| Sometime during the late 60’s, my mother bought
a house about a block away from where we were renting. I was around 10
and was excited that I would have my own yard where I could play with my
dog. Coco was a small dog, with some Chihuahua and terrier mixed in with
who knows what. He wasn’t tiny and thin like a Chihuahua, but he could
shake like one when he was upset. Like many boy/dog pairs, we were
inseparable. We would eat together, sleep together, play together, and
even (I imagined) talked to each other. The house we moved into was a small 2 bedroom framed structure built around 1924. It had a small basement. In California basements are very rare and I thought it was “cool” that I was the only one of my friends that had one. In the beginning, most of my time was spent helping to clean the huge mess that was left behind by the previous occupants. There wasn’t much time to be with my dog Coco. As the days went by, the house began to look like a home. There was fresh paint in and out, new carpet, things were fixed that had been broken, and the plants and grass began to turn green, thanks to my mothers daily watering. To someone that may have been on vacation for a month, it might have appeared that a new house had been built on the site of the dilapidated shack that had once stood on this lot. It’s amazing what cleaning and painting can do to remove all traces of a house’s former self. That is to say, all physical traces. Our neighborhood was largely Latino. This is important to note as our culture has many superstitions and beliefs that are based on spirits and death. It was rumored that the woman that had occupied the house before us was a witch. People believed that she was able to cast spells for both good and evil purposes. A witch in the Latino culture is different from the classic American type of witch. In many Latin countries it is common to find someone that claims to have the power to heal, cast spells for the broken hearted, bring you good luck, or assist you with achieving whatever your heart desires. This psychic help is usually offered at no charge, although donations are accepted (and culturally expected). Most of these types of people claim to achieve their power from the spirit world. Now about my dog Coco. Not many days after moving into our home, I realized that I had never seen my dog in the kitchen. I really didn’t think much about this until one day when we were playing in the living room. I would throw something across the room and Coco would go fetch it. While he ran off I would hide behind the sofa or the curtains. He would then call for me with his bark and sniff around looking for me. After a few times of throwing and hiding, I heard him bark and then give off a low sounding growl. The kind of growl that dogs do when they are giving a warning or sense danger. I peeked out from my hiding place and saw him crouched low and growling towards the vacant entryway of the kitchen. When I called him, he barked an acknowledgement but would not move from his spot. I went to pick him up and felt him trembling. At that time I didn’t think much about it except to think that my dog had a screw loose. I wanted to continue to play with him but he seemed to have lost interest. On a different occasion he was chasing me around the living room when I decided to run to the back room of the house. To reach the back room I had two choices, one of which was through the kitchen. With Coco hot behind me, I raced through the kitchen and on to the back room. I found myself alone in the back room; my dog hadn’t followed me through the kitchen. Upon returning, I found him stopped at the entryway to the kitchen. I called to him to come to me, but he just stared at me and whimpered. He wouldn’t cross into the kitchen. I went to him and picked him up and crossed the kitchen into the back room. As we went through the kitchen, he began to tremble and I could feel his nails cling to my arm. When we reached the back room, his trembling subsided and he started to relax. I petted him for awhile and then took him outside to play. Reflecting on my dog’s strange attitude, I decided to conduct experiments. Looking back I think that it was probably unfair to put my trusting dog through what I now consider to be unkind actions on my part. Even though I never put him into physical danger, I now know that he probably suffered from the fear that the experience brought him. My first experiment was to not feed him in the morning so that he would get very hungry. Then later in the day I placed a dish of food (cut up pieces of steak from the dinner my mother was preparing) in the middle of the kitchen. I called for Coco. After he showed up at the kitchen entry, I showed him the food and picked up a piece and threw it to him. He devoured the piece and barked for more. I pointed at the dish and slapped my leg, calling him to come and get it. He wouldn’t budge from the doorway. All he would do is bark at me and look at the dish and then back up at me. After a while I began to feel remorse and then took the dish of food to him. The next experiment was to see what would happen if I picked him up and walked into the kitchen, placing him on the floor. When I did this, he began to go into the running motion even before his feet touched the floor. As his feet touched the floor, I could hear his nails scratching the linoleum. He was trying to get out so fast that he had trouble getting proper traction and did a kind of slip run out of the kitchen. Of course when I told my friends about it, they also wanted to see him do it. I ashamedly admit that I repeated this experiment more then once. The final experiment that I recall doing was to see if he had a reaction to the basement. The basement stairs ran directly under the kitchen, although the basement itself was under the living room. The basement door was in the floor of the laundry room. After opening it, I placed my dog at the top of the stairway. I went down into the basement and called for him to come down. He wouldn’t come down, but he also didn’t act upset. I then proceeded to get him and carry him down into the basement. With him in my arms, he appeared to be acting normal while in the basement. There was no trembling or nervousness. I set him down on the concrete floor of the basement and he wanted me to pick him up again. It was more like he just didn’t like it there, but he wasn’t overly nervous or upset to be on the basement floor. I left him there and ran up the stairs. He didn’t run up after me, but stayed at the bottom of the stairs looking up at me. After calling him to come up, he slowly began his climb up the stairway. He didn’t appear fearful; it was more like he was confused about this strange place. There were no more experiments after this last one. There was only one other strange thing regarding my dog. Occasionally I would fall asleep on the living room couch while watching television. My mother usually turned off the TV, covered me with a blanket and left me there. On at least two of these times, I was awakened by my dog barking and growling in the night, staring towards the kitchen entryway. As the months went by, I lost interest in the kitchen phenomenon. I just got used to the idea that my dog didn’t like the kitchen and learned to live with it. Eventually my dog ran away from home. I don’t think the kitchen was the reason for his running away because as long as he wasn’t forced to enter it, he seemed content in his new home. He had made dog friends in the neighborhood and would wonder off with them. He usually came home when he was hungry. The day came when he didn’t return and we went searching for him. This began to happen more frequently and each search would find him further from home. I believe that on one of his outings another family probably adopted him. We never found him at the pound (he had a tag on his collar) and there was never any evidence that he was in an unfortunate accident. We moved out of the house a long time ago, but a friend of mine currently lives in it. He has a small dog named Dusty. He is a very active and playful dog that loves to run around inside the house. But Dusty also displays an aversion to the kitchen, although not as drastic as my dog Coco. My friend says that Dusty will enter the kitchen if ordered, but prefers not to if given the choice. Could it be that both dogs sensed something otherworldly? Besides the dog phenomenon, other people have had strange experiences inside the house, including myself. But I will leave those incidences for another time. |