Chapter 45 : My Trip to the Slaughter Yard: A Story My Mom Wouldn't Tell Me Until My 30's (Part 1)

So let me start out by saying I enjoy writing so this will be long (it is nonfiction though), but will hopefully be an interesting read. I also admit that I have absolutely no memory of this experience. I was a little over 2 years old and just starting to walk on my own when this event took place. My mom only told me this story around 3 years ago when I was 32 and about to get married. My mother was raised in a very tiny fundamentalist Christian community and had no belief in the paranormal. She believed that our souls "sleep" until judgement day or something like this; ergo, there are no ghosts or spirits to haunt houses. Even over 30 years later, she still sounded terrified as she told me this. This woman who always talks waaaaay too loud was literally whispering by the end of it, and she was white as a sheet. I believed her completely and still do (my mom NEVER talks about stuff like this); I'm just glad I can't remember it too!

In 1988, my parents had their second child. This was my brother Victor (alias). We were very crowded in our rented flat with 2 babies. My parents decided to move to a rambling old 2 storey farmhouse on a seven acre plot in southern Ohio for more room for the family. It was way out in the sticks and took almost an hour to get to town from there. My mom said the first time I saw the house I freaked out. I was crying and saying things like, "Don't like mean house! Mean house, ugly house, don't like! Scary house mamma, don't like!" My mom says this behavior was very out of character for me, but I stopped complaining about the house after a few weeks, so she chalked it up to the stress of the move.

Now this house was ramshackle af and in the middle of nowhere. The kitchen was to the far rear of the house and, until recently before we moved in, still had a working ancient wood-burning cooking stove against the back wall. This had caught the back wall on fire a couple of months before we moved in and caused a lot of damage. A lot of this damage wasn't fixed, so my young, broke parents got a very cheap rent agreement- gotta love the 80's! On the second floor, directly above the kitchen was a locked room. The landlord claimed it had heavy fire damage, but her son, who had done the repairs, claimed the only fire damage left was in the kitchen since it had been the worst and was beyond his skill level to fix. Either way, the landlord was adamant that the room was off limits, and my parents always respected that. I would have looked, 100% lol. I know all this because I heard stories about the crappy farmhouse with the creepy door my whole life and there were pictures of us in and around the farmhouse. The locked door was right next to the upstairs landing so there was no avoiding it and both my parents have told me it gave them the creeps.

A few months after we moved in, my mother and I were in the yard with our pit/doberman mix, Boss. She was hanging laundry and I was rolling around with the dog. She said that just as she noticed that everything was way too silent, Boss started going ape sh#t from surprisingly far away. About 500 yds from the house on the left, there was a small duck pond. Boss was in between the two, running towards my mom, then turning and running back towards the pond, barking frantically the whole time.

My mom saw something thrashing around in the middle of the pond. She took off towards the water full speed. Boss beat her there and drug me out of the water himself (thank you pupper, love you). Although my mom was confused how I got so far so fast and how I got into the center of the pond since it was over my head and I couldn't swim, she figured she underestimated me and brought in the baby gates and playpens. I was to be contained from now on.