Haunting History

Yesterday I wrote such a touching post that I think I raised the bar a bit high for myself. Today, I hate to say it, but I think possibly you will be disappointed. I am in a much less melancholy mood so I am afraid my writing may suffer.

Okay, just to point out what a geek I am I have to admit something. My favorite show is Ghost Hunters on Sci Fi Channel. This show is just fantastic and I look forward to watching it every Wednesday night. I know everyone has a ghost story or two. Everyone either believes a hundred and ten percent or they don't believe at all. I am a believer. Now don't go rolling your eyes. I am not an alien person and I don't believe in ESP or Palm readers, but ghosts I believe in. My reasoning:

I grew up in a house where unexplained things happened often. Things that cannot be explained away by coincidence. I used to laugh it off but then it got to a point where ignoring it just wasn't an option. The house I grew up in was almost 200 years old. The property used to be a peach orchard years before my family came to possess it. On the property once sat a farm house and a small barn (I know this from first hand accounts and public records). On January 13, 1956 there was a fire in the farm house. The fire started in the middle of the night and spread rapidly. Pearl (the woman whom lived in the home and this happened to, lived two doors down from us and spoke of this event often) and her husband barely escaped with their lives, there 6 children were not so lucky. All six were killed that night. Pearl's husband, racked with grief and guilt, hung himself in one of the trees in the back yard. The house and barn were destroyed (the tree remains in the yard to this day) and Pearl built herself a small little home where she lived out the rest of her life. She sold the property and in 1963 two houses (ours being one of them and my uncle's house being the other) were moved from their previous location to where they now sit. The two houses were identical on the inside. They were mirror images of the other. Both were spacious and beautiful. My uncle's house had a tainted history though. Shortly after the house was placed on the property a man, we will call him Bill for this sake, and his wife moved into the home. In 1965 his wife was found murdered in the home and it was deemed a random act of violence. No one fully believed it but there was no proof against the husband. He lived in total isolation from that point onward. In 1978 he was found dead of a heart attack two weeks after he died. That house had way more issues than ours!

Now because I was so young when we first moved in I don't remember everything in any type of order. They appear to me now as memories that fade in and out randomly. I will tell you what I know to be true.

Our House (*sings* our house...):

When I was 9 and my brother was 2 we moved into the house. Now I don't know what it was but it didn't matter if it was the middle of the day or the middle of the night, when anyone would walk out of my parent's bedroom door you felt like you had to run. I am not telling you this as a child often does. I did this until we moved out of the home just over a year ago. It was the strangest feeling. You felt like someone was right on your heels. You had to run. My mother did it, I did it, my brother, aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandma always did it. Once you were out in the hallway you would again resume a normal walk but you had to run to get out of that room. None of us ever spoke about it until we were much older and then realized that for years we were all doing the same thing.

Like I said my brother was only two when we moved in that house. He ALWAYS (still to this day and he is now 21) spoke of the man on the stairs. His bedroom faced the stairs and he would always insist that a man in a "golfer's hat" with a pipe would walk up those stairs. He would never lay in his bed facing the door...he always had his back to it. He wouldn't scream out and he was never afraid. He would just exclaim "I just don't like the man because I can't see his eyes". We took it as childhood fantasies gone haywire. One night my brother, who suffered from asthma his entire life, was really sick. I was sleeping on his floor, which was my habit since I was always the protective older sister, when I saw what he had been speaking of all along. This shadow of a man, I first assumed it was my father, came up the stairs (hat and pipe). He just sort of walked up the stairs, got to the top, and he was gone. As quickly as it started it was done. I screamed bloody murder. Let me tell you I think I woke people up a few states away! My mom came running in the room, my father on her heels, and brother sat bolt upright in bed. My parents are trying to settle me down and you hear my brother, in the tiniest little voice say "She saw the man, Mommy, that's all." From that point on I would bring my brother in my room when he was sick.

When I was around 13 I was asleep in my bed. I heard, what I thought at the time was thunder. I kind of got up and then I heard the popping noise again. Then I realized what it was my light bulb was shutting on and off over and over again. I don't know what it was doing. This one I could explain away as faulty wiring in a very old house, except the light switch was going up and down. I remember saying out loud "Please stop I need to get up for school in the morning" and it stopped. I don't think I really got scared until it actually stopped. I ran to my mom's room and slept there for over a week before I was finally kicked out!

When my brother was about 7 he had a toy robot that you would fill the head with water and then it would walk around blowing steam out of the top of his head and whistle. Like every other toy it soon becomes forgotten and is extinguished to some dark corner of the house to collect dust. The robot was no different. So when 6 months later we were all awoken in the middle of the night by a whistle no one could think of what it possibly could be. We searched that house for what seemed like forever. When we finally traced the noise to the basement we were astonished to not only find my brother's robot out of the box it had been in but filled with water and walking across the floor. My mom went and picked it up to remove the batteries only to find there weren't any.

I was downstairs late one night chatting away the hours. I remember it was late, later than I usually stay up. The door to my son's toy room was open and something caught my eye. I turned just in time to see his Nemo doll come hurling out of the closet. I don't mean it gently rolled onto the floor it came zooming out of the closet like a football. I closed off the computer and simply said "Well if you wanted me to leave all you had to do was ask." As strange as it sounds we talked to them often...I think it made us feel better more than it actually worked.

There were always footsteps coming up and down the stairs. A thousand times a night. Some were heavy walking, some were light running, some were just plain annoying. One night I had to get up really early for work the next day and the footsteps were really grinding on my nerves. I peeked out my doors and said "You have to stop I have to get up in the morning." And once again they did! They ceased immediately.

This one is my most terrifying memory of them all. It truly scared me to the point that I never again ventured into the basement. My son was two weeks old and sound asleep in his carrier so I decided to do the laundry. My brother was at school and mom had left for the day to get some errands done, so I was alone. I diligently locked all the doors and windows and made sure the baby monitor was on. I grabbed the basket and went to start the laundry in the basement. I had put in the first load and was about half way up the stairs when the door to the basement slammed shut. Now my first thought was that wind had just got it, then it hit me that I had made sure that house was completely shut before I went down there. So I ran to the door and tried to open it. I would get it about 3 inches open and it would slam shut again. Someone was on the other side of that door and they were damn strong. I was so terrified that someone was hurting my baby. Finally I yelled out "Let me up there, my baby is in there." And the door swung open. My son was still fast asleep and perfectly fine. I NEVER EVER went in that basement again. My mom would laugh and say that I was just trying to get out of doing laundry but I think she saw the pure terror in my face and knew there was no way she was going to get me back down there.

Now the first thing you have to understand about my dad is that he is a no nonsense kind of guy. He is the guy that will tell you the truth even if you don't want to hear it. He says it like it is take it or leave it. That is his personality, always has been always will be. He never gets excited or worked up about ANYTHING! That is what makes me take this next story so seriously...it is not in my father's nature to lie! Him and my mom were asleep one night when my dad was awoken by a musty smell. He said it was an earthy basement kind of smell. When he looked up he saw the figure of a man standing by the front two windows of their room. My dad said he wasn't in color...he was more shadow than man is how he explains it. My dad said you could clearly see his hat and pipe and that the curtains blowing in the wind seemed to go right through him. My dad did the only thing that fits my dad's personality and rolled over and went back to sleep.

When we first got my cat, whose name is Sherman by the way, he was a year old. We had never had animals in the house but this cat just invited himself in. He LITERALLY walked in the back door and never really left. Now he is a happy fat lazy house cat that lets us live in the house as long as we feed him. Back to the story: When we first got him me, my mom, and dad were in the house one night. Sherman had been put downstairs. My mom was in the kitchen and me and Dad were in the family room, when all of us heard, clear as day "Get it out". It was definitely a woman's voice. I asked my mom what she said at the same time she asked me what I said. It took us a minute to figure out neither one of us had spoken a word.

When my son was around 3 we had a brief incident in which the thermostat would randomly go up in temperature. Now my son got blamed for this new found game. We would be roasting in the middle of February, go in and the furnace was set to 95. It went on and on until one day I finally decided enough was enough. I walked my son in there by the hand and turned it down. I gave, what I am sure, was a long winded speech about not touching that. He looked up at me and insisted he never touched it. I thought how odd it was that he had figured out how to lie to me so quickly. I grabbed his hand and was just leaving the dining room when I heard a huff. Not a quiet sound at all but a deep male huff of irritation. I looked back just in time to see that thermostat pop back up to 95. I never blamed my son again!

These are just a few of the random stories I have. We have countless pictures that have shadow figures in them and these zooming purple lights around our heads. We have endless amounts of stories that just defy logic. Now onto the more sinister of the two houses.

My Uncle's House:

Now whatever is in this house it hates women. I will tell you that and may God strike me down if it is a lie. It hates women. Men have no problem at all in this house but women are haunted daily. My aunt hated every day of life in that house. I mean most of the stuff was innocent. Random things would come up missing and show up right in the middle of the room. The baby's toys would turn on and off alone. The baby bottles, this one I witnessed myself, would constantly appear to be jumping off the drying rack. Day in and day out things like this occurred.


The worst experience by far happened to my aunt...it was the reason they moved! Her husband had a habit of getting up at 5 am and going jogging. This day was no different. She laid in bed and heard him go downstairs, go out the door, and leave the house. She then heard the door slam shut, heavy footsteps run up the stairs and enter her room. She started to roll over to yell at her husband because he was going to wake the children, when she was held down on her side. She heard a deep male voice in her ear whisper "I know what you are doing." She screamed and it was done. This was not the fist time she had been held against the bed by this "man" but it was the first time he spoke to her. She was so terrified they only stayed in the house for 1 month after and they were gone.


The house sat empty for a long time and my grandma being the real estate agent would go and check on the house. One day she went in to make sure that the heat was still on. She had walked in, closed the door behind her, and had just walked in the living room when she heard "GET OUT, get out, get out" behind her. She said at first she thought it was a dog bark but then heard what it was actually saying. She didn't need told twice. She never again went in that house alone. She always made my father or brother go with her. My grandmother is a very religious woman, Catholic to the very end, and she doesn't believe in such nonsense. This was something that pained her to admit had happened to her. The terror on her face when she walked in our house was enough to convince me that what she said was true.

The Property:

All the children, from my brother all the way down to my son, always spoke about the man in the back yard. They ALL described him exactly the same and none of them seemed scared of him. They would all toddle over and wave out the back door. This happened with every child (8 in total). They would all do this from the time they could walk until about 5 years old. Then it would fade away. I never saw him but I really wish I could have. All the children still remember him. They all describe him as tall, grey hair, wrinkled face, and (yep you guessed it) a hat and pipe. They say he would wave at them and then he would be gone. He was always, and I have to admit it still gives me chills, leaning up against that tree. The one where Pearl's husband hung himself.


My cousin, being around 16, worked at the local cinema. She would get home rather late but loved the job just the same. On one Friday night she pulled in the driveway and had just reached over to grab her purse. She looked back and there was an old man staring back at her. She said she screamed and covered her face. She sat in that driveway laying on the horn until my dad finally ran out and got her. She was so terrified. From that day forward, she would call home before arriving, and someone would have to wait out front for her.


The day we left that house to move to Florida was one of the hardest days of my life. The house was part of the family and whatever shared the dwelling with us had grown on us over the years. I had just walked out the front door and noticed a piece of the lawn was stuck up rather odd. It was like it had grown over the sidewalk and could easily be lifted. I kicked it with my foot and it moved to reveal something white underneath. I picked it up and turned the paper over in my hands. On it was an old black and white picture of a young family. A man, a woman, and three children. I don't know where it came from or who it was but it was there all the same. I took it as whoever was in that house saying their goodbyes!





I think people want to believe in ghosts. We want to believe that this life isn't all there is. Only 70,80, or 90 years? It hardly seems long enough to do all you have to do. We want to believe there is a way that our spirit survives. A way that we can still watch our loved ones. Look out for them and care for them. We want to think that an imprint will be left of us on this earth. It is human nature.

Speaking of human nature and ghosts and stuff...I have to share this story before I sign off for the day!

My son was born a year and 3 weeks after my cousin died. I felt in my heart that my cousin had sent him to me but it was nothing more than wishful thinking on my part. When my son was about 18 months he started talking to some unknown person. Someone we couldn't see or hear but he would carry on conversations for hours. I thought how nice he had an imaginary friend. Ever day he would "play" with his imaginary friend that night he would wake with night terrors. If you have ever experienced night terrors you know their name does not do them justice. For around 30 minutes my son would scream like he was being tortured. He would cringe and wither almost in pain. I was terrified by them. I would take him to the doctors, the hospital, even my priest to try and get answers. Everyone said he would eventually grow out of it, which thankfully he did. Then one day we were going through some old family photos, when my son picked one up and loudly called out my cousins name. I don't know how he knew that. He NEVER had seen his picture before (like I said I was extremely angry with my cousin and didn't speak about him or have his picture out) and certainly wouldn't have known who he was. My son continued "talking" to my cousin until he was about 3 and then it stopped. I'd ask my son where he went and all he would say is "I don't need him anymore, I'm a big boy."

Maybe the spirit does live on. Maybe we still love and cherish our family, no matter what impediments are placed upon us, even death! I don't fear death anymore, I used to, but not anymore. As the great Albus Dumbledore (better JK Rowling) once said "To the well organized mind, death is but the next great adventure."