I think my house is benignly haunted!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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I think my house (new to me, but about 100 years old) has some kind of stuff goin’ on. I’m very, very skeptical in general about these things, but I’ve noticed that at times I catch some kind of blackish movement in my peripheral vision in certain parts of the house. A few times in the basement I have thought that one of my dogs was standing next to me, then realized that they hadn’t followed me down the stairs :eek:

In a few of the rooms, particularly the basement, I try not to look until the light is on (hard to explain).

I asked my partner yesterday if she thought anything was odd about the house and she confessed that she is uncomfortable being upstairs without me or one of the dogs. Despite the slightly odd sensations I’ve had, I don’t have the same feelings about the house she does and feel that it’s a kind of benign and “kind” house. The former residents who lived here for umpteen years are still alive (they visit my neighbor), so there’s no tragic story I’m aware of.

Whaddya think? Do you have stories of your own to share?

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:dubious:

GET OUT!

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Jennshark, I’ve had the same experiences in my house, too. I think whoever or whatever it is is benign (I mean, the walls haven’t started dripping blood or anything) but… watchful, in a way.

I probably shouldn’t have opened this thread when I’m home alone. :eek: :frowning:

4

I feel funny sometimes in my house too, but I know (to some extent, anyway) that nothing violent or nasty has happened here. I think it’s good ol’ imagination and natural human paranoia. Remember, your brain is wired to go to battle stations at the drop of a hat, and sometimes it’ll drop its own hat.

Don’t worry about it. Or go find a priest or something.

5

I’m actually not worried about it, I just found it unsettling that my partner had noticed something and was uncomfortable. The house feels quite welcoming to me, if a little odd at times.

The doggies don’t seem to sense anything awry (as if they would; they are big, loopy labs who would greet Satan himself with wagging tails :smiley: ).

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You’re right to be skeptical and don’t worry about ghosts; the black things moving at the periphery of your vision are more than likely giant insectoid aliens that dissapear when you look at them. Or it might be something as mundane as a brain tumour or the onset of glaucoma.

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Well, “insectoid aliens” and a brain tumor were naturally my first thinks! :smiley:

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Don’t go see The Exorcisim of Emily Rose. Just don’t, take my word for it.
Oh and if the feelings are benign enough I wouldn’t worry too much. :slight_smile:

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Several years ago I also lived in a “benignly haunted” house. (I like that description, BTW.) Like you mention, I’d notice a movement, usually in the hallway or master bedroom, but I mostly dismissed them as some weird visual phenomenon, akin to seeing spots after walking out of the bright sunlight. However, my stepson (mid-teens at the time) noted the same thing. He and I were at home one evening, the baby was asleep in his crib, and Chris and I both saw the same white “presence” in the hallway. (Stepson and I both did that “blank stare, I’m gonna wait for someone else to acknowledge that first” thing, since we had both been assuming that we were imagining things.) I never felt the least bit threatened by our “haunting,” and was, in fact, comforted by it at least once. (One night after getting the baby back to sleep, I had just laid back down – the last person awake in the house. My hair was pinned up, the hall light was on, and I lay down facing my now-ex-husband and could see him, so there was no physical explanation for the distinct touch of a hand that I felt on the back of my neck… No way that it was my hair touching me, no way that my husband could have touched me without me seeing him do so, etc. At the time this took place, I was newly and deeply grieving a dear friend, so maybe comfort was intended? I don’t know.)

Needless to say, my husband utterly dismissed any notion that our house was haunted… At least until the evening that he and I were laying in the bed watching TV, youngest son napping between us, no one else in the house, and the master bathroom light “clicked” on. Mind you, this light switch didn’t “glide” on or off with little pressure, it required a fair amount of pressure, and there was a definite “click” when it was switched. The skeptical hubby double-checked all of the wiring himself, and then called in an electrician the next day to double-double-check, but there were no problems… except that the light had certainly switched itself on.

Maybe the weirdest thing about our little haunting was its location: Had we lived in one of our city’s large historic districts, I wouldn’t have thought twice about a wee ghostie, but ours was a ranch house on the island, only two decades old. (Mind you, I’ve always sort of “accepted” that there is such a thing as hauntings, since I had grown up in a rural enclave of old family homes and farms that had more than their share of things that went bump in the night. None of them ever scared me, except that I wouldn’t stay upstairs in one of the old farmhouses that belonged to a family member. Years later, I researched the history of the house, and learned that a circuit-riding preacher was murdered in that house… if you can call it “murder.” He was killed during an attempted rape of one of the homeowner’s daughters.) Several years ago, though, I worked in the downtown historic district near where I currently live, in a converted cotton warehouse. The business where I worked was situated on the second and third levels of the old warehouse, and we used the fourth floor for storage. I was sent to the fourth floor for supplies ONCE, and flatly refused to set foot up there again… It was just plain scary, and I don’t consider myself to be a coward! (Any area that lacks air conditioning, yet can still give me a bad case of the chills during a Savannah August, just ain’t normal!)

*I took a phone call in the middle of posting, so on preview: Glaucoma’s right out, and I’m probably under-equipped for a brain tumor! :smiley: *

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The house I live in has “the Lady” who had been here for many years. The house was built for my husbands father, and there has never been a tragedy in the house. (His mom died here, but under the care of hospice so there was no pain, and the “Lady” was here before Mom died.) My husbands first wife refused to stay in the house because of the “Lady” - supposedly the “Lady” did nasty things to her. I have never had any problems with her - sometimes she will walk down the hall when I’m in the tub, but that’s about it. Our great-nephew (at age 5) is the only one to ever have seen her - she gave him a Jack of Clubs from a deck of cards none of us recognized.

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Really, really bad or really, really scary?

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Dammit, I’ve always wanted to live in a haunted house.

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Well, when I moved into my 50+ year old apartment building, there was an incident of pop cans - full pop cans, mind you, sitting at the back of my kitchen counter - being thrown off the counter and onto the floor. I was the only one in the apt. at the time, and there were no breezes or external forces that could have caused it. :eek: Other incidents: Laughter, foot tapping and coughing from the room next to me (yes, I’m sure it wasn’t from another unit - the place is pretty soundproof). The cat will also sometimes stop and stare wildly at things that aren’t there (i.e. there are no insects or light reflections where she’s looking). I also can’t sleep with the bedroom door open at night - I feel like someone’s watching me.

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So long as there are no floating red pig eyes a la Amityville Horror I can deal :eek: )

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Hell, I thought everybody saw the giant insect aliens! (That’s why I bought a cat.)

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I lived in a haunted house for a while when I was growing up. It was an old house that had quite a history to begin with–including being an inn at one point. My mother, though, was convinced that the ghost was Zelda Fitzgerald–the wife of F. Scott. Zelda Fitzgerald died when the insane asylum she lived in caught fire one night, killing several residents. Apparently her doctor owned the house at the time she died, and my mother was convinced that Zelda was looking for her doctor.

There wasn’t anything really scary or startling about it, though. Most of what we noticed were things being moved when no one was looking, and the sounds of someone walking around in the attic (which was a floor of dormers with a sitting area) when everyone who was supposed to be in the house was downstairs. The top floor was a little strange to be in, but never scary, even when I went up there alone.

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I did get a cool story from a psych prof once:
He was spending a vacation at a family friend’s house. It was a full house, lots of people. Of course, he stayed in the haunted room.
When he arrived he was given the choice of a couple of rooms. He could either stay in a guest room that was haunted or sleep on a couch. Of course, he chose the room with the bed and assumed that the owners were just joshing him.
He put his stuff in his room and joined the family to hang out, watch tv, etc. People moved in and out. Not everyone was in his vision at one time.
Later on, he went up to his room and found his stuff strewn about. He didn’t think anything of it because he figured that someone was just messing with him to freak him out. He didn’t say anything because he didn’t want to give someone the satisfaction.
However, after that everyone had congregated to watch Letterman, as was the house tradition. He knew where everyone was from the time he fixed his room to the time he arrived back in it later. His stuff was strewn about again. This required opening his luggage and tossing it about.
He slept on the couch the rest of that vacation.

I’ve heard several freaky stories from psych professors. Maybe I shoulda been one.

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For bait?

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I’ve got two stories but I’ll post the one that I just learned over the summer…

When I was 3 or 4, my parents moved to a new house (new to them). After living there for a couple weeks and settling in, my father cut back the large bushes that grew up all around the front of the house. He also started remodeling the front porch.

At about that same time, they noticed that the the kitchen cabinets would be open in the mornings. Drawers would be pulled out and light items (tupperware and stuff) would be scattered across the floor. They thought that I was getting up in the night and doing it.

One night, after going upstairs, they left the door to their room open, so they could see the top of the stairs and waited. After several hours, in the middle of the night, they heard a noise from downstairs. My father went down to the kitchen to find several of the drawers open and one of the cabinet doors still swinging slightly as it opened. They knew it wasn’t me.

The next day they had a family meeting in the kitchen. My father explained to the house that they bought it because they liked it. That they were only doing a few things to make it even nicer. They were putting new windows in the porch and fixing some of the woodwork that had gotten rotten. And they cut back the bushes to let more light into the windows on the front and so that people passing by could see the house and appreciate it. They didn’t want the house hidden by bushes like the former owners did.

That did the trick. They never had another incident in the two years we lived there.

I only heard about it this past summer because I was talking to my mother about the supernatural and she hinted about some of it and said to ask my dad about the meeting they had with our old house. I had to go to him to get the story and it matched with the hints she had told me. … (They’ve been divorced for 20 years so I don’t think they were conspiring to lie to me.)

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Earthstone, I like your story. Perhaps the house and I will sit down for a little chat!

My mother occasionally does what your parents did. She bought and is remodeling a former School for Female Juvenile Offenders (where orphans, “deviants” and other unwanted girls were sent to languish and often die, 1910-1940s). The former institution has some disturbing reminders of a past when “psychological treatment” meant isolation in the attic and being chained and whipped (there’s some chilling graffitti carved into some of the house’s woodwork). Odd things happen now and then and Mom says she has a little chat with who- or whatever is acting up to tell them that she loves the house and is working hard on it to make it a loving place where bad things will never happen to kids again.

Once in a while I’ve felt uneasy at her place, but it might be because it is absolutely huge and if you were to look in the dictionary under “Haunted Asylum” there would be a picture of the place next to the definition.