Sudden chills

While Regina and Dave lived with their adopted children in their funeral home, Tomlinson Funeral Home, anytime Regina felt an eerie spite or had the job of turning the lights off at the home, she would say a little prayer.

“I was walking the puppy, and I said ‘Well, let’s go inside,’” Regina said. “The door opened by itself. There was no way. It’s a door like this [Regina points toward her classroom door] it’s heavy and it closes by itself, so it wouldn’t have come open by itself. Nobody was standing there.” 

Regina spoke no word about the encounter to Dave. She shrugged it off as “weird.” A couple of days later, Dave told her about a strange, similar experience.

“He says, ‘Oh, it was weird,’” Regina said. “The other night I was walking the dog, and I said ‘Let’s go inside.’ The back door opened by itself.’ I kind of like that kind of ghost; open the door for me.”

Regina told her students about her experiences on the first day of school.

“She did say she believes in ghosts,” sophomore Ella Ashley said. “She has to turn off certain lights to turn off other ones. She always has a light on when she walks through the hallway because she doesn’t want it to turn off on her. She’s seen a lot of dead bodies, so I wouldn’t blame her if she saw ghosts.”

Dave and Regina had two funeral homes. After Dave took a break, he worked for Hahn-Cook near Austin where he managed their funeral homes.

“The only time I kind of got scared was [when] I went into the infant room, and there was a body there,” Regina said. “I went to go get something off one of the shelves, and as I was walking by, all of a sudden it felt like he was looking right at me. It’s just my eye happened to cross where his was looking. It felt like he was looking at me.”