9.29.2005

the tale of the HAUNTED CHAAAAIIIRRRRRRR

I hope it's not too much of a letdown now that it's all been built up.

okay, background. we have a beautiful antique couch that I love in our family room. we also have another couch and a wingback chair. behind the antique couch, we have set up a little play area between the couch and the half wall between the family room and the kitchen. I feel like a picture would be a good visual aide, so check back in a few months to see if I post one.

the couch has seen better days, though for an antique couch, it is in quite good shape. however, one cushion is ripped and the whole thing is kinda rickety. not to mention the fact that because I love the couch so much, I hardly let anyone sit on it.

so we decided that we'd move the couch (I won't get rid of it - someday I'll have a house where I can just put that in a room that no one uses and it will just look pretty) to the basement and instead of replacing it with another couch, we'd get two recliners. because I love recliners.

well, recliners are expensive. and the ones in our price range are really sort of ugly. so to ebay I went. I did a search for 100 miles from my house and found 3 listings, only 1 of which was an actual reclining chair. it was in jersey. I took a look at it. it was called "grandpa's recliner". it was pretty nice looking, though I couldn't tell by the picture whether or not it was brown or gray.

then I noticed that the seller had another auction going on called "grandma's easy chair" - note to self, "easy chair" equals "recliner" for oldsters like me who hate teenagers. so I took a look at grandma's chair, and it matched grandpa's pretty nicely. and we wanted 2 chairs. and the starting bid for both of them was $24.99. and no one had placed a bid.

so, one thing led to another and the auction ended and we found out the chairs were brown. I offered to buy them off the seller, who appears to be a stoner music dude with a long scraggly beard whose last name is coffey but who likes to go by latte instead. get it? coffey? latte? no one rolls their eyes faster than me these days.

so we make arrangements to pick up the chairs, and we pay $50 for the both of them. and they are cool. I love grandpa's chair, because it's a rocker. just like me. but I needed to know from latte, were they really his grandparent's chairs? because I saw something in the picture and I need to know. yes, they are his grandparents' chairs.

take a look at grandma's chair and see if you see anything odd in it. click on it to see the original ebay listing.

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so latte tells me that the reason he's selling these things is because HIS GRANDMOTHER JUST PASSED AWAY and they're selling everything. what he doesn't know is that apparently grandma isn't ready to let go of her chair. because if you didn't see it, THERE'S A GHOST ORB IN IT.

so like I said, we bought the chairs and brought them home. this was monday. just a few days after the exorcism of emily rose, when I still wasn't completely okay with merely SLEEPING let alone being downstairs with a haunted chair.

the dog and cat have sat on it, and to me, that's reassuring because pets can usually sense ghosts, right? nothing weird has happened so far, but I've only sat on that chair once this whole week. I want to put one of the chairs in the living room and keep one in the family room but I'm afraid to split them up. I'm also afraid to take a picture of it just in case another orb shows up, because then I'd have to move. in addition, I won't say anything bad about the chair while I'm in the same room with the chair, so it doesn't get mad at me. and finally, I will not be alone with the chair at night.

that's it. kind of a let down, I know. but that's the haunted chair. hopefully I won't be linking to this entry in the future saying "remember when I thought the chair wasn't really that haunted??"

oh. ps. so sean and his brother brion went to go pick up the chairs, and sean told brion about the orb. brion is what the family calls a "loose cannon" and isn't always completely aware of all the aspects of social grace, so sean sort of braced himself, but it all went okay. that is, until just before they were about to leave the coffey house. brion says to mr. latte "hey, where's those pictures?" and latte's all "what?" and brion says "the pictures of the chair with the ghost in it."

I'm not exactly sure what happened after that - I think sean said latte had a sort of bewildered expression on his face - butI think they just hightailed it out of there. maybe latte would have had second thoughts if he knew he was only getting $25 for both the chair and his grandma.

10 validations:

Marksthespot said...

Perhaps the story would better be called "the tale of the haunted patrice"?

NME said...

You are too funny. As I said, I'd totally be willing to have the ghost of his Grandma haunting my house as long as she did some light cleaning and cooking.

lonna said...

50 bucks for two chairs. Wow. Hopefully the chair won't freak you out for too much longer. I guess that it was just bad timing after seeing a scary movie. I thought you meant that you had haunted chairs like in Poltergeist. Now that would be cool.

Katy said...

OK so IF said chair is haunted which, ok I'm totally a believer so possibly, the pets like it. So even if Grandma's "still attached" to her chair she must be nice to animals. And all grandma's love babies, and let's face it, she's probably just thrilled to not live with Latte anymore.

Gary Daring said...

Ghosts, my attic, my basement, and were the four things that really scared me when I was little. (ASIDE: There was an old issue of Guideposts, a Reader's-Digest-like publication for bible thumpers that my mom used to get. One issue had a photo of a house completely engulfed in flames, and in the front doorway, in the flames, was Jesus. Unmistakable. The accompanying story told how the photographer who snapped the shot was cured of MS or cancer or something, like, the next day. I was afraid to look at that photo for years and years. I think I hid the issue so I wouldn't have to see scary Jesus in flames again.)

I don't necessarily believe in ghosts anymore, but I'm leaving the door of possibility ever so slightly cracked in case I ever see one firsthand. But this orb malarkey is...is...it's insulting. It's dust. Bugs. Spittle. But it ain't ghosts.

However, the photo of your chair looks more like a "ghost stain" than a phony orb...and you can almost see a ghastly hand clutching the left-hand armrest cover...struggling to get out of a chair that's a bit too plush, a bit too comfy, a bit too haunted. I suggest you try using a ouija board while sitting in the chair, alone, at night. I wish you luck.

Gary Daring said...

"Jesus" should be that fourth thing. Blogger's funny.

amandak said...

ooohhh, spoooky.

lonna said...

Guideposts is very scary! My parents and grandparents both had subscriptions.

Missuz J said...

I once had a quasi-haunted Volkswagon bug that I bought from a guy named Ramon who later stole my dining room table and chairs--not that that has anything to do with haunted chairs.

Kathryn said...

I totally see the orb. I wouldn't sit in it for a while either. Maybe you could burn some sage around it and smudge her along.

You're the second person who has said Emily Rose freaked them out. I was wanting to see it but I think I'll wait until after my hormones return to normal!