I hadn’t planned on adding to this thread, but disturbing events have supervened.
Since we moved into our hundred-year-old house in February, Pluto the watch-spaniel has been keeping guard at night from his pen in the living room. On some nights we can hear him digging at the floor mat in the pen. I am reminded of the agitation of the Labrador in “The Amityville Horror”, which I’ve been trying not to think about, instead ascribing Pluto’s behavior to hearing an animal prowling about the crawl space under the living room - perhaps an intelligent marsupial.
However…
Early this a.m. Mrs. J. reports hearing odd noises downstairs (I am currently away for a couple of days). She cautiously came down the stairs and identified “shuffling” sounds coming from the basement.
Bravely, she opened the basement door and turned on the light switch, but did not see anything suspicious. She did not descend to investigate further.
What could be “shuffling” down there? Hitler’s alligator? Zombies drunk on hand sanitizer??
At last report Mrs. J. had locked herself in the bedroom.
All the basements in our houses have been pretty innocuous, but a couple of friends had very primitive ones. Both houses were Victorian era, and the cellars (I don’t think they actually qualified as basements) were carved out of the rock that they had been built on. The outer walls were still the uneven raw stone, with some of the excavated chunks roughly squared off and mortared into support pillars down the middle. At some point, concrete floors had been poured over the original dirt, but one house still had an old coal furnace converted to an oil burner, with dirt floor where the coal bin had been and the old cast iron coal delivery door in the wall above. Both well-lit and non-scary, although my 6’4" friend’s cellar was low enough that even 5’9" me had to be careful not to knock my head on the overhead floor joists (massive 4x8 solid oak beams!).
My Granny had a root cellar, but the scariest thing there were all the Mason jars of preserves and such where she had re-used the seal and some of the contents seemed to be alive. And watching you.