The Music from the Playroom

Credits to Ominoke

At the risk of over saturating you with tales of weirdness from my life, here is another small thing that happened. I had actually forgotten about this until after I posted the second story and telling my husband a few of the weird things that had happened in the past.

About 16 years ago my mother hired a nanny to look after my little sister and myself. Both herself and my father worked long hours and frequently had to go on business trips so they wanted someone to live in with us for when they had to catch those early morning flights or ended up getting caught in traffic or working late. We were due to move from the middle of the UK to further up north and as a result my mother decided to get a local nanny, which made a lot more sense than forcing someone from the midlands to drive home in rush hour traffic every weekend. My mother took me to meet... lets call her Susan, at a prearranged spot, her references were good, she got along well with me and my mother decided to offer her the job there and then.

Things were fine to begin with but there were odd things that would crop up every so often, the first few we shrugged off - She turned up on her first day with all her hair shaved off. Weird, but OK, its her hair.

She took us to the circus, my sister loved it up until the clowns came out, she was terrified and it was me who had to leave the tent with her. When we got home my sister was put to bed after a simple dinner of stew whilst I was forced to eat gruel. I refused and was made to sit at the table until my father got home.

The move went smoothly and we settled in to our new schools and that's when Susan started to talk to me in the afternoons while I did my homework at the table. She'd tell me about her sister who was a little older than me and how she hated living with her dad. And how her mother was dead. Some pretty hard hitting stuff for a 12 year old.

Susan began to tell me stories while my sister was listening too, about how her mother still sent them messages from time to time from beyond the grave. I was skeptical, as far as I knew when you were dead you went to heaven or whatever you believed in and stayed there. I didn't contradict her though, I nodded and asked questions abut her sister instead... but somehow the conversation always returned to her mother.

The afternoon it all came to a head was very sunny and warm, I remember her telling me how her mother used to sing a song to her whenever she was sad, the "You are my sunshine" song. I decided that I'd had enough being creeped out for one day and started out of the kitchen, dragging my sister along with me.

She caught up to us by the door "You believe me, don't you Omikone? Whenever I'm sad my mother plays that song for me."

At that point one of my sisters toys began to play a twangy electronic tune in the room behind me.

Yep.

You guessed it. My little sisters toy started playing "you are my sunshine". My sister gripped my hand really tightly and whimpered my name as I stared at Susan and this awful, awful smile of triumph on her face.

I calmed my sister down, taking her into the playroom and explaining how her toy's batteries were broken as we searched it out and tried to turn it off. The entire time Susan stood in the doorway smiling at the song.

My mother requested that she leave not long after that.