I told you about my friend who got the "ghostly neck rub" a little while back. Since he told me about that, and with it being Halloween season anyway, I'd been thinking about my grandmother's rocking chair. We had a little dog named Duke from about the time I was 4 until about 22 (we seem to have long-lived dogs). When we'd go visit Granny, we'd usually have Duke with us and we'd trot up the stairs to her apartment, she'd let us in and Duke would run & jump up in her old Colonial maple rocking chair the minute he got in. She'd usually walk over, put her hands on her hips, give him a look and say, "OK, little man, that's MY chair!" He'd prick up his ears & jump down.
After Granny Mae died, we inherited her rocker, among other stuff. It was in the living room of my folks house for YEARS and got a lot of use . . . but every now and then, I'd be in there all alone watching something on TV late at night and the rocker would rock on its own. Just a couple rocks and stop . . . just enough to get your attention.
We're originally from Long Beach, a suburb of Los Angeles and Mom had a stroke in the middle of remodeling her house to sell and move to Seattle, which had been a plan of all of ours for a few years. After I took over "the gutting" of the house, I moved the rocker & lots of other stuff to a storage unit so the plumbers, painters, construction guys, carpet layers, etc. had plenty of room to work. After the move north, I had to be back in Long Beach for a deposition and to get the last load of "stuff" headed north. After much debate, I had the chair loaded onto the Goodwill truck instead of the moving truck - instead of Early American maple & chintz, I opted for golden oak craftsman style which is like my mom's mother had years ago. But that's a whole 'other topic . .
Flash to the present - the week before Halloween 1999. Mom and I are watching Haunted San Antonio on the History Channel and on one of the breaks, Mom was saying what a good series of specials this was. I didn't want to launch into "Did Granny's rocker ever rock when you were there alone?" because I'd never mentioned it to anyone and was thinking I was something of a loon. But I had seen it do that on dozens of occasions.
Instead, I decided a roundabout approach was in order and opened with "I'm trying to remember something - Duke used to like jumping up in Granny Mae's rocker when we were kids, didn't he?" I was thinking she'd say yes and I'd casually mention I'd seen it rock on its own almost like Duke was jumping in or out. Funny thing too was when Granny would sit in it, she'd just rock it a time or two herself and then read or get up and do something else. She wasn't one to sit & rock for hours. Just a rock or two.
So Mom's response to my question about the dog was, "Oh, all the time. Its funny you mention that. You know, sometimes that rocker would start rocking on its own when I was sitting there by myself. Duke would take off like a shot out of the chair and then 10 or 15 minutes later, with nobody around, it would just rock a couple times. I figured it was just Granny Mae telling him to get out of her chair again. It continued doing it long after Duke was dead, too."
Creepy . . . I told her I'd seen the same thing and never mentioned it because I thought I was crazy. She said she hadn't mentioned it to anyone except once to my brother Scott and he'd experienced the same thing. He died 8 years ago so I can't compare notes with him . . . but this is the first I'd heard of it from anyone. Weird, huhn?
So now I'm kind of laughing - somewhere in the greater Long Beach area is a solid maple Colonial rocker that's rocking on its own tonight . . . and Granny Mae did NOT take well to strangers . . .
