Photos by JJ Kaplan
This tale begins in a small house in a village known as Zionsville. The names have been changed, so local villagers do not suspect our friend to be less than sane. However, if you’ve had the pleasure of meeting “Suzie,” I think you would agree that she is very sane. The following are events as she has recounted them to me while she and her family have lived in her little house in Zionsville.
Suzie and her family purchased their charming historic 1858 home in the fall 1992. Her realtor gave her a photo of the house from times gone by that appears on this page. Perhaps the figures standing on the front porch in the photo should have given Suzie an inkling of what her future with this house would be.
It is critical to this story that you envision the size of her charming little home. Because it is tiny and cozy, you know everything that’s going on in the house. There is only one staircase, leading from the living room downstairs to three bedrooms upstairs. Because of its size, there is nowhere to hide, and every creek and squeak can be heard.
Less than a year after moving into her house, Suzie was sitting alone in her 
living room after everyone had left for the day. With some of her children in school and her husband at work, she knew that she was alone that morning. Clearly and succinctly, Laurie heard rhythmic footsteps going up her wooden staircase. Step by step by step, the sound continued until it reached the top. Then it stopped. So did Laurie’s heart!
She was frozen with fear sitting in her oversized chair and didn’t dare move until her family came home. She was completely terrorized by the footsteps on the stairs. She was scared to death. Not surprisingly, no one believed her.
Not long after, her daughter was upstairs in her bedroom. She heard a sound on the stairs, and it came to a stop right outside her bedroom door. She assumed that her teenage brother was pulling a prank on her. Quietly, she tiptoed to her bedroom door to try to catch him outside her bedroom. As she threw open the door, she looked into the hall and fully expected to see her brother. But there was no one there. She hopped back into her bed, terrified, and didn’t tell her mother until the next day.
A short while later, Suzie’s middle school-aged son was the last one to leave the house for school in the morning. He had a Nintendo game in his bedroom but no cable or TV shows. He came downstairs to eat breakfast but noticed the sound of a TV coming from his bedroom upstairs.
Naturally, he went upstairs and turned it off. Halfway down the stairs, the TV came on again. Hmmmm. He turned around to go back up to his bedroom, and halfway there, it turned off by itself.
One by one, each family member experienced something that was not explainable. They each have heard rhythmic steps on the stairs that stop once they reach the top of the stairwell.
There have been other events, too, that have gone beyond sounds. One afternoon, Suzie was preparing dinner. Across the top of the kitchen cabinets, she had various decorative plates. Out of the blue, one plate fell from its place on the top of the cabinet to the floor. Then another plate fell approximate 10 seconds later. Then another plate fell approximately 10 seconds later. Finally, a fourth plate fell about 10 seconds after that. In all, four separate plates fell at four separate times, all about 10 seconds apart from each other.
Some have tried to explain this by saying there could have been moving trucks on the delivery route behind her home. A rumbling truck in a 30 mile speed limit may cause, perhaps, a large vibration, but it is unlikely to cause four separate vibrations in 10 second intervals, each large enough to cause plates to fall from the cabinets. Surprisingly, no other objects or glassware were disrupted?
On another occasion, Suzie hosted a baby shower in her living room. Someone asked her where her family members were. They had all left for the day. One guest asked Suzie who the man wearing a white T-shirt was that just walked up the stairs. No one else saw him. The one person that saw the vision of the man was visibly distraught when informed it was not a member of the family. Suzie then came up with an explanation, “It’s just Edna.”
A long time ago when we carried pagers, Suzie’s husband received a page in the middle of the night. He got up to use the phone in the kitchen. Suzie was awakened also, so she got up to get a drink of water. Both Suzie and her husband went back to bed. Within 15 minutes when they were both about to fall asleep, they both began to hear distinct voices outside their bedroom door. The sounds were clear enough to decipher yet still too faint to identify. All Suzie and her husband knew is that they BOTH heard voices right outside their bedroom door, and there were no other people in the house.
A few years ago, Suzie was outside working in her garden. The cable repair man was coming and was supposed to call in advance of his visit. However, he didn’t make the call and just stopped by the house. He knocked and peeked his head into her front porch. He heard a woman talking upstairs and assumed that someone was home, so he entered the house and announced who he was. Every time he spoke, the voice stopped. Eventually the voice continued, and he repaired the cable service.
When he was done, he tried to find the owner of the home. The voice had subsided. He called Suzie’s cell phone, and to his utter surprise, he learned that she had been in the backyard the entire time. He wanted to know who the voice came from upstairs, so Suzie replied, “It’s just Edna.” When she explained her situation, the cable repairman ran out of the house.
Many have tried to offer explanations to these sounds and events. The home was built in 1858. Maybe the noise on the stairway was the house settling as all homes do. However, that would not sound like a series of rhythmic noises. And then how do you explain noises that stop at the top of the stairs? Suzie is currently hearing footsteps on the stairs approximately twice a week.
All of Suzie’s family has experienced the entity, most commonly known as Edna. No one from her family has seen her/him. They don’t experience chills anymore. There is no sound of a dragging chain or other stereotypical movie soundtrack images. It is just Edna. It isn’t good or bad. It just is. Edna.
