My House

I hope you find this interesting. I believe in ghosts, and the house where I grew up is/was "haunted", or at the very least inhabited, perhaps not by a malevolent spirit, but by a presence nonetheless. The house is over a hundred years old, but I have been unable to find out if anything happened in the house that could explain any of these occurrences, or even if something happened there before the house was built.

Most of the occurrences happened to either myself of my half-sister Jennifer, who is about 14 years older than me. We are both also very similarly tempered: very sensitive and high-strung. However, because
she is so much older than I, and because she moved out when I was still relatively young, I did not discover until much later that she had several strange experiences too.

My first major experience occurred when I was about 12 (I am now 22, and I know that seems like I was too young to really remember anything, but I can picture every detail of that night even now, and I KNOW beyond a doubt that all of this happened to me exactly as I am about to describe it). Now, when I was young, I was afraid of the
dark (as are most small children); however, by the time I was 10, I decided I was much too old for that sort of thing and had gotten over that fear.

We were having a birthday party at my home for my small niece, Brianna, who was about 3 at the time. There were quite a few party guests, as I have a large family, and after we had all eaten our cake and ice-cream all of the adults sat around and talked about things that I found very dull, and all of the younger children began playing and/or quarreling, so I decided to go upstairs and call my best friend at the time, Amy (rude of me to leave my own niece's
party, I know, but I was a bratty pre-teen at the time). I informed my mother that I was going upstairs and asked her to let me know when it was time for Brianna to open all of her birthday presents, as the family would gather to watch her unwrap her gifts. I headed upstairs and went into my parents' room, since at the time their bedroom was the only one that had a phone in it. I lay down on the bed and called Amy, and we had been chatting for about 15 minutes when I heard someone coming up the stairs, then down the hallway. I assumed that it was someone coming to summon me back downstairs, and I called out, "Is it time for Brianna to open presents?" There was no answer, and I heard the person continue down the hall past the room I was in. Now, the way the upstairs floor in that house is laid out, the stairs come up at one end of the hallway, with two rooms branching off at that end, then in the middle of the hallway there are two rooms, one on each side of the hall, and then down at the other end there is one room and across from that is the bathroom.

I distinctly heard whomever it was come up the stairs, then continue past the room that I was in and enter into the bathroom at the end of the hall and turn on the light; the light switch in the bathroom was an old-fashioned one that actually required a small effort to toggle it on or off, and when you did so there was an audible click. Well, obviously, as there was no answer to my question, I asked Amy to hold on, and called out again, "Hey, is Brianna opening her presents?" There was still no response, and suddenly I was overcome by a strange sense of fear, although I had previously just assumed it was someone who had come upstairs to use the bathroom, in which case I had no
reason to be afraid. Nevertheless, the frightened feeling was so strong that I said to my friend in a shaky voice, "Amy, I'll have to call you back; something weird is going on." She could tell that something was wrong, and told me to be careful, and then I hung up the phone.

The whole time this was happening, I could hear somebody moving around in the bathroom, footsteps, objects being moved, water running, etc. By this time I was thoroughly afraid, although the logical part of mybrain was telling me that I had absolutely nothing to fear, and that it was just someone who had really had to use the bathroom. I stepped
out of my parents' bedroom, and slowly began walking down the hall towards the bathroom (even now, I'm surprised I didn't turn and run the opposite direction, downstairs and AWAY from whatever was there, but I was still convinced that there had to be SOMEONE there and I could ask them about the birthday party going on downstairs). As I
slowly made my way towards the bathroom, I could still hear shuffling and movements emanating from the room, and I asked once again "Is Brianna opening presents?" Still no answer, and I continued to have that strange sense of fear.

By this time, I had grown very nervous, and I in my mind had decided that it was one of siblings trying to frighten me (though I didn't feel as though this was the case). I called out, "All right, all right, you scared me, you got me, but
PLEASE don't jump out at me!" since this was a "joke" that we all used to play on each other. About this time I reached the doorway to the bathroom, and as I turned to face the opening and look into the room, all of the noises ceased immediately. The light was out, and there was nobody in the room. As I stood gaping into the empty room, I heard someone else coming up the stairs. I glanced over, and it was my brother-in-law at the time, Brian. He approached and said "Brianna is about to open her presents; we're just waiting for you," then turned and started back downstairs.

Wanting to confirm my suspicions, I asked him if someone else had come upstairs to use the bathroom, and shouldn't we wait for them? He responded, "No, everybody's downstairs ready; there's nobody up here." The second major event happened about 2 years later. My brother James and sister Arlove were sitting in my room on my queen-size bed, along with our friends Chris and Jenny. We were all talking and just "hanging out" when we heard someone knock on my bedroom door. I called out "Come in!" but there was no response. I assumed it was my little sister Jessi and that she perhaps had something in her hands and couldn't turn the doorknob, so I went over and opened the door: there was no one there. I stepped out into the hallway and looked around, but didn't see anyone, although I heard my mother vacuuming downstairs, so we knew it couldn't have been her. I went back into the room, and we all began talking again, just thinking that someone had bumped the headboard or something and made a knocking noise. A few minutes later, though, it happened again. This time I called out, "Jess, cut it out!" but even as I said it, I remembered that she was spending the night at my grandmother's house, and wasn't even home.

Arlove confirmed this, and we all began to get worried. The next time it happened, Jenny started crying and wanted to leave, so Arlove agreed to take her home. They exited the room and went downstairs, and we heard the back door downstairs bang shut, so we knew they had eft the house. Well, even though we were all creeped out, we wanted there to be a logical explanation, so the three of us that remained, Chris, James, and myself, all decided that it was one of us, playing a trick on the others. (This was not really a well-founded assumption, as all of us,
especially my brother and I, took the topic of ghosts very seriously, and would NOT have kept the joke up for that long without admitting to it.) The three of us sat down in the middle of the bed, hand and feet in plain site of everyone else, and swore that it was none of us making the noise, then we sat quietly and waited for it to happen again. It did, and I decided that the next time, we would be ready. I had my brother (because he was the only one brave enough) go over and stand behind the door with his hand on the knob. When the rapping came again, he flung the door open, mid-knock! Nothing. Absolutely nothing. We high-tailed it downstairs after that. There were other, less momentous events.

For example, one day my mother, the nonbeliever, and I were the only ones home, and we were doing the dishes in the kitchen, listening to the radio. When we finished, we shut the radio off and went into the living room to relax
and talk. This radio, I must explain, was an old model, and instead of a volume dial or an On/Off button, it had a tab that you slid to Off, Radio, or Tape, and it would click at each setting. Well, we were sure that we had switched the radio off because there was no sound from it as we walked out of the kitchen and through the dining room into the living room, but as we were sitting down, we heard some static and then an old song from where we had just come. We went back out, and sure enough, the radio was back on. Switching it off again,we went back out to the living room and sat down, but as we began talking, we heard the same song come on yet again. By this time, I was starting to get spooked, and even my skeptical mother decided there was something weird going on. Back into the kitchen we went, only this time, my mother unplugged the radio before we left, yet when we returned to the living room, we heard static coming from the kitchen behind us. The sound lasted only a few seconds before finally
stopping for good.

My mother tried to laugh the experience off, but I wish I had paid more attention to what song was playing on the radio, as perhaps it would have provided a clue. There was also a spot in my room that was emotionally overwhelming for me. That might not make a whole lot of sense, but that's the only way I can think to describe it. The rest of my room was fine, but there was a specific place where I could sit at the edge of my bed that, if I would just sit still for a minute, I would be overcome with a deep feeling of sadness and depression. I could hear, as though they were muffled, voices fighting: a man and a woman angry and upset and screaming at each other, but I could never quite make out the words, though the tones and emotions were evident.

There was also a specific type of incident that happened to me quite a few times: as I would be lying on my bed, falling asleep, I would suddenly realized that I could not move, speak, or breathe, and it would take all of my effort and will-power to force my body to inhale, after which things would return to normal. I knew I was not dreaming
when this happened, however, because several times people were having a conversation in other rooms or areas of the house, and I would be able to tell them what was said or what was going on while I had been lying there, so I knew that I couldn't have been asleep. The most frightening of these incidents occurred when, one Sunday afternoon, I laid down to take a nap before dinner. As I was lying there with my eyes closed, I heard what I thought was my father coming into my room. I assumed he was coming to summon me to dinner, and I tried to tell him that I was awake and coming when I realized that I couldn't move. I heard him come over to my bed, and sense him crouching down slightly, then I heard him murmur my name. I was still unable to speak or open my eyes, though for some reason this just frustrated, rather than frightened, me. He said my name again, and I finally forced myself to open my eyes to look at him, except, there was no onethere!

Shocked, I sat up in bed and looked around, and there was no one in my room. At that point, my mother called up the stairs that it was time to eat; I met no one on my way downstairs, and when I reached the dining room my siblings were all sitting at the dinner table, and my parents were in the kitchen bringing the dishes out to the table.
Years later, I spoke of these events to my sister, Jennifer, who had moved out of the house when I was still small, and she told me of some similar incidents that she had experienced. The first occurred around age 14, right after she had returned home from a church activity, feeling very spiritually elated. She went up to her room to go to
sleep, but instead laid on her bed, eyes closed, and thought about everything that had happened. Suddenly, she was overcome by fear and a feeling that something was very wrong. Trying to get up, she found she couldn't move, and then felt a huge pressure on her chest, like someone was sitting on top of her, holding her down. Unable to move
or breathe, she felt a great hatred emitting from the presence sitting on her chest. For what seemed like an eternity, she sat there frozen, until she remembered hearing that in instances like this, you were supposed to say a prayer. She couldn't speak, but in her mind she asked God to help her, and then thought of the quote from the Bible:
"Get thee behind me Satan!" As soon as she had recited this, the presence departed, and she leapt up from the bed and ran into my parents' room where they were in bed.

Sobbing, she recounted the event, and my father rushed into her room, but there was nothing in there. She was so upset that she spent the night in my parents' bed, sleeping next to my mother (her step-mother, whom she frequently
fought with at the time) while my father slept on the couch.

Another episode took place around the same time when Jennifer was a young teenager, and my sister Arlove and I were about 3 and 4. Jennifer was upstairs in her room, doing her homework, when she heard a small child crying. We have an extensive heating duct system throughout our house, and noises echo up through the vents, which is
where the crying was coming from. Assuming it was either Arlove or myself, Jennifer came downstairs to try to comfort us, but was unable to find anyone. She searched the rooms and found nothing, whereupon she remembered that my mother had left to go shopping over an hour ago, and had taken both of the children with her. Through all of this, my brother James was the one with whom I discussed these events, and he told me of an experience that he once had.

He had gotten up early on Saturday morning, and had come downstairs to play with the dog, Toby, before anyone else had awoken. Toby and he were roughhousing and playing tug-o-war with the dog toys when suddenly Toby stopped and whipped around to face the stairs leading up to the second floor. All of the dog's fur stood on end,
and Toby glared intently at the to of the stairs, then slowly moved his gaze down the stairs and across the living room, as though following something that he could see but James could not. James said that he decided that it was much too early to be up by himself and scrambled upstairs and back into bed! I do not know where any of these events originated, or what may have happened to cause all of this. So far, as I said, I have been unable to find out any sort of history of the house or of the surrounding area. When my parents bought the house, they were informed that the previous owner had practiced witchcraft on the premises, but other than that, I have no information. Since I have moved out, things have apparently quieted down there, but I know that I did not imagine any of the things that happened to me, and as of right now, I still have no logical, natural explanation for these events.

By: isis82@gmail.com