08/25/2026
Spooky Shelbyville true story submission #1 (from our very own Dawn!): When I was around 8 years old, me and my brother (who was a year younger than me), shared a room before Dad added his bedroom on to the house. We had lived at that house a couple years with no issues, just normal as far as I can remember. My mom or dad, I can’t remember who, came home with a treadle sewing machine and Mom put it in our room to use it. If you’re not familiar with that sewing machine it was the type with a foot peddle, no electricity, just use your foot to push back and forth to create the pulley’s moving and thus you were able to sew. So with that said, one night my brother woke me up scared and said can you hear that, and I’m like hear what. He said the said the sewing machine was moving. I listened and it was. We were so scared that we ran to Mom and Dad’s room but they didn’t believe us. Dad got up and checked and said nothing was there and to go back to bed. Trust me, I didn’t sleep much that night. A couple nights passed by and I woke up to noise and again I could hear the sewing machine but this time I could see an old lady sitting there at the sewing machine. I woke my brother up and he saw her too. We ran back to mom and dad’s room and again Dad checked and heard nothing but we refused to go back in the room. We slept on the living room floor that night. After that, it happened so often that me and my brother would say, oh it’s the old lady sewing again, and we would roll over and go back to sleep.
Other things began to happen but this one time to my parents. I woke up to the front porch light flipping off and on, so me and my brother belly crawled to the living room and watched it. Yes, we went back to mom and dad’s room. Needless to say, they weren’t happy. Dad got up and switched the light off claiming it had just been left on. As mom was telling us to go back to bed, the light flipped back on. Dad turned around and went to shut it off again and it came right back on. He said for everyone to go to bed and he would fix it in the morning. He and mom got rid of the treadle sewing machine and I never saw the old lady again.
Now as an adult, I look back and can’t believe how many times me and my brother saw that old lady sewing, to the point where we would just roll over and go back to sleep. We would even say to Mom, well we didn’t much sleep last night because the old lady was sewing all night. Definitely not normal breakfast conversation. Mom would just laugh.
-Dawn
