Paranormal Factor

Most everyone recieves items passed down through family members, tokens or trinkets with no monetary value except sentimental ones.  My mother inherited items from her grandmother, many of them had been lost or damaged through natural disasters and moving.  One item I recall was a paticularly ugly glass butter dish.  It was cream colored with pea green vines up the sides and along the base; comprised of a flat base and rectangular lid.  It had withstood many years and had always stood upon the kitchen counter used often for exactly the purpose it was intended.

I was in charge of dishes after every meal.  And one particular evening I accidentally dropped and broke the lid in several pieces.  My father tried to glue it back together but it just wouldn’t take the gluing and eventually it had been thrown away to the dismay of my mother who valued every piece she received from her grandmother.  I felt horrible about breaking it, it wasn’t on purpose, just one of those accidents that make you feel utterly worthless to do anything about except apologize for.

Weeks went by and my duties had not changed after every meal.  I stood at the sink with my hands in the hot, soapy water and emptied the sink and refilled it several times clearing the dirty dishes from the counter putting them now clean into the drainer.  I finally got through the heap and had only a few pans left to wash when I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, a flash of sunlight on glass.  I turned my head toward the twinkling and found the butter dish that I had broken, which had been thrown out several weeks before, standing in its regular spot on the counter.  I frantically called for my mother, who was not one to see things as anything but coincidental.

She examined it finding no cracks or broken spots on it at all, and dismissed it at once with a look at me, almost as if I had been playing tricks on her, which I most assuredly had not.  I was frightened and had quite a hard time after that doing my kitchen duties.  Every time I entered the kitchen my eyes would automatically return to the butter dish, almost wishing it to be gone.

My little brother said something strange to me that next day during dinner.  It was out of the blue and so innocent that I didn’t know whether I should have been afraid or intrigued.  We were always the last at the table, our parents always left after eating to sit in the living room and watch television.  I recall him turning to me and saying with a look on his face as if he was hearing and repeating something said to him that only he could hear.  He said, “Grandma is glad we are using the butter dish.”  And that was it.  I waited for him to say more before I spoke but he just went back to eating.

He offered to help me with dishes afterward because he wanted badly to play Monopoly before our bedtime.  I asked him how he knew that grandma was glad about the butter dish and he shrugged and pointed toward the basement doorway.  The basement was one place I feared more than any other in the house, it was dark and wet and smelled like rotted earth.  I looked toward where he pointed and saw nothing, and when I looked again at his face he had a smile and was looking toward the basement dooway.  He wasn’t a vindictive child or prone to stories, again it was an innocent gesture and glance, but it frightened me immensely.

I still cannot explain how the dish had gotten back into the house after being discarded and then taken to the dump, which I am sure it had since the garbage was collected once a week and this had been several weeks since the accidental breaking of the butter dish.  Nor do I have any reasoning for the things my brother said to me or the way he looked toward the basement doorway.

No one ever spoke of the butter dish turning back up fixed as if I hadn’t broken it after all.  As with many other occurrences that happened over the years it seemed to all be in my imagination when I absolutely knew that it was not.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS