Spooky Family Story Time - Happy Halloween 🎃

Happy Halloween! It's Spooky Family Story Time. Gather around the fire as I share with you a spooky story of my own that has been passed down through the years by my grandma. Got your snacks?

This happened years ago, but still within my lifetime. After my great-grandpa Joseph Ilg passed away, my great-grandma Honey moved in with my grandma Ruth Wheeler (her only daughter) and Grandpa Les Wheeler. Honey apparently was interested in the afterlife and making contact with the other side. She would tell my grandma that after she died, she would try to make contact. My grandma didn't believe in that stuff and said to her that she wouldn't acknowledge her if she did try to make contact.

Great-Grandma Honey and Me
1982-1983

Honey, Grandma, Uncle Les, and His family
late 1970s

A few years later, Honey passed away on March 5, 1983. She had been living at the Masonic Home of Missouri in St. Louis. She was cremated a few days later, and her ashes were scattered in The Big River, which is connected to the Meramec River near Eureka, Missouri. The same place where Honey's husband's ashes were scattered (and where grandpa Les' ashes would also be scattered later on as well).

The Sound of Footsteps...

Sometime later, Grandma started hearing noises in her house. She said they sounded like footsteps. And not just any footsteps. They sounded like Honey's footsteps. If you have lived with someone for a while, you begin to recognize the sounds of certain people's footsteps. And Grandma was sure it was Honey's footsteps walking down the hallway to the bedroom. She began to hear them nightly after she would go to bed. But Grandma was true to her word. She didn't want to interact with whoever was walking down the hallway, even if it was her mom. So she began to close her bedroom door at night to signal that she didn't want to be bothered and wanted whatever or whoever it was to go away. Sometime later, Grandma stopped hearing the footsteps. And they never returned. My mom was kind of upset cause she DID want to have contact with Honey, but Grandma wouldn't allow it. 

I was only one year old, so I don't have any memories of this. Mom told me about it later when I got older. Grandma stayed in that same house until she went into a nursing home around 2013. I tried to make contact when I was a kid, but never experienced what my Grandma experienced. 

My Grandma and my child
To the right in the hallway leading to the bedrooms
The hallway where Grandma heard the footsteps
April 2005

So what do you think? Do you think it was my Great-Grandma trying to make contact? Have you ever experienced anything like this? Share some of your spooky family stories in the comments. 

Happy Halloween!👻