Stories from Ben Woods

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I have never been one to really relate
to other peoples' ghost stories, but
I never debunked them either. Just never
seen a real ghost. Seen some UFO's.
In 1982 in the fall, my new wife and I
moved from Houston Texas to
the far west Texas town of Alpine.
I had seen a house I thought she would
like, and described it to her over the phone while
I was in Alpine and she was still in Houston.
She agreed and I started the paper work while she packed
up the home in Houston to sell and complete the move.

We moved into the new/old home on a Thursday.
The old house came with all the paper work dating
all the way back to when the land was released for
sale to finance the school system in Texas, as was how
the state got money for education in the
by gone days. The house had been in one
family for all the many long years. The original
owner had built and added to the old one-
room house over the years and the whole
house had handmade extras, bookshelves, kitchen counters,
hardwood floors, etc. We were the only owner
besides the original to live in the house.

We had a dog at the time, and I must admit
he was somewhat of a scarry cat, but there
was one room he would not go into.
He had to cross that hardwood floor to gain
access to the back yard, the only fenced
yard, and he could clear that area with
his tail down, head lowered and would not
come back in the door, unless the path was
clear to the hall way outside that room to
the rest of the house.

There was a closet door in that room that
would not stay open or closed, however you left
it, it would be changed when you came back next
time. It was a level door, I checked
it. We just wrote it off as an old house.

The bedroom we used was the first room
down the short hall off the living
room. One night, the first week we were there,
late at night after we were good
and asleep, I heard a noise in the living room.
Thinking one of the cats or the dog
was up to no good, I got up to investigate.

As I entered the living room, with no lights
on, I noticed the sound was the bentwood rocker
we had, rocking slowly. I thought maybe a breeze was
blowing it. As I turned to look at the chair,
I saw an old woman slowly rocking back and forth.
When she saw me, she raised her head, and looked
right at me. I started to say " Don't go!" but she started
to stand with her hands on the arms for support
and then, just wasn't there anymore. The
chair made a rock or two and stopped.
I was not scared, just curious.

We made friends with an older couple down
the street and I finally told them about
the lady. When I described the woman
in the chair to the lady of the house,
she asked me where the chair was sitting.
When I told her, she replied, " That was
where Mrs XXX was sitting when the family found her
dead. I used to sit across from her and knit
with her when the weather was
bad out."  The dress she was wearing
was the one she had worn to her
husbands funeral two years earlier.

We kept the house and my wife confessed to me
later that she never did sleep well in that
house, and the dog never would stay in that room with
the bad door.

True story and I never told the people who
bought the house from us about the Lady in the Rocker.

Wonder if she is still rocking?
 

The Indian Woman of New Mexico

Thanks for the story, Ben!--tbs