It was the summer of 2021. My friend and I had just completed undergrad. Her with an architecture degree, me with and art history degree. You may be surprised to find out that we were not swimming in job offers.
Her mother had hired us to digitize her late mother’s extensive artwork at her house in North Carolina. She had been deceased for, I believe, at least two years at that point. There was some family drama with siblings arguing over what to do with the house. That’s beside the point. We were being paid to digitize and catalog the artwork over about two weeks.
The artwork has nothing to do with the story I just wanted to set the scene. No one had been consistently living in the house since the grandmother had passed. Family would stay there when they were in the area or passing through. It was a beautiful house in a beautiful location in a small town about 45 minutes from Asheville. It was at the top of a hill at the end of a quiet street. There was a small creek with a waterfall on the property.
We made the most of the trip. We prioritized the art cataloging but still managed to make a daytrip to Asheville and did our own thing.
The A/C in the house was broken, but we found ways to stay cool. We opened the windows at night, and had the ceilings fans on at all times. At night we slept with the bedroom door open (I know, I know) to keep the air moving. This was no problem until the second to last night we were there.
We felt weird sleeping in the bed my friend’s grandmother slept in, so we opted for the guest room, which consisted of two twin beds. I was sleeping in the one closest to the door, her with the one against the opposite wall. She also slept with earplugs and a pillow over her head.
Like I said, we had no problems until that night.
On the second to last night I was woken by the fire alarm. When I woke I had my back facing the door, so I sat up and whipped around to see if I could see flames or smoke. Instead I saw a silhouette standing in the hall way outside our room, facing our door. I could tell it was a young woman, no older than 30, but I couldn’t see her face. She was wearing either a bathing suit or her underwear, and appeared to be wet – I could tell because of her shoulder length hair.
I turned back trying to wake my friend, but like I said, she was wearing earplugs and had a pillow over her head. When I turned back around the figure was gone, but I was left with this weird feeling. I kept hearing in my head something like, “This is not a threat, you are safe. You are not in danger”. This is hard to explain, but it didn’t feel like my conscience, it felt like someone else’s voice communicating that to me.
At some point during that event the fire alarm turned off, but I stayed up for a while to make sure there was no active threat, totally not because I thought I just saw a ghost and was frightened, totally not that. I remember pulling the sheets over my head and just messing around on my phone until I fell asleep.
The day after I ended up not telling my friend what happened until later in the day. She is one of those people that would tease me about it or try to spook me, so I was debating the entire day about whether I should tell her. I ended up telling her while we were in the drive thru line at Arby’s (shout out to Arby’s) around dinner time. She was definitely taken aback, but was overall glad that I told her, mainly because of the fire alarm going off. When we got back she made a joke about her Grandma’s ghost coming to haunt us which I immediately shut down and put a ban on those jokes until we left. There was no problem on our last night.
Several weeks after we had left she asked me about the visual description of whoever I saw. She said it probably wasn’t her grandma because she never had long hair. She did mention that there were people that had died at the waterfall on the property. That would explain why the spirit (apparition, ghost?) appeared to be wet.
I still think about it every now and then, but it is interesting because I don’t think of it as a scary situation. Unsettling, definitely, but I don’t get frightened when I think about it. It was just something weird that happened to me once. It also makes for a great story.
And that kids is why you don’t sleep with your bedroom door open.