The Haunted Sewing Machine

I don’t believe in ghosts. But I don’t NOT believe in ghosts. Is there a word similar to “agnostic”, but for ghosts? If so, that’s what I am.

That being said, I’m convinced my mother’s sewing machine is haunted. By my mom. I inherited it when she passed, and have used it a number of times.

This sewing machine was purchased by my mom from a door-to-door salesman in the summer of 1966. I remember her buying it. The salesman set up a shiny new sewing machine on our dining room table and plugged it in. He pulled a square of white flannel from his pocket and a spool of pink thread from his case, and proceeded to show Mom how to program the machine to make a machine-embroidered bunny. It was magical. It was beautiful. My mother’s eyes sparkled like it was Christmas morning.

My parents were very frugal, pinching every penny until it screamed out for mercy. My dad took one look at my mom from across the room and said, “You want it, don’t you?”

“We can’t,” she responded.

Dad looked at the old foot-pedal Singer in the corner and asked if she was sure. Her eyes followed his glance and she said, “Well, I could sew all of our clothes if I had a new machine.”

My mom asked the salesman the price and swallowed hard when he told her. She asked if he had a sewing machine that was a little less expensive, and he did reluctantly fetch one from his car that couldn’t make fancy animals or scalloped edges, but did have a zipper foot and some other attachments. It was less than half the cost of the bunny-making model. Sold!

I don’t remember the price of the new fancy sewing machine, but I do remember the excitement of picking out fabric for the new dresses, pajamas, and blouses my mother made throughout the following year. She made three dresses for me to wear when I started kindergarten in 1967. Three!  

This was the sewing machine my mother continued to use for the next 48 years. One of the things she used it for was to make braided rag rugs. My mother made dozens of beautiful rugs that she donated to church charity sales and sold at a local consignment shop. She taught me how to make them, sort of (I’m a terrible student).

I decided to make a rug of my own, using her sewing machine, to honor her memory. This entailed sewing two-inch wide strips of cloth, each several yards long, into tubes. Hundreds of them. For days.

As I was sewing one of these tubes, the sewing machine was going very slowly no matter how hard I pressed down on the foot pedal. It was frustrating, but I kept sewing. Suddenly, it started stitching faster and faster. I eased up on the pedal, but it kept speeding up. I tapped my foot down on the foot pedal a few times, and the machine finally stopped. I took a deep breath, and a walk around the room to cool off. I sat back down at the sewing machine, and it seemed fine for about five minutes. Then, it sped up again. Tapping the foot pedal didn’t work to stop it this time. In a panic, I yelled out, “Mom, stop it!” and the machine stopped. By now I was shaking.

I scooted back from the sewing machine and muttered a quick thank you to my mother’s spirit. Without me even touching it, the sewing machine started to slowly stitch. That was it! I pulled the plug and have never plugged it back in.

Oh, and the rug I was making? I bought a new, very cheap sewing machine of my own and completed it. My poor rug is ugly and uneven, but it reminds me of my mother and her haunted sewing machine every time I look at it.

And I still have the haunted sewing machine if anyone wants it.