Hey, my beautiful Gigis! Your girl Gianna here is sooo sorry that I haven’t posted for a few weeks! A lot has been going on. I’ve even picked up my old bad habit of licking my lips till they’re SUPER dry! But the one thing that has saved me is this *chef’s kiss* lip oil. You can check out the link here.
But, back to why I haven’t posted for a while. Well, our family has been going through some things. To be honest, I’m writing this post today with a heavy heart. So, bear with me as I explain what’s been going on lately.
Jordan and I have been sleeping in the guest bedroom that is connected to our younger daughter MacKenzie’s room via a Jack-and-Jill bathroom. Our older daughter, Harper, has her own small bathroom—a “princess suite,” cute, right?—connected to her room. Then there’s the first-floor master bedroom, which has its own awesome ensuite, complete with soaking tub and huge herringbone tiled shower, and flowers right outside the window.
It’s beautiful. But I’m also fairly certain that it’s haunted.
Let me go back a little bit. We’ve been here for two years, since Jordan got his (long-awaited, I may add) promotion to Director of Engineering at his company. We dated all throughout high school, and he was always so good at math, physics, and especially biology. He’s going to hate me for saying this, but hear me out: Poor guy wanted to go to med school, but you know how hard it is with all the interviews and essays and the MCAT, etc etc. It’s honestly amazing how anyone gets in with how hard they make it. Anyway, joke’s on the doctors now—Jordan makes twice as much as they do! :)
Anyway, everything was fine until about a month ago, when weird stuff started to happen. During the first “occurrence,” I was soaking in the tub in the master bathroom, bath bomb fizzing and my favorite candles burning (you can get them here), when I noticed something strange. A sound? Or…a lack of sound? Yes, silence. Complete and utter silence. Usually, Harper and MacKenzie are SO LOUD that I can’t hear myself think. And I knew they were in the playroom when I went to take a bath. Probably playing one of their favorite games with Jordan—Connect Four, rummy, or Jenga. (Jenga was always my favorite. My friends and I would try to break the world record for the highest tower, but we were woefully unable to do so!) Anyway, the playroom shares a wall with the master bath, so I definitely would have heard them.
I strained my ears, listening for a familiar noise (or any noise, for that matter). The silence persisted. “Jordan?” I called loudly. “Harper? MacKenzie?”
My voice sliced through the silence like a razor. It sounded unnatural, hanging in the midst of such absolute silence. Or maybe it was the unnatural silence that made the natural sound seem strange. I couldn’t even hear the sound of the water lapping around my knees. Just my own breath.
BUZZZZZZZZZ! The sound erupted from the other side of the wall. I jumped, splashing water down the sides of the tub and the beadboard walls surrounding it. (You might remember that Jordan and I renovated our bathroom last year. Click here to see pics of the renovation! Psst…it turned out darling!) “What the H-E-double hockey sticks?” I said aloud. I knocked on the bathroom wall adjacent to the playroom. “What are you guys doing?”
“Playing Operation!” MacKenzie said. Of course, the way she said it, it sounded like “Op-oh-way-shun.” Four-year-olds, man. Anyway, I was just relieved that the weird silence was gone. That evening, I tried to forget about it, chalk it up to a rare moment of stillness within my family, or perhaps impacted ear wax, which I get a lot and it impairs my hearing to some extent (BUT I have a home remedy that I swear by, which you can read about here). Still, I felt uneasy.
The unease didn’t even have time to lift before the next strange thing happened. A week later, I was shaving in the shower, which I usually hate to do, but the new razors I’ve been using make it sooo much better (here they are on Amazon). Mid-shave, I was suddenly overcome by a strange feeling. I didn’t feel like I was in the shower anymore. Rather, I felt like I was in some other realm. I still saw the herringbone tile of the shower (which can be found here) surrounding me, but I felt removed from it…removed from the entire experience. My mind was elsewhere, and my body felt numb.
I looked around and saw something dripping down the wall opposite the shower. It seemed both bizarre and familiar at the same time. I stepped out of the shower and touched it, my fingertips coming away sticky and red. I suddenly felt very calm, and knew what I had to do. It was as if the stuff on the wall was speaking to me. I rubbed my fingertips together, felt the horrible tacky stickiness drying on them. Then I picked up my razor and brought it toward my stomach. The silvery blades had barely bitten into my skin when the bathroom door flung open.
“What are you doing? Oh my god, Gigi, you’re hurt!” Jordan cried, rushing over to me. Still disoriented, I stumbled backward and smacked my head on the travertine soap dish (which you can find here).
“Baby, shhh, it’s okay,” Jordan whispered, turning off the shower and wrapping his arms around me. “What *happened*?”
“I don’t really know,” I admitted.
“Have you ever…you know…hurt yourself before?” he asked.
“No,” I said, honestly. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“It’s okay, babe,” Jordan said. “Please just promise me that you’ll come to me if you ever get the urge to…do that again.”
“I promise,” I said. Jordan kissed my forehead. “Now, let’s get you cleaned up.” He wrapped a towel around my shoulders. I looked at the wall with the blood on it, once again becoming aware of its presence—this time alarmingly so, since I was no longer in that weird fugue state. The blood was still there, and was creeping down the wall with increasing speed.
“Um, Jordan?” I asked, afraid of the answer. “Do you…*see* that?” I gestured toward the blood.
“See what, baby?”
“Oh,” I said. “Never mind. Just a little speck of something on the wall.” I thought back to the original movie *It*, the part where Beverly’s father can’t see the blood Pennywise exploded all over the bathroom. (Have you guys seen that movie? Drop your reply in the comments!)
Was I losing it?
Jordan and I began walking toward the bathroom door leading to the bedroom. On the way out, I caught a glimpse of us in the bathroom mirror (you can see ours here).
If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn I saw my reflection wink.
After that incident, I didn’t feel comfortable sleeping in the master bedroom. God knew when the freaking walls would start bleeding again. Jordan has that engineering mindset where he doesn’t believe in anything irrational, so I knew that he would scoff at my real reason for moving rooms. I told him that being near the bathroom triggered thoughts of harming myself. When I told him, he held me, reassuring me that he understood.
However, today really threw me. Gigis, I’m telling you: I’m beside myself.
Today is a weekend, and we all slept in. I had to venture into the bathroom to retrieve a face mask that I remembered was under the sink (you can find the mask here—it has hyaluronic acid and ceramides, all good stuff for your lovely skin!).
When I entered the bathroom, it was impossible not to see the singular tulip resting on the tub. A tulip, like the ones were grew in our backyard.
With a combination of intrigue and terror, I picked up the flower and breathed its scent deeply. I’m a sucker for floral scents (check out my favorite floral perfume here!). After letting out that first breath, sweetened with gorgeous morsels of fragrance, I kept my nose to the flower, breathing in a second time.
And retched.
The smell of decay filled my nose and mouth. Jordan likes to drink protein shakes (you can find them here), and once or twice he’s left them somewhere obscure, after which they were able to rot freely in secret. My old organic chem professor in college (geek alert, I know, haha) once told our class that a protein shake left to spoil produced much the same smell as a dead body. After finding Jordan’s, um, “aged” concoctions, I can definitely say I know what death smells like.
I dry-heaved a few more times, still holding the tulip. Holding my breath, I quickly unlatched the bathroom window and removed the screen, chucking the tulip into the garden I somehow knew it came from.
Harper knocked on the master bathroom door. The sound jolted me, causing me to gasp the putrid air. “What’s up, honey?” I asked, my voice weak and wobbly.
“Can you braid my hair, Mom?” she asked. (I love doing her hair. I see a lot of cool ideas for little girl hairdos on Pinterest. You can find my board here.)
“Sure, honey,” I said.
“Holy cannoli!” Harper exclaimed. “It smells horrible in here!”
Mackenzie wandered in at that point. “It smells gross, Mama,” she said.
*Oh my god*, I thought, as the realization dawned on me. *They can smell it too. THEY CAN SMELL IT TOO!*
It’s the weekend, so Jordan had the day off. I called to him, cupping my hands around my mouth to amplify the sound. “Babe! Come here, I need you to smell something and tell me if it’s my imagination or not.”
When Jordan entered the room, Harper, MacKenzie, and I scuttled out of that ungodly smell. We watched Jordan from our post in the bedroom. He was thorough in his task of smelling, making little birdlike movements with his neck all around the bathroom.
“Nope,” Jordan said, exiting the bathroom. “It just smells like the bath bombs you have over there.”
“Can we please fumigate the place somehow,” I mumbled without conviction. I had had it with that bathroom. At this point, I had no doubt that the bathroom was haunted. “Maybe, love,” Jordan said. “Let’s see how it is after it airs out.”
Jordan looked in my eyes. “I know you’re freaked out about stuff you’ve been experiencing lately. Just know it’s just your imagination.”
I turned to walk away, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jordan pick up one of the petals left behind from the tulip. He curled his hand into a fist and crushed the petal, ragged pieces peeking out in some places.
He could see the tulip, feel it. He could…destroy it.
I went to go check on the tulips, and noticed that the ground looked a little funky. I’m not the gardener in the family, not even close. But I could tell that the ground looked…puffed up. Like someone dug into it and then put dirt back on top.
Guys, I’m scared. I have no idea what this all means. And now, as I write this, the fear is no longer only in the bathroom, but permeating the entire house. I have a feeling of dread unlike any other that I won’t like the answers to all the questions I have.