Back in the day, when my mother was yet 3-4 yrs old, her family of 8 brothers and sisters and her mother moved to Kentucky from Ohio to reduce hardships that had arisen unexpectedly.
A nice log cabin built by her mother's grandfather was left for them to move in to. Complete with a fireplace, wellhouse, clothesline and wringer washer, it had added personality such as ghosts...or maybe they brought those with them, who knows? Anyways, on with the story.
So...there was a space of waiting for minor repairs and the family decided to stay in a small trailer that sat on the lot behind the log house. It was super cramped in there and everyone had to share living space, storage space and sleeping space. The very back bedroom was the largest and that's where my grandmother, mother and her two closest-in-age siblings slept.
With no modern marvels like security lights, it was very dark throughout the house and the only light was the bright moonlight that shone through the windows. The door freaked and woke my young mother up.
As her eyes opened she still just lay there trying to go back to sleep, but the door slowly swinging back and forth caught her eye. It was like a small child when they hold the handles and lean back and sway back and forth only no one was there. She sat up with a start and the door instantly on cue stopped swinging in mid swing.
She tried shaking her sisters and her mom who shared her bed, but they just would not or could not wake up. So she looked at the door again....waiting for something to happen.
Just then she saw movement at the top corner of the door and what she saw made her scream out. A hag looking down at her, smiling devilishly, waved at her and put her finger to her lips to shhh her. The Hag had wild gray wiry hair that seemed to float around her head. The thing is, there were small white fluffy feathers, like baby chicken feathers, in her hair. She had old, old, old, cracked, dark tanned skin with deep creviced folds. But that's not what made her scary. She had that evil look in her eye like she had that 'upper hand and knew it, and there was nothing you could do about it' kind of look.
My mother panicked and screamed out for the Hag to leave. She stood up on the bed and with every ounce of courage in her little body, stood up to that ugly creature. It looked just like what movies portray witches to look like.
It stopped smiling and looked down at the others waking up, snarled and glared, then turned and floated down the hallway. At least two foot off the floor with no visible feet, it floated past the other two bedrooms pausing slightly to glance inside each then through the kitchen, the living room, then out the closed window through the curtains.
The whole time her mother was trying to console her to tell her it was a dream, she was trying to look around her mom to see the Hag and telling her mom to look, watching it float away. If her mom would have just turned her head and looked she would have seen it for herself.
That is not the last time she saw the Hag. Throughout her life there would be intermittent episodes of appearances where the Hag would visit and be seen almost every day only to disappear and have a space of years before being seen again.
Mom's family had eventually moved into the log house and the trailer they had stayed in was sold and removed off the property. The sleeping arrangements were basically the same. Three bedrooms were shared. Each bedroom held a bunk bed and one single bed. 3 people per room. The three oldest boys in one room, the three middle boys in another, then my mom and her sister in a bunk bed, my grandmother in the single, and her youngest brother, now 2 yrs old, in a crib.
My mother, of course wanting top bunk, would lay awake staring at the ceiling until she fell asleep.
Once again, scratches could be heard coming from the door. Thinking there were mice, she was glad she was on the top bunk. She leaned over to look at the floor in the corners hoping to catch a glimpse of a critter scuttling across the hardwood floor. No mice, yet there were still scratching noises. But it seemed to be a little higher up.
As her eyes looked out through the door to look around the living room floor, she saw a strand of wiry gray floating hair. Unkempt, fly away gray hair floated around long gnarled, wrinkled, bony fingers curled around the door edge and then there she was!
Peering around the top corner the Hag smiled her snaggle-toothed smile and slowly wiggled her fingers for a kind of greeting, seeming to say, "Hi, I'm here for a visit." Then vanished around the back of the door and on into the living room, disappearing into the wall.
Needless to say Mom had many sleepless nights. But after a while she became used to the Hag's visits. She never caused any trouble except for late night sporadic visits. It's said that the log house was built on an Indian burial ground which is possible for there were many arrowheads and other relics found around on the property. Never any bones though.
Perhaps the Hag was an Indian medicine woman keeping an eye on the place. Who knows? But many more visits happened throughout Mom's life as she grew up. Even after she was married and had moved away, she still got visits from time to time.
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