Things that go ring in the night!

Couple of days ago KH mentioned that the boys' room might be having another unwanted visitor, read 'ghost'. For those not in the know, this would not be the first time that our house has been the scene of spooky stuff. The last time it happened, we had to call a priest in to bless our house. Since then though, all has been peaceful on the spooky front. Well, more or less. Apart from the occasional strange sightings of strange long-haired woman hovering in the backyard area, but that's a story for another day. My house, the inside that is, has been a ghost-free zone for years.

Until now it seems.

KH said that he has been awakened by Isaac's alarm going off in the middle of the night and this has happened several times already. Each time he goes over, the boys are still in deep sleep and the alarm is screaming - and it is always at 2am sharp. Without fail.

The night before, he told me, he had seen Isaac set the alarm for 6am. Despite that, he was still awakened by the alarm going off - again, at 2am. A look at the clock confirmed the alarm setting - 2am. So the hairs on the back of his neck were decidedly standing.

I was sort of sceptical when he told me. But that very night, I was awakened by Isaac's alarm going off. KH was snoring in dreamland. I padded over to the boys' room and climbed up to Isaac's loft bed. Two things struck me immediately. First, the alarm was set at 1am. Second, the boy was not in bed.

I checked Owain - sound asleep. I checked the girls' room - sound asleep. I checked my room - nada. It was pitch dark down below in the living room. By this time, I was thoroughly alarmed and afraid. I woke KH up urgently and he did the same quick checks. We switched on all the lights. I called Isaac's name loudly.

Then suddenly came a voice:"Mom?" and he emerged from the darkness.

The following conversation took a slightly bizarre turn. He seemed hesitant and dazed. And to confess it, all sorts of wild thoughts ran through my mind. I checked him if he had a temperature, wondered if he was sleep-walking or yes (a bit goondu of me!), if he was possessed!

It was pitch dark below and I know Isaac has always been terrified of the dark. He would not even go upstairs if no one were there. He always had to coax his younger brother or sister to come with him. So for him to be downstairs, in the middle of the night, in pitch darkness, gosh, I was flummoxed!

We asked him why he was there but his answers were vague. He mumbled something about "going downstairs to look for the book", referring to his library book which had gone missing.

"At 1am in the middle of the night???" I went, disbelieving. "Why on earth? You don't have school tomorrow, you could have searched then."

"I thought I would have more time."

"What was so urgent about the book?"

"Well, the library lists are in there. Without the lists, we won't know when to return our books."

"But you know that we could go to the internet to check right? We've done this before."

"Ya..."

"And how could you look for anything in the darkness too? Why didn't you switch on the lights?"

"My eyes adjusted to the dark after a while."

I stress: this from a boy who is scared of his own shadow! I found it hard to believe that he would be awake at 1am, searching for a book in pitch darkness alone. But nonetheless, it was late, so I sent him back to bed, said a quick prayer for him (in case he was possessed - haha! His behaviour was certainly very unlike him, and weird enough!).

KH and I went back to bed. But we both could not sleep, so full of questions about the strangeness of the incident. After a while, KH jumped out of bed and went back to Isaac's room. He opened the door to find him sitting upright in bed, staring into the darkness outside his window.

"Why are you sitting up? Why aren't you sleeping?" the daddy asked.

"I don't know."

"What are you looking at?"

"Just the scenery." Huh? What scenery? Its absolutely dark outside - nothing to see!

I don't know why, but something made me go downstairs to have a look. I was feeling rather grim, I have to say. Once downstairs, I made my way to the side door and the study - this was the section where the strange apparition has been known to show up once in a while.

I realised there was a bluish light coming from the study room, not from any lamp or overhead light. The door was ajar, the curtain drawn. All very unusual to me. At that split moment, my hair really stood. But when I got nearer, I realised what it was - the light was coming from the computer screen.

Ah. So desu ne.

I knew immediately what was going on. I checked the PC - Yahoo was on. I checked my history - nothing. Either he was smart and quick enough to delete the history, or he simply didn't have enough time to really do what he wanted to do. I think it was the latter because he didn't bargain on me waking from his alarm clock as well, checking on him and setting off the whole chain of events.

I turned the PC off and went upstairs. This time, I was not so cordial. It was right in the midst of the PSLE and our friend was taking forbidden computer privileges in the dead of night. But I didn't come down too hard on him. Just pinned him to the truth - which he reluctantly admitted. I left the detailed interrogation to the morning. Just told him to go back to bed and never do this again.

The next day, I asked Lolita if she had ever heard anything since the wall between her room and the study was very thin. She told me that she hears the sound of the study room chair creaking and moving usually between 1am to 5am. But hey, when you hear things creaking in the middle of the night in a supposedly empty room, no sane person would check it out of course! And, she added, Isaac was increasingly harder to wake every morning. In the past, he would wake whenever the alarm went off in the morning. But these past few days, she has had to physically shake him awake.

I pieced it together and confronted him. He reluctantly came clean. I was not ballistic, just matter-of-fact. He needed good rest and it was PSLE time, so it was really very stupid of him to carry out such stunts at this time. I got an agreement from him not to repeat it. To drive the point home, I casually pointed out that we DO still have an unknown apparition wandering around the outside of our house and that study window is the exact same one where she has been spotted peering through. So sneaking down in pitch darkness in the middle of the night to that part of the house is definitely not a smart thing to do. He paled a bit, swallowed and said he would not do it again.

So the mystery of the ringing alarm clock at 2am is finally solved. Not a case of the spooks - just a rat sneaking around in the dead of night!