Who else lives in a haunted house. slightly long.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’m curious, I can’t be the only one living in a haunted house, and its not the first one I’ve been in. I want to hear about others expierences. Hijack away.

Currently I live in a nice double wide in the middle of absolute nowhere. There are ruins from an 1800’s military fort literally 50 feet outside my front door. I’ve been told my trailer is where the old bordello was. That freaked me a little. The first couple of weeks I was here, the nights were very loud, slamming, bangin, creaking and all kinds of noises(no, I wasn’t getting any). My cat was freaking, she spent a lot of time staring at one particular doorway. Lights were randomly on in the morning that were definately off when I went to bed.
The noises went away, the cat calmed and I didn’t think anything much of it, then I talked to my landlords. They lived here for a little bit, as have my 3 closest neighbors, one of which is the daughter of the folks who built the place, who also died in MY bedroom. Seems that they all knew something was happening here, I guess the old lady(I need to find out her first name) is the one that when she was alive had to have every light on in the house. I’ve heard that the light thing has been going on for several years now. The old man(I know his name was Louis) has a thing for women and only bothers them (sadly I haven’t had one here long enough to experiment with). He seems to have something for the landlord who lives next door, the night she came over to offer me her cat, once again it was a very loud night, banging, slamming, footsteps, It tapered off over about 3 days. I feel no bad vibes, like poltergeist, just a couple of old folks hanging out, its almost comforting.

The one cool thing is that I’ve heard that the fort across the way is haunted, and that some nights you can see a lantern light walking through the ruins.

In college I lived in an apartment that was clearly haunted. Lots of footsteps. This happened many times sitting in the living room, we would hear the back bedroom door slam, hear pounding footsteps, that went into one of the front bedrooms, and the door would slam, however this door was in the living room and we saw it slam. A minute would go by and the door would open, and after being slammed it was definitly closed, and big footsteps to the back bedroom and Slam! again.

Back when I was a kid, 3-4-5 years old when I went to sleep I just thought stuff moved around because it was dark. It was mostly toys, so my folks never noticed, but I knew where they were.

So am I nuts, or do you guys out there have some good stories?
There are several more odd things I’ve skipped over, but those are the major ones.

2

Years ago we lived in a house in a little town in Texas. One day while my grandmother was staying with us for a visit we both heard, from different rooms, the front door open and close, footsteps across the hard wood living room floor, and a baby’s cry. Since my wife was due home from work at about that time with our baby, we both walked from our seperate parts of the house to meet them.

Nobody was there.

After that we’d occasionally (maybe twice a year) hear the door and a noise like footsteps from the front room. We joked that we had a boring ghost that only came home from work.

3

Ooooh Oh Ooooh!!! I have been waiting for a post like this.

My parents purchased their first house in 1973, I was two years old. It was located in Brooklyn, New York and at the time of purchase was 150 years old. It was a huge house, by Brooklyn standards. Gigantic rooms, high ceilings, two full “apartments” a finished basement and an attic. My grandmother, my uncle and my sister occupied the top floor. My mother, father and myself on the first. My grandfather in the basement, who had long ago divorced my grandmother on the second floor.

I only recall the various “hauntings” that took place while I was old enough to understand them, there were according to my mother many more. But she refuses to speak about them.

My grandmother was sleeping and late in the night her bedroom light turning on awakened her. She sat up in bed quickly and heard what sounded like a rocking chair on the floor above her, the attic and moaning. Not horror movie moaning, just someone nursing a mild stomachache moaning. She got up to check the attic and when she approached the door to the attic the rocking and moaning stopped. Braver than I would have been, she went up the stairs and asked who was there. She received no response and went back to bed. She claimed it continued through the night, but at that point she was so freaked she never even bothered to check again.

My father, a night owl, had finally gone to bed at 2:00 in the morning. About an hour later he heard a woman repeatedly call his name. “Ronnie…… Ronnie…… Ronnie…… He reached over to my mother thinking she was having a bad dream and was calling out for him. But that was not the case. My grandmother also heard the woman calling my father’s name and according to my mother I also heard it and came out of my bedroom to see what was going on. I do not remember this. We all convened to the living room in my parent’s “apartment” and stood there listening. Finally my father yelled “What do you want?” and it stopped.
My parent’s bedroom was extremely large and they had converted the sun porch that was attached, into my bedroom. There was an archway into that room, no doors, so parental sex was forbidden unless I slept over at grandpa’s (downstairs) or grandma’s (upstairs).

When my sister moved out, I acquired her old bedroom on the second floor, which was at the top of the stairs leading to the second floor. My grandfather had passed away a few years earlier and my other uncle, whom traveled quite frequently as an engineer with NASCAR, had moved in. He was away during my personal experience.

I was sleeping soundly when I heard the door to the basement apartment shut. I figured my uncle was back from his many trips and was doing laundry or something, since the laundry room was adjacent to the basement door. I heard footsteps up the stairs to the first floor, through the hallway, then up the flight of stairs that lead to the second floor. I thought for sure that my uncle had noticed that his collection of Playboy magazines had been riffled through and that he was coming to ream me out.

I pretended to be asleep. The footsteps continued from the landing of the second floor into my bedroom, he paced back and forth in the room a few times and I finally peeked to see what he wanted and no one was there. I pulled the covers over my head and the pacing continued and “he” headed back down the stairs. Little did I know that it would continue for the rest of the night. Up the stairs, pace back and forth in my bedroom four times, then back down. Up the stairs, pace back and forth, down the stairs, etc. This continued for several hours, and I finally passed out from exhaustion.

My mother had a similar experience. She was lying in bed and saw a figure pacing back and forth in the sun porch. She thought she was dreaming and called out “Dad” thinking it was her father. The figure turned and looked directly at her and disappeared. That was the last haunting we experienced in the house.

4

I was only ten when this happened and time has a way of solidifying details. I am not sure anymore how much of it was childhood imagination and what was real.

contents deleted - see below - ub

5

How does a non-corporate being, without mass, having its body long decayed into dust, make stepping sounds?

6

If there are lights, sounds, & your cat is freaking, try ruling out simpler things, rather than indulging in writing your own X Files script.

Like, maybe, teenagers checking out thre allegedly “haunted” fort? With flashlights? And avoiding you because they’re jumpy enough? Your cat won’t like strangers, that’s for sure.

Raccoons, stray dogs, or other vermin may account for the rest.

Or, ask the cops to come out there more often. Could br drug deals going on.

But there ain’t no such thing as “ghosts”!

7

Oh, I have one from when I lived in Taipei Taiwan, right near the graveyard. Our townhouse was haunted. Could always hear someone walking up the stairs to the second floor. The person that lived there before me had a bunch of freaky things happen. Only one I remember clearly was that the balcony porch door slammed shut and locked one day – but there was no wind, there was no key so it became permanently locked, and it coincidentally happened to be the Chinese “grave sweeping day.”

My roommate one night woke up to some guy sitting in a full lotus at the top of the stairs, so my buddie kicked him. Dude in the lotus evaporated.

I went to Tibet on a trip and came back with a whole role of cloth with printed buddhas on them. Also with some tanka or tibetan buddhist scroll paintings (some were really wild “wrathful incarnation” forms). I hung those up around the townhouse and things calmed down.

8

I lived in a haunted house too (make fun if you want, I don’t care).

The house wasn’t particularly old, but weird stuff happened all the time. Shadows would rush past your peripheral vision, voices would whisper your name urgently over your shoulder, and things would move during teh night. Books wouldn’t be beside your bed where you left them, now they are somehwere weird, like the bathtub.

One night I was laying there, trying to sleep, facing the wall when the bedroom door opened behind me. No biggie, I figured it was my dog and the door hadn’t been shut hard, just resting shut. The waterbed began to wave as if the dog had jumped up on the foot of the bed. I rolled over to pet her.

No dog.

9

In a house I lived in a few years ago, my roommate claimed haunting. It was an old house out in the country, and had some strange stuff in the basement, including what looked like a jail cell. I only ever heard things that I could at least reasonably explain in my own mind, but he had a couple good ones. One time he was sitting downstairs watching tv and he started to get irritated because of all the noise I was making in my room upstairs. Heavy-footing across the room and repeatedly dropping things on the floor. He was about to come upstairs and ask me to knock it off- until he realized I was on a trip out of state, and he was alone in the house. At that point he didnt feel like coming upstairs. After a few more minutes of the noise, he heard my door open, then shut. Then footsteps across the hallway, going toward the stairs, then coming down the stairs. They stopped halfway.

Another time, he said he was lying in bed, not really sleepy, when his sheets got dragged to the side, between the bed and the floor. He spent a moment trying to decide if that actually just happened, when something crawled across his chest and and a hand slapped him in the face.

10

Did you write this, too, ArcticCircle?

:confused:

11

I’ve never had experiences with ghosts, but my friends, the brothers TO and DO (their initials) make this claim.

TO & DO’s parents used to live in a farmhouse north of Charlotte NC. TO was going to college at the time, and DO was in high school. TO came down to stay during the summers, but his last summer there was one of the worst few months of his life.

His parents fought constantly, and DO was having problems in school. TO says that he had nightmares every night he spent there. One nightmare he had shook him up the worst of all of them. He had one of those types of nightmares where the subconscious tricks you into thinking you’re awake. He thought he had woken up from a nightmare, and imagined himself in his bed, fully awake. He then saw a creepy old man at the foot of his bed, and that frightened him enough to wake him for real.

Later, their parents split up, and the mom moved into a house in the citu and the sons moved in with her. TO says that he later did research on the farmouse and the surrounding area. The previous owners not only had a family plot close by, but they had an insane daughter they kept in the house in order to keep her far away from everybody else.

Years later, DO asked TO if he ever thought the farmhouse was haunted. TO said yes. DO talked about what he experienced.

He said one night before going to bed, he smoked a cigarette and had 2 left in his pack, which he put on his bedside table. That night he had a dream where he saw an old man at the foot of his bed.

At this point TO feels his skin crawl. He asked DO to describe the old man…and it was the same one he dreamed.

But there’s more…DO said that the old man asked him for a cigarette. DO pointed to his pack and said, “Sure, help yourself.” The old man reached over and took out a cigarette, and lit up. At that point, DO said he felt at peace and that everything was going to be OK. He then went back to sleep.

When he woke up the next morning, he reached over to pick up his pack of cigarettes from the previous night…and found there was only one cigarette.

12

Moderator’s Notes:
**Arctic Circle, pending some concrete evidence that you and the person who has written, or has express permission to reproduce the original story found at Washte’s link, I have removed the contents of your post. Perhaps you didn’t notice the words at the bottom of that page:

The owner of this message board, the Chicago Reader, takes copyright violations very seriously. And even if “your story” weren’t copyrighted, plagiarism is a no-no here, too. Please re-read your membership agreement if there’s any confusion on this point.

And thanks, to Washte for tracking that down. We appreciate the assist.

13

My girlfriend and I (in this case, just a friend that happens to be a girl…) were getting dressed up to go out. We sometimes took pictures of one another after getting all dolled up.

We didn’t actually hear or see anything THAT night, but we had more than one experience with freakiness there. This was the topper…

She got the pictures developed a few days later, and came to my house with them…laughing, but a bit nervously. There was a picture in the stack that neither of us had taken. No one else was in the house, the camera didn’t have a timer.

In the picture, you can easily see that the camera is facing the mirror. You can tell, because the flash is going off. I didn’t see a flash that night and neither did she…The picture was of the two of us, dressed and almost ready to go. I’m facing the mirror, holding my hair up with one hand…other hand at my side. She was putting my necklace on for me, using both hands. See last sentence of above paragraph. There is no logical explanation for the camera to have taken that shot.

Another time, my kids and I spent the night at her house. They had gone to bed and she and I were in her room, getting ready for bed as well. We had been giggling and talking about something when we heard a very soft voice from the living room call out “Mommy!” Exasperated, I went out into the living room to see which child was still awake at midnight and why. No one was there. I went to the room where they were sleeping to see if one of them had run back to bed. They were all completely and totally dead to the world. I even turned on the light. Not one child moved, and 2 of the 4 were snoring loudly.

She and I were once folding a blanket in her bedroom and between us we both heard a whispering sound. Not the sound of fabric, the sound of a voice…The word wasn’t distinctive but we both heard it. We totally freaked out, dropped the blanket and ran into the living room. :slight_smile:

My exhusband swore we had a ghost in a house in GA. He said he saw him several times, dressed in clothing from the late 19th century. Suspenders and work pants. Sometimes a hat I think he said…he was frequently found looking into our refridgerator and I’m told he was very interested in the control switch of our air conditioner. I never saw or heard a thing.

~J

14

Good question. How also, does and “entity” of this nature smoke cigarettes?

Good gawd. It’s amazing how many of these stories involve people sleeping, or dreaming, or at the edge of sleep, or were sleeping but believe they have just awakened. Have you people never heard of Occam’s Razor? Or lucid dreams?

Or science? Shit.

15

My shit rarely goes bump-in-the-night.

Or, sometimes it does. Depends on the meal, though.

SkipMagic’s Spooky Mansion! :wink:

16

UncleBeer, I don’t want to believe in ghosts…the concept ranges from extremely sad for the poor souls to scared for your life (in some stories I’ve heard, ghosts can be very violent.)

Therefore, if you can come up with a way that the camera took that picture, I’d LOVE to hear it.

17

Tell you what, if you can prove that photo was actually taken by a real ghost, there’s $1 million for ya.

18

My best friend and I lived in a very old row house - built around 1935. Mostly original wiring - and the house was located under the major tower for the State Public Television station.

My new TV was nuts in that house. Would turn on and off randomly, volume would suddenly blare or slowly slide to mute. We, both scientists, realized that the freaky combo of TV waves and faulty wiring was at play here. But it was much more romantic to call it George and make up stories about the old ghost who was looking out for us.

After moving, I’ve never had a day’s trouble with that TV.

19

Glad to oblige! :slight_smile:

Many cameras have spring-loaded shutters. The springs closes the shutters rapidly. Usually, these springs are tightened for use by the same mechanism that advances the film–a motor, crank or lever. The button that triggers the shutter is merely a release.

In an older or cheaper camera, & especially in disposable cameras, the catch that is connected to the shutter & button is often weak, worn, broken or easily breakable.

Your shutter button was probably worn smooth, or didn’t “catch” properly. One slight vibration, like a person walking across the room or maybe a central air/heat unit turning on, would trip the shutter, & take a picture.

No biggie.:cool:

PS–I am a photo lab techincian.

20

2 things:

first, my own story (well, my parents really).

gets his flashlight and holds it under his chin

we live in a 400-odd year old wooden farmhouse, and it was haunted for about the first 2 years we lived in it, mainly my parents room. their big double bed was up against what was once the fireplace about 10 foot long. quite a big beastie. anyway, my dad sleeps like a log. you can scream at him and he wont wake up, but my mum sleeps light most of the time. about once a week or so my mum would be woken up by heavy breathing and the duvet getting very cold, followed by the sound of what she believed to be a flint and steel (the jacobean version of the match). i would like to point out now that a lot of the time my dad works away from home, so it wasnt him with the heavy breathing etc. it didnt spook her out that much, but it really annoyed her that she was getting woken up…
anyway, after about 2 years of this, she’d had enough of it and the next time it happened and woke her up she ended up screaming ‘oh for f*ck sake! SOME people are trying to get some sleep around here!!!’. it ceased immediately and never happened again afterwards. i guess my mum has the power to tell off the undead as well as me :eek:

the other thing i have to say is something i’m surprised nobody else has commented on yet…

bubba jr, i believe you may be telekinetic. no, dont laugh. what you seem to be describing is poltergeist behaviour, and poltergeist activity is always linked to one person in a household. i believe that one person is you. that thing of your toys moving around? the person it’s linked to is normally a child. it was basically you doing it, but not you, if you see what i mean. and more recently in your ‘haunted house’? if you learnt any of the history surrounding the place before then your mind made it real… some part of the other 90% of your brain is doing this, rather than the 10% that we use to make us who we are. sceptics amongst you laugh if you must. i’m not a spirtualist, i’m a rationalist. i believe this does have a scientific explanation, but one that we aint likely to find or understand for a long time…