Can't sleep

Pain medication does weird things to me. Mostly it makes me sleep, and often times I have odd dreams. In fact, I woke myself up from an odd dream about a haunted house. But the odd part was I know this house and it isn't haunted at all. So now, to try and bring back whatever normalcy my life is right now I am going to talk about this place. Just a childhood memory tucked away in my vault.  Then maybe I can catch another hour before everything becomes chaotic around here.

 

My grandparents, not the roller coaster ones but the other ones bought an old church house in Oakley, Utah and set up residence there. It was very odd for people to actually live in church houses back then and the towns people really weren't very happy about it either but I knew nothing about that because I was 8. To me and my siblings it was one big adventure. There were tons of rooms upstairs (5), there were two bathrooms downstairs but only one worked and the other was blocked and we couldn't get into it (They only needed one since they were side by, side after all). The relief society room was on one side of the bathrooms and it was the family room and where my grandma spent most of her time. On the other side of the bathrooms was the priesthood room that they used as their bedroom and that was definitely off limits! The chapel was across from the bathrooms and was still mostly intact, except for the kitchen table set on the right side of the room. For some reason we never went close to the left side of the room. The pews were there or something. I really don't remember. Mostly Grandma wanted us to stay out of the corners. And we weren't allowed to go up on the stand either, which was really hard because there was a podium and everything. We were kids after all.
And on the left side there was a big picture window and you could see a house that had burned to the ground behind the church house. It was over a year until they came and cleaned it up. The family who owned it abandoned it after the fire. For us it was really freaky.

The kitchen was huge. And there was a short in the electrical wires in the kitchen and occasionally we would shock ourselves when getting water out of the faucet.

The backyard was so small you really couldn't call it a back yard. It was just a separation of the property lines behind the building but we were not allowed to go out. The grass had grown to the window looking into the chapel.
 

But that was not the weirdest thing. No, that would be the cultural hall. It was behind the chapel . There was a small hallway separating the chapel and cultural hall that lead to the kitchen so we passed the cultural hall all the time. Grandpa was a carpenter and the hall was his workshop. We were not allowed in it. My brothers and cousins peeked and explored but I was always afraid to go too far inside. But when you step inside the vinyl doors, the wood was stacked at least 5' tall and the pathways were 2 feet wide and it was a labyrinth of pathways leading to places I was too chicken to explore.

 

When my Grandma died, piles of wood started appearing in the living areas. That was a big no no with Grandma but she wasn't around anymore and Grandpa worked himself too hard. When Grandpa had a stroke and we had to clean the old place out, when I wasn't off on my many 'hide to get out of cleaning' adventures, I helped my parents and I discovered there was a stage as well as a room up the stairs above the kitchen. And I am sure there were other places I knew nothing about. My brother and cousins, however, knew where everything was, the stinkers.

 

Don't get me wrong, it was fabulous! We had so much fun in that old building! The rooms upstairs were converted into bedrooms, a play room, and we had so much fun running back and forth down the hallway and just being kids, which I admit often drove my Grandma nuts.
 

 

Now I look back and there are still so many mysteries to the old building I don't remember anymore, but whenever I need a good haunted house, my dreams gravitate to that small church house in the small town in Oakley. And my mind embellishes things, adds on extra rooms and even more mysteries.
And if you haven't guessed it, I am in the red, to to be confused with the other red, my brother Jeff.