Most people like quick reads; anything over 5 minutes, you don’t have time for. I get that. You’re busy. We’re all busy. Or it’s just too many paragraphs to get to the point of what happened. I get that, too. It’s 2023--we want everything fast with the least amount of effort invested. What’s the quickest way to get to the information you want to read? That’s our goal. I think it’s everyone’s goal. It’s definitely mine for some things, and is the main reason I have zero patience now when looking at a recipe online and I have to read through the history of how cocoa was discovered and its timeline of usage over a few centuries. All of this makes this paragraph oxymoronic, doesn’t it?
My point is, you might want to know about the paranormal activity in my house but don’t want to read an entire blog post, or an entire blog for that matter.
So without further ado, here is a summary of my top favorite moments, since the house was built in 1871. The accounts are real, witnessed by either myself or other family members. They are seemingly far-fetched but they actually happened exactly as described, which is what makes them intriguing.
(To narrow it down to be a favorite, I chose the ones that have the greatest impact such as making your jaw drop or giving you a good old fashioned case of the heebie-jeebies.) I’ve tried to keep them concise. If you want to read them in their entirety (which is highly encouraged), they are all on this blog. There is a search box for keywords to the right.
1. Phantom Car
Experienced by myself and 3 other family members on separate occasions, the phantom car is an incident which has involved the unmistakable sound of a car pulling into the gravel driveway, the sound of car doors closing (and voices following the car doors closing during one of the incidents.) It has also appeared at night in the yard, during which time only the headlights were seen shining in through the windows of the house. It is never a real car. It is not tangible. It is not visible and mostly auditory.
2. Do they Wear Shoes in the Afterlife?
A fairly new pair of red Puma sneakers disappeared from the house while the only two occupants slept in their beds. A search turned up nothing. Many months later, the missing Pumas were discovered in the far end of the walk-in attic in a box. No one knows how they got there. Oh yeah, and they were quite mangled, coming apart at the seams in some places. And they were covered in dirt. The dirt was even inside the shoes. Where were they all those months? What happened to them? Who (or what?) had them? How’d they mysteriously end up in such a weird place in the house? They are still here in the box.
3. Footprints in the Living Room
Carpet
was removed to expose the original hardwood floors. On this one particular day,
the floors were swept and left that way until the next work day. The next
morning, my son and his girlfriend discovered clear, child-sized footprints
across the floor boards. No children lived in or visited the house during this
renovation. The footprints looked wet, but weren’t. They were just “there”. Pictures
are on the blog.
4. The Night Willie Appeared
Willie
was a little boy who lived here and died here in the 1800’s. We used to joke
that maybe he was one of our ghosts, based on mischievous activity over the
years. One night when I was asleep in bed, my door creaked open. For some
reason it woke me up (I guess because when your door creaks open in the middle
of the night in a known-to-be-haunted house, you tend to wake right up) and I saw
a young boy standing in the doorway. Yes, I was 100% awake. No, it wasn’t my
child. Full story is on the blog.
5. An Actual Ghost Walk
Around
the same time Willie made an appearance, I was in my bedroom one night at my
desk. My son, who was about 5 at the time, was asleep in his bed. No one else
was in the upstairs of the house. The sound of someone pacing started right
outside my bedroom door…back and forth from one end of the hallway to the
other. Trust me, if someone is walking on that old creaky floor, you know it.
This went on for a good twenty minutes, at which time I bravely opened my bedroom
door and stepped out into the hall. Full story is--you guessed it-- on the
blog.
6. The Green Mile Books
A
relative loaned my mother the series of Stephen King’s The Green Mile books (6
in total). When she was done reading them, she put a large elastic band around
them to keep them together and shelved them until she could return them to the
owner. Imagine her surprise to discover them one afternoon on the middle of the
dining room floor, no longer held together with the elastic band. They were
spread out in sequence, book 1 to 6 in perfect formation on the floor.
7. The Night Light
When
my son was five, we lived here for awhile. You don’t put your kid to sleep in a
haunted bedroom every night without a nightlight in there. The one I used went
into the wall plug quite snugly and you had to pull pretty hard if you wanted
to remove it. Every night for two weeks the nightlight would be sitting on top
of his dresser when I would check on him before going to bed myself.
8. I’m Not Saying It Was Aliens But…
Ghosts in your house are one thing but I get a lot of raised eyebrows whenever I mention about the “man” that came to the door one day looking for a lift to the gas station. Full story is on the blog.
9. Horror Movie Lights
This
happened recently so if you read my latest blog post, you may remember it. My
son and I, who were talking about ghosts and hauntings in my kitchen,
simultaneously witnessed two lights flickering at lightning speed, horror-movie
style.
(A 10th to round things out nicely):
10. The Hoofprint
Some
years ago in my bedroom, I awoke one morning to find the perfect imprint of a
hoof-shape burned into the carpet. Nothing hot had been dropped on the floor. It
had not been there when I went to bed. Approximately six other people checked it out. No one had an explanation of
what could have caused it. Even stranger, the following day it began to fade.
Within several days it was gone completely.
