We have a
ghost house in town here. We've not been there yet. (Not enough hours in the day...)
I was asked to tell the tale of the cleaning ghost, so here it is. I'll lead in by setting the scene to give you an idea of the home in question, and divulge two relevant things.
The home is a servants' quarters in Newton, NJ built in 1860. The carriage house is also still standing, acting as the garage for the funeral home next door (the funeral home may well have been the original main residence, but I never looked into it.)
The home is still owned by an old high school friend of mine who bought it from a flipper during the bubble. (And wow did they hide so much instead of fixing it, that poor house!) I never did much research on it in the two and change years we lived there. I found some documents he had gathered, which is how I knew how old it was, as well as its purpose.
We came to live there when said friend moved to Florida and needed a property manager because long distance landlording wasn't working out for him. We also happened to live in Newton at the time. Our lease was almost up, he was offering a reduced rate, so we moved into the second floor apartment and I started managing for him.
We'd had some unexplainable noises overall, nothing major on that score, but the basement was where I started noticing patterns of unexplainables. The basement held the original kitchen of the home, with boilers, oil tanks and laundry crammed into a tiny under porch space between the original outside porch and house foundations. The porch above was later closed in and they put the bathroom and a kitchen in there. It still had the original rock and mortar fireplace, complete with baking nook and swing out pot arm. The home was on a sloped property, so there were doors to enter each side of the basement on the ground level. The owner had made a third (illegal) apartment out of the kitchen portion of the basement. The under porch portion was the laundry/utilities.
There was only two small windows left exposed on the far ends of the long side of the basement, so no matter what time of day it was, you had to put the overhead lights on for most anything you needed to do. There will still two big windows on the same wall as the doors, but they had been boarded over on the outside, and later still, the house got plasticized the cheap way (over what was either asbestos or Masonite shingles, over original wood siding--no wrap in sight--a corner had been knocked askew, which is how I found the layers).
Two things I want to note which I promise are relevant:
1. I have low blood pressure which makes me very sensitive to temperature changes. When I get a chill, it's hard to get rid of without tea/soup/shower/bath. I always have a sweatshirt on hand when we go grocery shopping in summertime because otherwise I 'm shivering by the time we leave.
2. I use vinegar when I do laundry for soaking smellier/greasy stuff, and instead of fabric softener. I use it to clean a lot of things. Laundry is important first though, as the pattern begins to emerge from that.
All the above leads to our ghost at Three Academy...
Every single time I did laundry, regardless of time of year, it always felt chillier in there. The lights also flickered sometimes down there, but it's an old house, knob and tube visible despite upgraded panels, so to be expected right? (I also suspected that the basement circuit was overloaded.) If I had to fiddle with one of the boilers or find a certain something for the owner stored there which often took time, I never noticed the change. No drop in temperature, no flicker.
We had a short term tenant (former student of owner) who moved into the basement soon after we moved in ourselves--bad at paying rent and thus did not last long. When he left, it needed cleaning. If I was sweeping, I had no problems. But once I started spraying or wiping things down with vinegar, every single time the there'd be that chill and sometimes even lights would flicker once the smell started getting strong. I was cleaning in short bursts at the time, because I had other things going on, so every day, at various times of day, I'd be cleaning, smell would get strong, chill, lights would flicker.
When I went to wash the wood floors, I filled a bucket of water and vinegar in the laundry sink. There's that chilly feeling again. Then, I walk into the room with the painted wooden floor that needs cleaning, and the lights went out completely--not just flickering. I kid you not. It was afternoon time, so, bucket still in hand I walked over to the door to open it for more light. I set it down, then I flipped switches, then went to check the breaker, still on. Then I go back into the room, and follow the wire. As I do, lights come back on. "Hmm, must be loose" I think to myself and go to close the door.
After I pick the bucket back up and while I walk back into the kitchen, lights out. Go back, and do it all over again, and I even check to see if there's another circuit on the other apartment panel, but nothing's off. Again I step back into the kitchen, head over to follow the wires, but this time nothing. Jiggle, nothing. Not even a spark at the junction. I don't have much time, so I leave the door open, open the other door that's in the kitchen side and mop the floor. I feel cold as winter by the time I'm done despite the storm doors still being closed. I'm not sure if it's from feeling that weird chill too long or just January air seeping through.
Once finished, I first close the doors because it's so cold, then dump out the bucket, rinse, dump. Once all the contents are down the drain, then the lights come on. I'm standing at the sink which is right near the panel but it also means I can see that no one is fiddling with it for a joke. I'm also the only person in the house at the moment, as the sole other tenant had gone out earlier and spouse was at work.
A few months later, the first floor tenant complained he wanted cheaper rent, so since we were a bit cramped on the second, I mentioned a swap to owner which he agreed to and then we moved out of there and into the basement temporarily, then moved the tenant up--problem solved. I cleaned the basement as little as we could stand in the short time we lived there as I cleaned the first floor (tenant now on second floor didn't ever clean in two years). I didn't mop the basement floor even once, but we had area rugs which covered almost every square inch that wasn't covered by furniture and boxes.
The only time we had trouble with the basement while I was cleaning the first floor was when I had opened up the trap door from what was then the bedroom on the first to the basement so I could use those stairs, and the smell of vinegar was present due to cleaning I was doing. Clean the windows in the bedroom? Chill and flickers. Mop the floors? No lights in basement. Keep the trap door tightly shut? No issues. This didn't make much sense to me because it's an old house! There
had to be cracks and drafts. Still, whether that trap door was open or not made the difference.
We could never find a rational wiring based issue related to how the vinegar could by some method be triggering the electrical from cleaning. (I'm a bit nerdy too, so I was curious if such was possible.) I cleaned the same way when we lived on the second floor, but I'm guessing it was far enough away it didn't bother the ghost.
After, we moved out of the basement and into the first floor, I always kept the trap tightly closed when cleaning, but laundry had to be done. I never completely lost the lights from it, but always the chill and flicker. Every single time. I even started to at first jokingly apologize before starting laundry, hoping maybe that would help, and then earnestly, but it was always the same.
We moved from there to here. This home is a not much younger, and I still clean with vinegar (even in the basement where our laundry is), but I've never had the same problem. I sometimes wonder when I'm cleaning here if whoever lived there now cleans with vinegar and has the same issue. (I know the owner doesn't use vinegar. I asked him though I never told him
why I was asking. ) I also still wonder why that ghost only seems to like the basement. I have to say, I'm relieved they do or cleaning in general would have been more difficult!