Have you ever found anything in the crawlspace or attic of your house or a family members house, and wondered what the story behind it was? I recently found out that they can be stranger than you think.
When I was ten or so, I was exploring the storage area in our basement and found a large seraded knife that looks like something a soldier would carry. It has a leather camoflauged sheath and if you unscrew the butt of the handle, there is a compass on the end. When I first discovered it i asked my father where it came from. He looked at it for a minute then paused, and said his friend gave it to him upon returning to Vietnam. I never had any doubt of the story, as it seemed completely reasonable.
However, last week, my dad came into my room and saw I had the knife in a drawer, as I like to collect military antiques. He picked it up and said "I remember the day i got this thing."
I said "your friend gave it to you, right?"
He chuckled, and said he just told me that story when I was younger so I wouldn't get scared.
The actual story of how the knife came to be in my basement is far more haunting.
In the mid 1970s when my father was just starting out as a police officer, he got a call of a drowning in a local reservior. He was the first officer on the scene, so it was his job to notify the family of the teenager who drowned when swimming with some friends. While divers looked for the body, my dad gathered up the boys clothes(they were skinny dipping) and belongings, and among them was the large knife. It was the first time my dad had ever notified a parent that a child had died before, and he was so nervous that he got the clothes from his car, but forgot to get the knife, which had apperently slid under a seat.
Having all but forgotten the incident several years later, my dad was assigned a new squad car and found the knife while cleaning his old one out. He didn't know what to do with it, so tossed it into our basement on a shelf out of reach, which is where i found it when i became tall enough to pry.
I have never had any supernatural experiences with the knife, which to me, would seem like something a spirit would attach itself to, because obviously the child treasured it enough to take swimming with him. But when i hold it now, I can sort of visualize the boy setting his pants down on the bank, and slowly walking out into the water, not knowing that his legs are feeling the weight of his body for the last time.
This has made me look at everything i have acquired differently, and now i wonder what the story is behind the tattered old hat i sometimes where, that i found on a bus, or the old baseball mitt i use to play catch when i go to my grandparents house. Do you have anything with an interesting story? please share.