We usually get some type of activity when we do home repairs or remodeling. Nothing scary, just someone letting us know he’s still around. We bought the house from a widow. I don’t know if her husband was in the house when he died.
The incidents are too numerous to mention, mostly little things. One not so little thing that made me realize I had nothing to fear from hour housemate:
I was about 8 months pregnant, and at home alone. We had just changed our guest bedroom into a nursery, and my husband had dismantled the guest bed and stored it in the attic. Our attic is very small and only a portion has flooring. It’s also not very well lit. For some reason, I just had to go up to the attic to look for something. We have the pull down ladder thing. So when you’re in the attic, you have a small section of floor with a huge opening in the center. It’s tricky even if you’re not 8 months pregnant. I found what I was looking for and headed towards the opening. I didn’t see the bedrails that were lying on the floor next to the opening. I tripped and started falling through the opening. My cat was below, looking up and I remember the startled look on her face. Then I just stopped falling as if I had been caught. Then I became aware of the ladder rung under my feet, and was able to climb down the rest of the way before collapsing into a shaking, crying heap.
The Springer Opera House in Columbus is said to be haunted, and I have had several things happen that made me believe it. This didn’t happen to me, but to an actor I know during the run of a show before my time there. At that time the stairs to the upstairs dressing rooms led up from the green room and were painted wood. He was coming down the stairs one night, hurrying to make his entrance, when his heel caught on one of the planks. He knew he was going to fall and was trying to figure out how he was going down so he could take the impact as lightly as possible. He swears something caught him and put his foot back on the step.
My ‘birth house’ as it were was originally built in 1885 by my g’great grandfather, along with 2 others [one for him, and one each for each child. we lived in what was his house before it became my great Aunt Bessie’s house. Blame her for one of the more noted of the child stealing ‘christian childrens fund’ scams. One of my hot buttons is essentially taking away children and packing them into ‘boarding schoo;s’ to christianize them from their own perfectly good religions.]
Right after my parents were married, my father still did a lot of time away from home, and my mother felt uncomfortable with live in servants so neither maid lived in the house with her. She had gone to dinner with my Grandparents and one of my uncles and had come home to find every single light in the house [including basement and locked attic] turned on. It took my uncle and the police about half an hour to search the house, and involved getting one of the cops to pick the lock on the attic door because the key was on my father’s keyring.
Back in the day, my g’grandfather had his ‘personal suite’ in the attic, a full bathroom, a dressing room with huge walk in closet and a very large office [about half the size of the house footprint, about 30x40 feet with a huge window seat the size of a tein bed and 4 beautiful dormers each large enough to fit a twin bed. It was not uncommon to seat footsteps starting in the bathroom, walking down the short 20 foot hallway, and into the big room, and a few minutes later walking back again, with the sound of both bathroom and big room doors opening and closing. Lights would also be found turned on [pull chain lights as my parents never really modernized the attic other than installing a few pull chain light fixtures to more or less replace the gas wall lamps that were there.]
Oddly enough, I had the typical imaginary playfriend when i was about 3 or 4 years old. It also fit the physical description of my very long dead g’grandfather. Of whom I had never seen a picture, the only portrait of whom was at the time down in florida at my grandparents house. I was the only person who could sleep in the attic peacefully, with no odd disturbances.
I have never been into the basement of this house. When I was still an infant, my mother tried to carry me down with her to get some canned goods and i pitched such a screaming and flailing around fit that she stopped on the 4th or 5th step down and took me back upstairs, where I stopped my fit of pique. After this repeated for the next few months any time she tried to take me into the basement she gave up. As an adult of 17, I was house sitting for the people who bought it from my parents, and made an effort to go into the basement and found myself so full of horror at the thought of going downstairs, i was almost physically nauseous to the point of vomiting. I can not even look into the windows from outside. My mother never tried to make me go into the basement when I was housebroken and coherent and walking under my own power, nor was i forbidden to go down, I simply never seemed to have the desire to go down. I asked my mom why I couldnt go into the basement and she said that she had no clue, but i gave her such problems with it as an infant she never bothered to try to get me to do anything with the basement as a child. My brother has no problems with the basement, but categorically refuses to even discuss the attic.
I also have something that playfully likes to make things vanish and reappear. I have had my car keys vanish, and the whole house turned inside out looking for them, only to find them safely clipped back to my purse. I always clip them to my purse with a carabinier, and it is always the first place I look for my keys. We have had other things go missing like that, mrAru always puts his pocket crap in a container on the dresser, and his wallet will be missing, we tear the place apart and suddenly it is back on the dresser.