“In 1988, my mother purchased a house in a small town called Greenway (not the real name). It’s a cool old house that was built in 1892 and has 12-foot ceilings and solid oak doors and trim work. It had been a rental house for several years, so we had to do a lot of work before my mom, sister, and her little girl could move in.

There were fireplaces in every room of the house, but none of them were safe to use. We bricked them all up but kept the mantels. The mantel in what once was the formal dining room had a built-in china cabinet, and the wood was this beautiful old oak. Of course, someone had painted over the woodwork for many years, so my sister and I had started to refinish and refurbish it.

One day we were there working on the mantel while my niece was playing. It was a quiet day with no workers. It was just us three. All the sudden, we heard a baby crying, and I mean crying loudly like was hurt. Just crying and crying. My niece came in and said ‘Aunt Sonya, where’s that baby? I can’t find it nowhere!’. She was maybe five at the time. So there we all went, running all over the place, looking for a baby that was crying its eyes out. We never did find it. I don’t remember how long we heard the crying, but at some point it stopped. Years passed and we heard the crying a few more times, but we never found a baby.

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