By Mary Trotter Kion
Kennewick, Washington.
The first time I entered my house in Kennewick, Washington, despite its rundown and dirty condition, something about it seemed oh so right. It seemed like the house welcomed me, telling me to live within it. Not long after I moved in, it did not seem quite welcome at times. And I had yet to meet ‘Ralph,’ my silent, mischievous housemate, or at least start to realize I was not living alone. Ralph was, and is, invisible to me, except for one very brief occasion.
I had lived in my house for about two weeks when, one day, I heard the faint sounds of a baby crying. It seemed to be coming from the other end of the house. At first, I didn’t pay much attention. It was just one of the cats, I thought. I had several, and one, Cookie the Calico, had quite an extensive cat vocabulary.
I heard this baby-crying sound several times, and each time, Cookie would not be in sight, confirming my belief that Cookie had added another phrase to her speech-making. I had already assured myself that the neighbors on either side of me had no small children or babies. So, I concluded it was the cat making the crying sounds. With that mystery solved, or so I thought, I continued unpacking boxes and making the place my own. If anything else unusual happened, I would have been far too busy to notice.
Baby Crying.
Then, one day, I again heard the faint cry of a baby. As usual, it was coming from the other end of the house. It never mattered which end of the house I was in; the sound always came from the other end. But this time, when the ‘baby’ cried, Cookie the cat sat beside me. As the ‘baby’ cried, I stared down at the cat. Cookie was quieter than I had ever seen her. She never opened her mouth nor twitched a whisker. It was not the cat making the sound; it was the last time I heard the ‘baby’ cry.
I had no idea what had created the crying sounds, and I still don’t. There was nothing I could do but let the incidents pass and get on with enjoying my house. It was a busy time cleaning the place to make it livable. Before me, its most recent residents had been of the squeaky four-legged and long-tailed variety. Though unseen, they had dropped evidence of their presence in every cupboard and drawer. That was no problem. Armed with pail and rag, several cats, and mousetraps, I soon had my unwelcome boarders mostly eliminated. But, as I discovered one afternoon, there was evidence of some other uninvited guest lurking in my house. And evidently, it was a rather windy entity.
When I bought this house, one of the gals where I worked gave me a housewarming present. It was a wind chime from an inverted clay flower pot that a leather thong could hang. As it was winter still and I had yet to begin sorting out the yard, I hung it from a hook that was in the ceiling in the dining area. As heavy as it was, I feared how much of a big outside wind it would take to make it sway and activate the clay clapper. And, of course, being hung inside with all the doors and windows tightly shut, there wouldn’t be any breeze to move it anyway. But — there was.
One day, I entered the dining area to see the heavy clay wind chime swaying back and forth. It must have been moving eight or ten inches in either direction. I just stood there, almost disbelieving what I was seeing. But I was seeing it as it swayed back and forth for several seconds before it abruptly stopped and remained still. I first thought that one of the cats had gotten up on the table, swatted the chime, heard me coming, and scurried down and away. Knowing that my largest cat could stand on his tiptoes and reach the kitchen counter to look at anything on the edge, I measured from the floor to the countertop. I then measured from the tabletop to the clay chime. The space from the tabletop to the hanging clay pot was two feet longer than from the floor to the countertop. No cat had hit it and made it sway. The incident of the swaying clay pot occurred one other time shortly after that, then no more.
Nothing more happened that seemed out of the ordinary for a couple of years. Oh, once in a while, something would fall off the top of the refrigerator — things I was sure had not been near the edge where they could fall. But, of course, I could have been mistaken. Besides, they were just small things that couldn’t hurt anyone. I kept my big electric wok up on top of the refrigerator and ensured it was well back from the edge. There was no fear of it falling. The heavy wok didn’t fall, but something even more strange fell — or possibly flew.
By now, there have been a few incidents of pictures falling, not down from the wall but OUT from the wall. Actually, it had happened just a few too many times, and I was starting to wonder and get suspicious. Houses just don’t make crying sounds or make hanging clay pots sway. I was seriously beginning to believe that something strange was going on. I had been in the house nearly three years now, and although unusual things happened occasionally, nothing serious happened that could harm anyone. Then something did happen.
I was in the kitchen one day, doing some of those necessary things you do in a kitchen. One of the things I did there that day was duck, just as the lid to the wok came flying off the top of the refrigerator right at my head. Now, things were getting serious and scary.
As the wok lid clattered to the floor, I shouted. And I, to this day, have no idea why I shouted what I did. I yelled: “Ok, Ralph, knock it off!” So now my invisible and silent housemate had a name, and since that time, I’ve had many occasions to repeat those five warning words. Why did I call him ‘Ralph?’ I don’t know. I don’t even like the name especially. But it has been a little over sixteen years that I have lived in this little house with Ralph.
Sometimes, a year or more will pass, and I will not indicate that Ralph is still lurking about. Then, suddenly, he will pull one of his innocent pranks. I would not believe he is here except that I have learned to make sure, when I go outside, not to close the door completely and to ensure the little thing in the middle of the doorknob that locks the door isn’t turned locked. I learned the hard way early one morning when I put the dogs outside. For some reason that I do not remember, I also stepped outside and closed the door completely. When I turned the doorknob to reenter — it was locked. It was no fun climbing in a window. At the time, I didn’t even consider that Ralph had locked the door. Then, one day, my sister came here to visit. We stepped outside together, and I closed the door completely. We were locked out. If Ralph did it he goofed. My brother-in-law was inside and let us in. I didn’t say anything about Ralph to them. They wouldn’t have believed me. But since then, I have been very careful not to shut the door tight unless I’m on the inside. After coming inside, I have often found the little thing on the doorknob turned to lock. Telling Ralph to “knock it off” doesn’t seem always to work anymore.
I’d been living in the house for some seven or eight years when I became disabled and could not work any longer. My daughter would work full-time, so I signed up as a babysitter for her little daughter. My granddaughter was about three years old at the time. I don’t think Ralph cared much for the child being there. I had some small plastic Mexican decorations on one wall. They were extremely difficult to put up. I suppose they were designed so they would not fall off the wall. However, on several occasions, when my granddaughter was within a few feet of where they hung, one or the other of the decorations would fly off the wall straight at her. They never hit, just missed, and couldn’t have hurt if they had connected with her. Eventually, that game ended, just as others had. But always, when one game ended, I was confident that something new would happen with time. And it did, just before Christmas in 1996.
To make sense of what happened late in November of 1996, I have to briefly explain an incident that happened to me 20 years ago. At that time, while living in Illinois, a person I will refer to as ‘a friend’ sent me one half of a tissue in an envelope with a letter. This friend wrote that the tissue had been blessed and that I was not to destroy or discard it. Being one to keep cards and letters, I read the letter, put the half of the tissue and the letter back in the envelope, and stuck it in a drawer in the bedroom. I thought no more about it. Soon after, I began having tremendous headaches that lasted for nearly a year, never really going away. Nothing the doctors gave me did any good, and I, to this day, remember very little of that lost year. But, for some reason I can not explain, one day I did remember something.
I don’t know why I recalled the letter and the tissue my friend sent me, but I thank God I did. They were still in the drawer where I had put them. I took the letter, the envelope, and especially the tissue and burned them. Then I asked my husband, now ex-husband, to buy me a silver crucifix on a chain that I could wear. He usually scoffed at my belief in the supernatural, but this time he didn’t. He immediately left and came home with what I had asked for. I put the crucifix on and lay down to rest.
My husband said later that I lay there twisting and turning and crying and that he could not wake me. When I woke on my own, the excruciating headache was gone. I continued to wear the silver crucifix for many years thereafter. Several times the chain would break. I would then buy a new chain, attach it, and continue wearing it. The chain broke a couple of times after I moved into my house. The last time it broke I never found it or the crucifix. Always before, it would fall inside my clothing or on the floor where I’d see it. This time the silver crucifix and the chain, which had a string tied to it where I have once done a quick repair job, was gone for good. For weeks afterward, I looked everywhere in the house for it. I could only guess it had unknowingly broken when I was away from home. It had disappeared some two to three years before November of 1996. That November I had occasion, instead of telling Ralph to “knock it off,” to thank him.
Being short of money that Christmas, I was making many of my gifts. One I was especially proud of and was enjoying making was a large cloth doll for my granddaughter. The doll, when finished, would be as big as she was. I was sitting at my sewing machine late one night, making a dress for the doll. After a while, I got up to go to the kitchen to refill my teacup. When I came back to the sewing machine the chain that had, some years previously, been attached to the silver crucifix, with the string still tied on it, was draped across the machine’s foot-feed. The foot-feed is the little foot-like thing that you let down on your material to hold it in place while you sew.
Had the chain dropped out of something I was using? That was my first thought. But that couldn’t be. Everything I was using to sew the doll and its clothes I had bought new just a week before. Besides, it was obvious the chain had been gently draped, not dropped, across the foot-feed. All I could think was — Ralph, and to thank him. Why, if it was Ralph’s doings, hadn’t he also returned the crucifix as well? I didn’t and still don’t, have an answer for that one either. It is a little too scary for me to consider.
Time passed. A year or more would go by, and there would be no indication that Ralph was still with me. Occasionally, a wonderful scent of male cologne will waft through the house with no logical explanation of its source, and I will think — Ralph. Sometimes, things fall off tables or counters when they should not have. Again, I will think — Ralph. Throughout all of this, I often wondered what Ralph looked like when he was alive- if he is indeed a he. For several years, nothing of major note occurred, and my life continued to revolve around the usual things: cleaning, yard work, grocery shopping, and caring for my cats and my dog.
By now, Cookie the calico, who I had in the early days, at first, thought had learned to make sounds like a baby crying, was getting on in years. She had passed her fourteenth year and survived a mild stroke that left her far less agile than previously. She spent most of her time now in a place I found very strange for her to be.
I had a rocking chair in the living room. None of the cats had ever claimed it as their resting place because the least little touch would erratically rocking the chair. But now, Cookie was spending her resting time exclusively in the rocker. She was there most of the time now, except for one occasion when someone else was sitting in it — someone who quickly dissolved into nothing.
I had been out grocery shopping. I came through the front door, both arms clutching over-filled shopping bags. Out of habit, I was looking downward to ensure I didn’t step on a cat: I had a couple of new ones that were not fully grown and hadn’t learned not to be where my feet were. Had I not been looking down, I might have missed that brief glimpse of who was sitting in the rocker. And it wasn’t Cookie the cat.
I only saw the lower, jean-clad legs of the man sitting in the rocker. The jeans were well worn, as were his scuffed western boots. In my astonishment and, I admit, fright, I failed to glance upward at his upper torso and face before he instantly disappeared. It is a failing I will always regret. Was it Ralph sitting there or someone else?
Cookie, the cat, spent her last days curled in that chair. I often wonder if the chair’s attraction was Ralph’s lap. If so, again, I thank him.
That was several years ago. Occasionally, the scent of that wonderful cologne fills the house or a single room. At other times, something falls that shouldn’t have. Is Ralph still here? His antics may have calmed, but I believe he is here. In many ways, I hope he is still haunting the rooms of my little house. But a kinder instinct also hopes he had moved on to that better place we tend to say the departed have gone.
© Mary Trotter Kion, 2005, updated March 2025. About the Author: Mary Trotter Kion is the published author of two books: Stones of Love, a mystery romance, and Kennewick, a historical non-fiction book about Kennewick, Washington. Over 200 of her historical articles and fiction have been published online.
Also See:
Washington – The Evergreen State