guy that lived around the block to come stay the night. He didn’t know about the mysterious sound.

We were in my room and staying up later than I normally did when the thump drag began. He looked over at where the sound was coming from and froze. He stammered, “What’s that?”

“Oh that’s our ghost.”

He started going pale, “Whose ghost?”

“How should I know? All I know is that it drags a dead body through here each night.” I didn’t get to say another word. He was out of my room, down the stairs and out the front door before I could tell him that he left his shoes and shirt. I came down the stairs to see if he was still there and found my dad in the living room staring at the open front door.

With an amused look he asked me what happened. All I had to say was that he heard the thump drag. Daddy shut the front door as he laughed and then waved me off to bed.

It was soon after this that mother figured out that it was a rat dragging sticks over the rafters in that crawlspace. So she set a rat trap, caught it and that was the end of the thump drag. I was disappointed in no longer being able to say the house was haunted.