'SMOKE IN THE HOUSE'

In three of the years after my wife and I split I lived in one unit of a 4 unit row house downtown that a friend of mine owned.  I was working on the side for him anyway gutting the other 3 units so I didn’t have to go very far for that.  The building was built in 1829 so it had seen many residents and much change in the town.

Often I would hear strange noises coming from the other units, but since some of them didn’t have windows that were too tight, I always figured wind and other stray breezes were the sources of the noises.

One night, though, I had an experience that made me question what had gone on in the house in the years before I lived there.

I awoke at some point on the night in question to see the room filled with ‘smoke’.   Rubbing my eyes to be sure I had not awoken with gunk on my eyes, I could still see the ‘smoke’.  But then my clearer science trained mind took over and I thought that if the room were as smoky as it appeared, I should be able to smell it, which I could not.  At that instant the smoke disappeared.

I was told at some point after that that what I saw was called The Devil’s Smoke. 

There is  a sequel of sorts to this experience.  Some years later I was living up the street and my friend was in the process of working on the unit I had lived in and had the windows out of the room that had been my bedroom.  My friend Virginia and I were walking past it one night when she looked up and said there was a funny light coming from the room.  I remarked that it was probably a reflection form the bright street lights in that area of the street.  Her answer was that it was something else.

For a number of years before I had come to town, there was a family living in that house who had three sons, all of whom were involved in various crimes including one being implicated in a  double murder in the early 70s. 

Was there evil in that house waiting to spring out at whoever chose to live there? I think I came close to finding out on a personal basis.