Narrator: Denise F. | Virginia, USA
We bought a house that needed work and did the cheap things ourselves. Taking down wallpaper, painting, replacing handles. Anything involving wires was somebody else’s problem.
There was a patch of wall in the hall that stayed warm. We had the wiring checked. No fault. No pipe behind it either.
One Saturday I was stripping paper there when I found a child’s pencil outline of a hand. Five fingers, a broad wrist, a little scribble where a sleeve would be. I put my hand over it and felt something push back through the plaster.
I dropped the scraper. The outline moved down the wall about an inch. It left a clean trail through the damp paper paste.
My husband was in the garden. I shouted until he came. By then it was a drawing again, and he seemed more worried about how much wallpaper I’d ruined.
We covered it. I don’t go around talking about energy or spirits, but I can’t stand having a photograph hung over that patch. Every time I pass it, I imagine somebody on the other side trying to see.
