The Bear Incident
Report by: Debra Pickman
Since his arrival, our newborn son had been waking up every hour on the hour every night for more than 2 weeks. When my sister offered to fly from New York to help, we accepted and anxiously waited for her arrival the next day. She had graciously taken over the nighttime feedings and care of three-week old Taylor for several nights and allowed us to catch up on some desperately needed sleep. Karen was a godsend for 5 days, and she will never forget her last night in Kansas. It was the night that marked the infamous event that changed our lives forever. It was that very evening, that we were pushed over the edge of disbelief and through the door of terror. The following events are true, and were recorded by myself in my diary shortly after they occurred.
“So what shall we do today?’” I asked. ‘Shall we watch another rented movie?’ Rented movies and a box of bite-size shredded wheat had been the extent of our nightly entertainment since Karen’s arrival.
“For most of that day, we had been visiting at my in-laws’ house, and during our stay, some of Tony's other relatives had popped in and out. As we were getting ready to return home, Tony's sister-in-law, Jean, came by. She said she had to tell us something, something she felt guilty about. Several weeks ago she’d mentioned to us that she had a highchair we could have. She admitted that she had stopped at our house earlier that day to drop it off and even though we were not there she had still wanted to see if the nursery had been finished yet. She’d let herself in and went upstairs to take a peek. (Tony and I had no problem with her doing this, but after having done so, she didn't feel right about it.) In order to ease her guilty conscious, she had searched us out to tell us what she had done. I assured her it was no big deal, and in the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but wonder why she was still so nervous and upset about it.
“Twenty minutes later Tony, Karen, Taylor, and I left for home, which was only five minutes away. After being at the house about half an hour (somewhere around 10:00 p.m.), Tony went upstairs to use the bathroom. When he came back down, he found me in the kitchen and asked why I had put all of Taylor's stuffed animals on the nursery floor. So, being very puzzled by the question, I responded with a puzzling grimace, “What?” I asked. Again, he told me that all of the stuffed animals were sitting on the floor in the middle of the nursery. Perplexed, my eyes widened as if to say, “What do you mean? How did they get there?”. Karen had walked in time to hear Tony’s comment. All three of us promptly marched upstairs to take a look.
“It’s important to note that several days before Karen had arrived, I had meticulously put a medium, scruffy looking teddy bear on a small wicker chair just inside the nursery room door, two small ones on a shelf above the baby's crib, a rather large bear and several small stuffed animals inside the crib, a few small ones on top of the dresser, and another large bear on the far side of the room. I had also left a small musical cat on the baby's changing table. As we tucked sleeping Taylor in his carrier downstairs in the living room, I tried to visualize, as all three of us went upstairs to take a look at what Tony described about the bears on the floor, exactly how I’d decorated the room. Just that morning, I had admired how adorable and welcoming the toys and stuffed animals looked!
“We got to the nursery. Exactly as Tony described (not that I doubted him), all the stuffed animals had been placed on the floor in the middle of the room. In addition, they had been neatly organized into a circle; their backs snuggled against each other, facing forward. As I starred at this display, I got a really weird chill down my back.
“Although several things began to run through our heads, we were sure someone had played a trick on us. Since we rarely locked the front door, Tony's brother, Tom, or anyone else for that matter could have gotten in the house and set this up. Perhaps when Jean was in the house, checking out the nursery while were gone, she had moved them there. But why would she have done that? And if she had wanted to pull off a prank or surprise, why would she have gone to the effort to find us and tell us that she’d been at the house in the first place? A prank by Jean was unlikely, and definitely not in her nature. We thought about the wind and even the cats knocking the bears to the floor; but all the windows were shut and these theories would not explain how the animals ended up so meticulously positioned on the floor.
“The three of us stood there, quietly going through theories, smirking at each other in disbelief, knowing there had to be a logical explanation. We waited, wanting one of us to say, ‘Okay, I did it.’ But no one did. Still very puzzled and realizing no one was going to fess up, we checked for magnets, transparent strings, and fishing lines attached to the stuffed animals. None were found. After exhausting our list of signs of typical tricks, we decided to call Jean. After all, she had been the last person in the house. Maybe, just maybe, she did prank us.