Mama’s True Life Ghost Story
October 15th, 2008Mr. Chase And The Box S
In 1983 I rented an old house in downtown Lucerne Valley, CA owned by Al Philipe, who had other real estate and a restaurant in town. I was told that it was the old Box S Ranch house and stage stop, and that there were many stories of a ghost. It was a strange building, not really very well set up as a home, but it was adequate, interesting and affordable at a time when rentals were hard to find.
Impossible as the house was to heat or to cool, much less keep clean, my two teen age sons and I made do the best we could. Then, at the start of the summer, the boys went to live with their father in another town and I was left to fend for myself in the strange old house.
I soon discovered that I wasn’t truly alone. I also decided that the “presence” explained a lot of funny business that I had laid to my son’s doings, evidently unjustly. There was no doubt in my mind about the ghost or poltergeist being there because he saved my life one night… but I’ll get to that.
It all started with my little dog. She was a brave little soul, always ready to protect me and never willing to let me go anywhere without her in front of me. The fact that she would never, under any circumstance, go down into the crude basement of the old Box S was a very strange exception to her usual behavior. She not only would not go down there herself, she was terribly and vocally upset every moment I spent down there. I don’t recall particularly trying to account for her unusual attitude at first, having about all I could do to work full time, attend college classes and raise my sons.
Other strange things that happened were even more easily overlooked, most likely being attributed to the age of the building, the substandard construction and the drafts as well as the supposed antics of the boys. Once they were gone, giving me a little more time to think, I had to explain these things to myself in a different way. When the supposed “cause” of such things is removed and the problems do not vanish in proportion, there has to be another culprit around.
I began to feel very strongly that there was another presence in the house. Eventually I “knew” his name, though I can’t even begin to describe how I knew. My ghost was a “Mr. Chase” and he was a lonesome, cranky old fellow, not really too happy to have people live there. I don’t think he was a “bad” ghost… but then, what do I know?
Mr. Chase liked to play tricks, most of which drove the dog crazy and left me amazed. He would not tolerate having either the front door, or the door between the living room and the kitchen left standing open. No matter what I propped them open with, they were closed when I went back. The dog barked at those doors and other things so much that my own sanity was probably in question for a while. My poor children took an awful lot of blame for this ghost, but they did like to tease the dog from time to time.
Our ghost, as one might expect, spent a lot of nights doing his mischief. He loved to turn lights on or off at odd times. The light in my bedroom would often come on while I was sound asleep. I got up several times a week in the middle of the night that way, and always felt his “presence” very strongly then, even before I recognized it as such. The lights came on a few times in the boy’s room but, since they could sleep through an atom blast, it wouldn’t have been much fun for Mr. Chase and he soon quit doing that.
The only mean thing the ghost ever did was to kill all my house plants one night. This was after the boys had gone and I was feeling pretty bad already, so the loss of all my beloved plants was pretty hard to take. They were overturned and appeared to have been stepped on. It could not have been done by an animal, and no animal including my dog could have gotten near where they were kept. I guess Mr. Chase was sorry for it later because the next week was when he saved my life, along with the building. I’m quite sure the building was the most important thing to him, but I’m grateful just the same.
Since all of the construction was substandard and very old, the electrical fire that night was no real surprise. The firemen who answered the call voiced the opinion that the old building was “living” on borrowed time anyway, and had been for a long time. They said it was a wonder I had not been killed, let alone that the house had survived intact. I’m afraid I let them think it was just my extreme good luck and didn’t give credit where it was due at the time.
I was awakened that night, just like so many others and got up to turn off the light. When I got to the doorway, I noticed that the lights were on all over the house! As I walked toward the kitchen, I smelled that awful stink of burning electrical insulation and saw a plume of smoke pouring from the outlet where the cooler was plugged in. I ran over and yanked it out, which caused a big spark and snapping sound, just before half the lights went out as the breaker finally blew. In a panic, of course, I called 911 and stood trembling in my nightshirt on the front porch until the firemen were done inspecting the “fire”.
The only damage was to the outlet itself, melted internally. The firemen were amazed that it had not ignited the old dried out wallboard. The whole place would have burned like a pile of matches.
Needless to say, I spent the rest of the night wide awake in the overstuffed chair by the phone, and I started looking for another place to live the next morning.
Years later, I read a book about Lucerne Valley and the old “Box S Ranch,” the house where I had lived. It was mentioned several times and there was a clear photograph of the house as a stage coach stop, and one of the early owners… A Mr. Chase!
