As I have said I get a lot of vintage items that have gone through my house for years since selling on eBay but there was one box lot that is not easy to forget...
(just a stock picture of a Shriner)
The auction stated that it was the liquidation of an estate from a gentleman who was a Shriner and I thought well I have seen those sparkly fez's sell pretty good so away I went. I wound up buying quite a bit of this man's personal items such as hats and framed memorabilia. He had won quite a few awards being a Shriner and he must have been an officer because his fez was really fancy. I also wound up with a nice velvet hat of his like men used to wear during the 40's. I take lots of staged pictures and could use that hat as a prop.
It was late when we got home from the auction but I am a night owl so I went to my office to unload my loot. After laying the items out on my work table and getting a closer look at the stuff I turned around and sat down at my computer to do some price research on eBay.I had been at it for about 15 minutes when from right behind me a loud whistle sounded, like somebody whistled for a dog! I about jumped out of my jeans! The hubbs had already went upstairs to bed but I yelled up the steps anyway and he was sleeping.... our dog was just standing in the middle of the floor staring at me. I racked my brain trying to figure out what had just happened but I just could not figure it out.... eventually I went on to bed.
Our upstairs has two bedrooms, one in the front of the house and one on the backside. We sleep on the backside because it is larger and more quiet. The front room is small and does not have a heat vent or ac vent in it so we keep the door closed. However in that room is a fancy little cabinet with a glass door that I was keeping my props in for photos. That next day I added a couple of the hats from the estate auction, closed the glass door and the bedroom door and had forgotten about the whistle I had heard and went on my merry way.
That next evening we came home from a dinner date and were getting ready to head upstairs for bed, I was finishing something up in the kitchen and all of a sudden my husband started yelling that it sounded like there was a little dog upstairs whining... He wanted me to come by the stairwell and listen, I could not hear it as well as him but did hear something faintly. He went on to bed and I followed a few minutes later. I finally made it upstairs and was standing in the hallway talking to him and I heard it much better this time. It was coming from the front bedroom. Chills ran up and down my back and my hair stood on end but I managed to go over and and slowly open the door, the whining stopped but I saw no dog. Although we were both rather freaked out we just didn't really talk about it, it was like we both knew it was other worldly and we were just going to ignore it as much as possible.
For about three days the whining continued, I finally decided to keep that bedroom door open and it seemed to stop. One evening my husband went up to take a bath and from downstairs it sounded almost like somebody was running around or stomping in the the bedroom closet. My husband was in the bathroom when I went up to see what the heck was going on, he had not even came out of the bathroom the whole time...
I had a sewing sleepover for my grand babies and their cousins, one of the cousins stated they didn't know we had a little dog... I said we don't and they swore one was just at the end of the dinning room table. At the time we only had a large Australian Shepherd. A couple of weeks later I was sitting in the living room facing the stairwell door, it was very late and I was thinking I should just go to bed when I heard dog toenails coming down the wooden stairs, plain as day. I thought our dog had been up there and was coming down when I looked over and realized he was laying two feet away from me. Looking back at the steps I saw the first full bodied apparition I have ever seen. It was a small dark dog, with long silky looking hair, like a sheltie mix. It paid no attention to me whatsoever and walked straight to the kitchen almost like it was on a mission. I got up dumbfounded from my chair and walked to the kitchen. There was no dog to be found. My dog did not seem to hear or see what I heard.
this is the staircase where I saw the dog..
(the dog looked something like this)
I was starting to get a little panic stricken. I tried to find something about seeing a dog apparition by researching online but all I found was a bunch of mumbo jumbo so I tried to think it through on my own. I prayed about it, and it stayed on my mind constantly. I wasn't exactly scared but very confused as to what the heck was going on. Then I thought about the whistle I had heard and I felt it connected right to the dog sounds and the dog ghost I had seen. What if it was the man whose estate items I had bought, he had passed away and his family had sold all his belongings.... so maybe he was kind of sticking with his stuff, maybe even his hats that I had in my cabinet!
That next day I removed his hats and laid them on the back porch. Not sure what to do with them I just kinda left them out there for a day or two. I had left my dog out in the backyard one night and rested my arms on the railing watching him for a few minutes and it felt like someone touched my back, not slightly but like the real deal. I decided that I would pitch the hats and walked them out to the trash. As I returned to the porch I heard the whine of a little dog, almost like a puppy but I could not tell from where it came. I thought maybe that would take care of the situation, yeah right... There was the night I was up to use the facilities and I started to hear something clicking around in the hallway, like it was clicking up one wall and down the other. My husband even got up and was listening to it, just as we started to talk about it a dog howled from the bottom of the steps, we had never heard our dog howl before. My husband ran downstairs and our Aussie dog was in the kitchen on his mat sound asleep and never reacted at all...
It was almost a year later and I was awoken by a dog on my bed digging my feet just as hard as it could, it actually hurt! But I saw nothing, it was broad daylight. We still will feel a dog jump up on the side of the bed in the middle of the night and it can freak you out. But its getting fewer and farther between now. Its been almost two years since the awful howling sound.
However... our new rescue dog (Bitsi Boo my little Jack Russell) has taken to waking me up in the middle of the night growling at the ceiling... I hope she does not keep this up.
There are still one or two things to tell but they will come out another time...
I know... this is one wild colored pinwheel for sure. I was trying to use up some stash I had in fall colors. I think I will border it either in black or brown. The blocks are 12 inches after I squared them up. I started with two ten inch blocks sewn together with good sides together sewing a quarter inch seam all around then criss crossed cut with my rotary cutter and opened out and a pinwheel pattern made. Then I sewed the cuts together matching all the seams, then side by side till I had sewn them all together. 
