The Witch Is In The Dining Room

An incident happened the other evening that brought back memories of a story that I had told Chloe of when she was about four.

Long ago when I was a young boy, my brother and I shared a bedroom. Our bedroom was between the kitchen and the hall leading to the rest of the house. Sometimes people would use our bedroom as a shortcut to get to the kitchen instead of going around thru the Living Room and Dining Room.

Sometime during the early morning hours I had awakened and when I looked across the room I saw a tall man with  an overcoat on. He was too tall to be my dad or my brother, so I thought someone had come in uninvited. I took the covers and pulled them up over my head, but to my surprise later when I looked across the room he was still there. After doing this several time during the night, I decided to quietly slide off of the bed with my pillow and to sleep under the bed so that he wouldn't get me. I slept here until morning, and as I heard my parents moving around I knew that it would be safe to get up.

Much to my surprise when I looked across the room where I had seen the man standing, was the hat and the overcoat but no man. Instead there was the hall tree (hat stand) with the hat on the top and my dad's overcoat on the peg just below the hat. My imagination had let my mind complete the picture I had formed in my mind when I had looked across the room.

I was so mad at myself when I found this out, because I had slept on the hard floor for several hours because of my fear.

So what made me think of this was, Chloe had left her winter coat here over the weekend and to make sure that she got it when she came on Tuesday, I hung it over the post on the Dining Room chair. I also put my coat on the chair next to her coat and put my hat over the top of my coat. When she came that morning I told her mother that I forgot to put her coat with the rest of her things and that I had put it here to remind me when she went home she could take her coat.

We did many thing together that day, played Barbies, played games on the computer and she wanted me to tell her some of the things that I had done growing up. This kept us busy into the late afternoon, when we decided to go outside so that she could ride her bike. I told her to get her shoes so she could put them on and she left the room to get them.

All of a sudden I heard her scream and before I could check it out here she was running back into the kitchen and about knocked me over in the process. I asked her what was wrong and why did she scream. Then she told me sh had seen a short Witch in the Dining Room and I needed to go with her to get her shoes.
I asked her, "Chloe are you sure that you saw a Witch or do you just wanting to get me to go and get your shoes." "No," she explained, "Come with me and I will show you what I saw."

As I went into the Dining Room, I didn't see any Witch, just the coats on the backs of the chairs. Then she started laughing and said, "Poppy these coats are just like the coat and hat that scared you when you were about my age." All I could do was just smile and give her a hug for remembering that story and let her know that I was sorry that the coats had given her a scare.