A Ghost Story: Chester

So I have some ghost stories. Here is one of them...I'll post the others later.

A little background, first.

This story is about a ranch that we lived at when I was about 14 years old. My parents had taken a job there as caretakers. The family that owned the ranch lived down in the Phoenix area, and only came up now and then for a vacation.

At the time, it went by the unoriginal name of "Hidden Valley Ranch"...I have no idea if the current owners stuck with that ridiculous title or not. HVR is located on the eastern slope of Escudilla mountain, which straddles the Arizona/New Mexico border. It is roughly 13 miles north of the tiny little town of Luna, NM. The road from Luna to the ranch is dirt and cinder, and the nearest neighbors to the ranch (at the time I lived there) was about 6 miles. It was truly situated in the middle of the wilderness.

The main house was brand new, and probably 6,000 sq. feet. It had been built on the same site where an old cabin had once been...in fact, the stone fireplace from the cabin that had been torn down was still standing out in the middle of the parking area for the new house.

Although the new log home was brand new, it did not have electricity. At least, not what we are accustomed to...there was a "battery room" at the end of the hall in the basement, that contained maybe a dozen car batteries that were charged by a couple of solar panels on the roof, and a tiny little windmill on the roof. These batteries were enough to power a few small flourescent lights around the house for a short period of time. You could not plug in lamps or electric appliances; our fridge and stove were gas powered. Our heat came from a woodstove. For light at night, they had put gas lamps in the house. They were mounted on the wall and had gaslines running to them...you had to use a lighter and turn a lever to light them. They would light with a small "whoosh" and a flash of blue. They didn't provide a ton of light but at least you could see well enough to read a book at night (you sure weren't going to be watching t.v. without electricity!).

Our water was pumped out of the ground by a windmill into a tank on a hill, and the water came down into our house by the power of gravity. Once a week, my dad would run a gasoline powered generator for a few hours so that we could do laundry. I use that time to pop a movie into the vcr to watch.

We lived in the basement of this gigantic house. It wasn't a scary, dark basement. It was a walkout basement, and was fully finished into an two-bedroom, one bathroom apartment. Also on the property, was a huge (new) barn, and also a second, smaller house that I am guessing was probably built in the 50s or 60s.

As you can imagine, that was not the ideal living situation for a 14 year old girl! I did not want to be out in the middle of nowhere with no electricity, I wanted to be with my friends, going to the mall, hanging out. I was not a happy camper.

Anyway, shortly after moving to the ranch, we started noticing strange things. It started out with the usual reports...we'd hear heavy boot steps walking across the ceiling, as if someone was on the first floor of the house above us. Dad would go check it out, and of course no one was there. On other occasions, we would hear a loud bang right over our heads, as if someone dropped something heavy. One afternoon, I was sitting on the livingroom couch reading a book. Mom was down the hall, and dad was working outside somewhere. Suddenly there was a LOUD crash right above me. LOUD. It was so loud it scared the bejesus out of my parakeet, who's cage was suspended from the celing right where the sound was centralized. It startled me so bad, I swear it sounded like someone had dropped a bowling ball right over my head. I screamed for my mom, but she said she hadn't heard a thing. I got my dad and made him go up and check, but nothing was there, nothing was out of order or knocked over.

Dad of course wore work boots to do all his outdoors stuff. He always took them off outside the front door so that he wouldn't track mud across my mother's pristine floors. One morning, he went out to put on his boots and start his day, but the boots were gone. He was pretty ticked off, and we all assumed one of our dogs had dragged them off somewhere. A couple of weeks went by, when dad found them. They had some how managed to make their way back to the battery room, at the back of our house. They were in the exact center of the floor, together, with the toes pointing towards the back corner.

By this time, we had taken to calling our resident ghost "Chester". I don't know why, just a silly name.

Chester loved to steal things. Items of clothing were a favorite. You'd lie out your clothes on the bed to put on after a shower, only to find them missing when you got out. One time, we awoke in the morning to find that all the glass globes surrounding the wall-mounted gas lights were gone. Just...gone. No broken glass on the floors. No nothing. We had to order new globes.

Once we went out for a horseback ride, and when we got back, all the cabinet doors in our kitchen were standing wide open. Nothing was stolen or out of place...dad went through the house with a baseball bat! No sign of anyone.

Another time, all the clocks were turned backwards a couple of hours. Remember, we didn't have electricity, so it wasn't that the power had gone out for a time...all our clocks ran on batteries, and they were all turned back the same amount of time.

Chester was never really malicious or mean...other than somewhat of a prankster who stole things. In fact, he could be kind! My dad told me once that while my mom and I were gone on a trip to visit family and he was at the ranch alone, he went out to tend the horses or whatever, and when he got back a cold glass of milk and a stack of cookies were waiting for him. Again, he went through the house with a ball bat, although by now we were pretty used to Chester.

Mom mom is the only one to have seen Chester. She said it was at night, and she and my dad were in bed. My dad had already fallen asleep, and she had just turned out her reading light to go to sleep. In the darkened room, she saw a greenish-glowing figure walk in, walk to the end of the bed where our dog, Bear, was sleeping, pat the dog on the head and then vanish. During this event, she kept shaking my dad, telling him to wake up, wake up, there was a ghost in the room...but he mumbled that she was dreaming and to go back to sleep.

So, that is the story of Chester the Ghost. I have no idea what was really going on there, but I can tell you whatever it was, it was very strange. The ghostly activity did not follow us when we moved from there. Some other family owns that ranch now, and I think someone still lives out there in the same basement apartment to keep an eye on things. I've always wanted to ask if anyone else experienced strange happenings. I wonder if Chester is still there, lurking around, playing pranks out there at that lonely outpost in the mountains.