The Bear Incident
Report by: Debra Pickman
“As I dialed her number, I wondered if perhaps the toys hadn’t already been on the floor when she’d come into the nursery. She probably would have thought we had put them there and didn't think to mention the strangeness of it to us. While listening to the phone ring, I thought about something else. I knew Jean was inquisitive, no matter what the subject was; she always had to know why, where, when…. I was positive that if the stuffed animals had been on the floor of the nursery when she’d looked into the room, she surely would have asked me why we had put them there. So before even talking to her, I had a feeling she’d say she didn't ask about them because they weren't there.
“A moment later, I heard Jean's voice on the other end of the line, “Hi, Jean. It's Debra. Thanks for the high chair...” Since I had a some really odd questions to ask her and wasn't quite sure how I was going to go about doing so without startling her or getting her curious nature started, I began with a bit of small-talk first. After running out of idle conversation and out of ideas on how to inconspicuously ask someone bizarre questions, I just came right out and said, “Hey, Jean, I've got a really odd question for you.” Her response was an enthusiastic, “Yeah?” My nerves settled enough to go on. "When you were here today, did you notice anything weird in the nursery?’
“No,” she replied. “Everything seemed to be in perfect order.” For a few minutes, she went on about Tony's and my artistic talents at creating such a wonderful nursery. Just about the time I thought the conversation had gone well enough she wouldn’t quiz me on why I’d asked such a weird question, her curiosity had been piqued. She must have had a delayed reaction. “Why'd you ask about anything weird in the
nursery?” There it was, I had to tell her what and how we found the stuff animals in the nursery.
“Before explaining our situation, I decided to rephrase my original question. I wanted to be sure the answer she gave was in no way influenced by me. “You didn't by any chance move any of the stuffed animals to the floor of the nursery, did you?” “No, I didn't touch a thing. Why? Is something wrong?” A bit shy at first about blurting out what we’d found, I hesitantly told her and, before I could finish, she said, very shocked and distressed, “Oh my god!” I heard her calling out to her husband. “I wasn't going to say anything,” she said to me, and my heart skipped a beat. However, she called out to her husband again, repeating to him what I had just told her.
She finally got her focus back to our phone conversation and explained how she’d felt odd, as though something was really wrong, when she’d come into the house. She said that when she’d gone upstairs, she got a real strange, cold feeling and she felt strongly that something just wasn't quite right. After she’d gone into the nursery, she described an overwhelming, unsettled feeling. She said the strange, uneasy feeling just wouldn't let go of her and made her leave the house very quickly. She drove to mom and dad’s to stop by and tell us about it. But, during the drive over, her nerves had settled down. Because mom and dad’s house had been filled with several relatives when she’d arrived, she decided it probably wasn't a good time to tell us of her experience other than the fact she’d left the highchair.
“I relayed the conversation to Tony and Karen, who were still in the nursery with me while I was on the phone. We all came to the same conclusion; Jean hadn't moved the toys. There were only two explanations left. First, someone had been in the house between the time Jean had left and the time we came back from my in-laws (no more than twenty minutes). Second, and altogether unsettling, was the idea we had a ghost.
“I remembered that I had always wanted a ghost of my own, but because I had never been confronted with the reality, I wasn't quite sure how to handle it. My thoughts kept going back and forth with, ‘Wow, this is neat, this is great, I can't believe it, this sort of scary, this is really weird, is this really happening….’ I wondered what we were supposed do now. What kind of a spirit was this, what will it do, what does it want? On one hand, I thought about the many possibilities having a ghost in the house would bring. However, I kept a firm grip on denial. Such as the thought, “this only happened to other people”. I think this was a just and natural reaction and my only form of defense against something I was, for the most part, unfamiliar with.