The Haunting of Gunther Samuelson

This is a ghost story, but it’s probably not the story you expect. It may not be as bad as you think it will be... but it might be worse.

Regina took a job as a live-in nanny for 52 year old Gunther Samuelson against the advice of her friends and relations, and really the entire town. They predicted she wouldn’t last the week.

The Samuelson family was wealthy, but it was mostly family money. Gunther had worked as a pipeline engineer most of his life, until it all fell apart. He was on disability now, and had been since the death of his wife Ella, after which he’d come down with a case of chronic pulmonary edema from which he never recovered.

The kids, Hunter, age 5 and Eliza, age 7, were born late in Gunther’s life. Ella had been younger, and without her Gunther found the task of raising children impossible. Or maybe he just found it undesirable. But whatever the reason, he was neglectful, an alcoholic, and no longer fit to be a father. But he spared no expense, and at the very least his money ensured the children’s needs were met and they had the best possible care, as long as he could get someone to stay. They had the nicest toys kids could possibly want. They just, more often than not, played with them alone.

They lived a fairly isolated existence, which was surely unfair to the children, but no one knew what to do about it. You see, everyone knew Gunther had killed Ella and she, or what was left of her, was most likely buried in the beautifully manicured backyard that she loved so much. Gunther even had a full shed of landscaping equipment and chemicals, the kind that could dissolve bodies. If this wasn’t enough, they’d all heard the stories. Everyone knew Ella haunted the house to this day, and past nannies would attest to the terror they felt within the walls of the manor at night. This much was known.

The stories were jarring, but the money was good, and Regina was broke. And the kids were darlings without equal. This is how she sold herself on the job. They were independent, mature, and resentful of their absentee father, but also imaginative and charming, and aching for the guidance of a mother figure and some sort of freedom from the stuffy old house… and the banging inside the walls at night.

That was the worst part, the banging. Or maybe it was the moaning. Or maybe a combination. The rhythmic thumps from inside the walls of the old house accompanied a muffled moaning that drove the brave, impetuous children nightly into the arms of their terrified, trembling nanny. There was no blood running up the walls. No apparitions. Just the banging and its subtle push towards madness.

Gunther blamed it on the pipes.

The house was large and modeled like a Georgian country house, though from a later era. The boards and seams fit neatly, the walls and pillars were straight and strong, and it was a testament to the soul of the structure that the neglect inflicted on it by Gunther Samuelson hadn’t done too much harm. The large receiving rooms on the first floor provided plenty of space for the children to play, since they obviously weren’t used for entertaining.

Regina would walk the house when the children slept. The home was well built and beautiful, and it tormented her that she knew what horror would come with the night. No matter where she went, nothing seemed awry. She learned every inch of the first and second floor, but never ventured to the third, which had served as the personal chambers of Gunther and Ella, and was now Gunther’s private retreat.

She respected that privacy, but the banging kept happening. Night, after night, after night. The children would come running to her room and bury their heads in her nightdress. She would whisper comforting stories to them as she watched the shadows and waited for the echoes to cease.

One day, the kids down for their naps, and Regina pushed to the brink of what a person could endure, coupled with many sleepless nights, began to snoop around the house. Gunther had secrets, this she knew, and she would find them for better or for worse. It was all that was left. While he was out in the garden, she snuck up to the third floor.

Gunther’s room occupied the whole of the third floor, and was neat and spartan. At first she found nothing of interest. Then she noticed an odd dust pattern behind the dresser, as if it had been recently moved. She leaned into the dresser and it slid easily on well worn casters, revealing a hidden crawlspace. She opened the door and stumbled into the darkness. Standing up she bumped into an old pull chain from a solitary lightbulb, and fumbled with it until she managed to illuminate the small room.

The room was stuffy and hot and the walls were covered in papers that were yellowed with age and blackened at the edges. The walls were smeared with blood, old and new. In the center of the room was a huge trunk. She approached the trunk warily, knowing full well in her heart what she would find inside. She lifted the lid and found… clothes. The furs and linens of the late Ella Samuelson, neatly folded and pressed and perfumed with her favourite scents, cinnamon and rose petals.

She stood aghast in the fragrant darkness and took another look around the room and was shocked at what she saw.

The walls were covered with aged newspapers detailing Ella’s untimely death in a freak fishing accident in Tonga, and the heroic efforts of her husband as he dove for hours in an attempted rescue before the local guides pulled him out, exhausted and damaged with his lungs full of water. There were pieces about the lawsuits brought by Ella’s family who held Gunther responsible, though he was always cleared of wrongdoing. There were pictures and travel documents from the happy couple’s globetrotting adventures from the lagoons of Polynesia to the steppes of Mongolia, always smiling, always together. There were dozens of bottles of Christian Brothers brandy littering the plywood floor.

And the blood. The blood was smeared across the wall in well worn grooves where Gunther had been punching the wall every single night in drunken grief, and weeping about what was lost. He hid his torn knuckles beneath the gardening gloves.

This wasn’t a tomb, it was a shrine.

You see, the house was haunted, but not by Ella. It was haunted by the grief of a broken man who mortgaged his children’s happiness for his own self pity. He missed their birthdays, and their milestones. He paid strangers to bandage their cuts and bruises and tell them that they were brave. Rather than read them bedtime stories he punched the walls of the house in a drunken haze and filled their heads with visions of ghosts. And when he was sober, he spent all of this time in the garden, because Ella did so love the roses.

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Regina quit the next day. There were always other jobs. Of course, she made the report to child services, but Gunther was rich and there were always other nannies. The children were provided for. Nothing came of it. CPS had more important things to do. She ended up living with extended family in Hilton Head, watching children and washing dishes on the side. It was a harder life, but the nights were quiet.

Eliza moved to New York and hooked up with an older businessman. He wasn’t kind or gentle, but he was rich and that’s what mattered. Everything else could be bought. And besides, he would die eventually, and then she would be free.

Hunter moved to LA with his boyfriend and worked as a waiter, but told everyone he was a screenwriter. He never spoke of his family. Though sometimes the pipes would bang at night and he would wake in a cold sweat. His boyfriend would worry, but he’d just have a drink to calm his nerves. One drink here or there couldn’t hurt to take the edge off. The brandy would burn as he watched the silver turn to orange in the morning sky.

They both hate the smell of roses.