Some Ghostly Stories.....since I brought it up last week.
I lived in a haunted house. There, I said it.
My Aunt owned this home. She gave me a great break of only $200/month rent plus utilities. It was in a fine neighborhood and close to work for me. Why wouldn’t I take it?
The rent alone was a steal. I had just moved out of a place that my sister and I had lived in together, but she had just gotten married, so I was living alone for the first time.
With rent costs like that, I could do it. I had always had roommates, so this was exciting to me to have this house and live alone for the first time.
It had 2 bedrooms, a kitchen, a dining room, a living room, a bathroom, a sunroom, and a room off the living room that went upstairs to an attic-type room. I used that room to store my holiday items and bikes, etc. There was also a back deck and a real attic off the kitchen for the entire house.
I would go to work and come home, and sometimes find things in different places or different positions than how I left them. As I have said before, I am anal retentive. I like everything in its place, and I notice everything when it’s moved.
I came home one day, and the photos on the top of my dining room buffet were all as I had left them, except my one sister’s photo. It was faced down. I picked it up. This happened several times, and I figured I just needed a new frame because the thingy in the back was unable to prop the frame up. I bought a new frame and inserted my sister’s picture. A week or so later, it was faced down again. None of the others was ever moved.
I came home to find the flowers in the middle of my dining room table had moved a bit to the left. It felt creepy. I shouted something, fearing someone was in my house. I called my Aunt and asked if she had been in the house. I told her I didn’t mind, but I would prefer she let me know because I was scared. Normally, when she has come into my home, I can “smell” that she’s been in there, because the woman was never without a cigarette hanging from her mouth. She laughed and said she would never go in without telling me, and I probably moved the flowers and didn’t even realize it, or I forgot. I wanted to believe her, so I let it go. But I knew I had not moved them. I would NEVER put them off set like this.
In my small hall bathroom, the sink was very close to the hall door. I could brush my teeth and stick my left foot into the hall. That's close. While brushing my teeth, it always felt like someone was either behind me or walking down the hall. I felt it.
When it felt like someone was behind me, I would lift my head up quickly and look in the mirror above me, thinking I would see someone there. Never saw anyone. But oh, how you could feel it. One day, while my head was down in the sink brushing, I felt like someone had walked by me in the hall. I felt that a lot, too, when showering. I lifted my head again quickly to look into the hall, and of course, there was no one. But I felt it all the time. When showering, I would swear I’d hear footsteps down the hall, and I would quickly snap back the shower curtain, and of course, no one was there.
I saw someone at the foot of my bed a couple of times. A man and a woman. Something woke me up, and I sat upright quickly and screamed at them to leave me alone, and they would dissipate. Now I’m awake with every light on in the house, unable to fall back asleep.
The things that happened didn’t happen every day. I guess it would be more accurate to say that I didn’t notice them every day. I did notice over time that certain times of the year they were quite active.
A friend of mine was visiting, and we were in the living room on a Friday night. We got together after work to just sit at my house and “chill”. We had a pizza delivered, and we cracked open a bottle of wine, put on some music, and were talking about our weeks. She was telling me about this guy she had just met and then stopped and said, “Those people who live upstairs sure are making a racket.” To which I replied, “Connie, I live on the top floor.” The color drained from her face. She said, “I always thought you were full of shit about this ghost stuff.” She began to gather her stuff. She said, “Peggy, I can’t stay. This is freaking me out.” It will stop in a couple of minutes. As I said, it indeed stopped. She said, “Ah, I’m going home,” and she left. The noise did not start again.
She and I had always lived in apartments where someone lived above us. But not this time. My house was a flat. That is what they were called there anyway. Think of a duplex, but instead of side by side, it was on top of one another. My Aunt “lived” in the one below. I say “lived” because all of her things were there, including her office, which she worked out of, but she was always at her friend Mary’s home, and she slept there 99% of the time. This was before people were comfortable “coming out.” We all knew, but we left it alone.
I was indeed on the top floor. The noise was coming from the room off the living room where I stored my holiday items, like Christmas lights etc. It sounded like people were throwing boxes down the stairs and running around.
I didn’t live there long before I was transferred out of town for a career move.
Rick was my friend whom I had just met 2 weeks prior. He loved my apartment with all its windows and great light. Since his lease was running out, he asked if my place had been rented yet. I told him no, and my Aunt would be thrilled to have a man above her since she was a single lady. I just knew she would tell him it made her feel safer. I never once told him any of the things that I felt in my apartment. I didn’t know him well yet, and I really didn’t want him to think I was crazy.
He could figure that out on his own later.
As expected, my Aunt was thrilled that he wanted to move in, and she didn’t have to go through the whole process of looking for someone. She did raise his rent to $250.00, which was a joke. Rick couldn’t believe his luck and told her he’d mow the lawn and handle snow removal since she did that. So both parties were thrilled to be living there.
He moved in as I moved out, and a month or so later, he called me in Ohio and said, “What the hell is with this apartment?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, there are some strange things that go on here. Did any of this stuff happen to you?”
He began to share some stories – all of which I had experienced. We ended with the bathroom scenario, where it felt like someone was walking down the hall or standing behind you while you were brushing your teeth.
He worked a lot, so he wasn’t there much. But when he was, he felt something or saw something, but it didn’t make him want to leave. He had just wished I had told him before I left. How do you tell someone you’ve just met – “Hey, I think I live in a house with a few others….ya just can’t seem ‘em.” He would have run for the hills, thinking I was a nut job.
(he learned that later on his own)
If you’ve been reading here for a while, you know that I ended up back there with him a few years later, after my company was bought out and I lost my job. By this time, my Aunt was full-blown living at Mary’s, but kept this house as her home for others to keep up the facade.
I didn’t tell a soul. I have known Mary since I was a wee little thing. Mary cooked, and my Aunt didn’t, she would say. My Aunt said she didn’t like being alone in the house so she just stayed at Mary’s. Sad that she felt she had to do that.
But the point was I no longer had anyone to blame for things missing, moved, or hearing footsteps, etc. If she wasn’t here, who the hell was making this noise? Or moving stuff?
The house was old but full of great charm. Big moldings and wood floors. Since I had been downsized at this point Rick and I had decided to stay to save some money before we moved on to buy something. (I had just started a business) So we stayed, and so did our “guests.”
Here are a few things that have happened while we lived there.
• My youngest sister had had a fight with my parents. She was still in high school. She asked if she could come to stay with us for a few days. I talked to my mom and dad, unbeknownst to her, and asked them if it would be okay. Of course, it was, and I kept them informed of what was going on. One day, while in the shower, she swore she heard someone walking down the hall (yep, I know that one!) and she yelled out for either Rick or me. She thought we were both at work. When she got out of the shower, she called me at work and asked if I had come to the house and left. I said, “No, why?” She said I will call Rick then. She asked Rick if he had come home, and he said, “No, why did you hear something?” She called me back and begged me to come get her to go home. She was completely freaked out. So she ran home and apologized to my parents and couldn’t wait to get to her room and be ALONE.
• One night, when I was living with Rick, the same thing happened to me as when I lived alone. I woke up and saw these 2 people at the foot of the bed. I could see them, describe their clothes, yet see through them and not really see a face. I screamed at them to leave me alone and go towards the light. (someone told me to do that) I kept repeating, “LEAVE ME ALONE” They dissipated. But I woke Rick up, who was now saying, “I’m not touching you!” Which is pretty damn funny now.
• We would get these horrific pockets of a smell. To me, it was like rotting fish. It was so gross. It would be between the hall by the bathroom and into that entrance to the dining room. You could put your head in it and out of it. The smell was just foul. We were having a bunch of people over for dinner, and the smell arrived. We never knew when it was going to be there. I was setting the table and bitching, “Oh yea now you show up when company is coming. Please give us a break and go away.” It would remain, and then just before they arrived, viola it was gone. This happened a lot. This would show up and be gone just like it arrived, with no notice. It always varied in length, but always smelled just horrible.
• One night, I had a girlfriend visiting while Rick was out with his buddies. We were in the living room talking and having a couple of cocktails. My friend and I were sitting on the L-shaped sofa facing the entertainment center, watching something on television. To the left of the TV was a rocking chair in front of a window with draperies. All of a sudden, the rocking chair moved forward as did the drapes, and then slowly back in its position. As though someone had gotten up, and the wind outside made the drapes move. She and I both saw it and freaked out. There was no wind outside, and even if there was, the window was closed. But I saw the look on my friend's face. I immediately lied and said, “You know how bad these old windows are, look at us with blankets over us, this house is old and drafty”. She didn’t buy it. She was uneasy after that and didn’t stay a lot longer.
• One day, when my niece was about 3-4 years old, I was taking her to the beach. It was cooler than I thought, so after I picked her up, I went back to my place to grab a jacket. I picked her up from her car seat and said we were going to go inside to get a jacket, so I didn’t get cold. She said, I don’t want to go into your house. By this time, we are inside the door and about to walk up the stairs. She grabbed me and asked to be held. She held both sides of my face in her chubby little hands and said, “Aunt Peggy, I do not like those people who live with you.”
I got shivers. I told her no one lived with me but Rick. She said no, those other people. I told her I would not let her down; she could stay in my arms. So we went inside, and I grabbed my coat. She said, “I can get down now because they are not here.” She continued to look around corners, and I never said a thing. Wow. Out of the mouths of babes, huh? That really creeped me out, though. She had no prejudice on the topic. She had no preconceived notion of the topic. She floored me that day.
• We had this sticky stuff that would ooze from the bathroom walls and ceiling. It was sticky. It looked like honey. I asked my Aunt if there were bees in the attic, and if an exterminator would come and take a look. The exterminator found nothing. Rick and I decided to gut that bathroom. Since we were living there dirt cheap and it was helping us save for a house, we decided, as long as we were there, let’s make it nice. So we had that bathroom down to the studs. We put in new lights, new drywall, fixtures, etc., and painted. We thought for sure that would stop whatever it was that oozed now. I mean, we were down to studs, nothing was there. Some told us it was lead paint, and that was the cause. After the remodel, we painted, so that shouldn’t be an issue. Within the first week of using our new bathroom, it was like that again. We just gave up. There was no explaining it. So I just was forever cleaning it up – even off the ceiling.
• When we got to the dining and living room portion of the updating we ripped up the carpeting and found beautiful hardwoods that we refinished. They were gorgeous. But the paint on the walls was buckling and blistering. We decided to pay a professional painter to redo the paint in the dining room and the living room. We sanded and stained the floors.
Within a couple of days, the paint started to blister. The blisterings were big areas the size of a dinner plate all over. We called the painter back 3 times to fix and he would do it again. Finally, he asked us quietly, as though he didn’t want to say this too loudly, “Do you have poltergeists?” We said, “We think so,” which was the first time we admitted this out loud to anyone. He said that is the only time I have ever seen this happen. I can’t come back and fix this again for free. So when it blistered and buckled, we left it.
• One glorious early summer evening Rick and I were sitting in our sun room on the sofa.
We had finished a bottle of wine, and as sometimes would happen, my hands began to swell. I took off my wedding band and tossed it on the coffee table. It spun around and fell onto the area rug. I didn’t grab it just then because Rick was making me an offer I couldn’t refuse. He had already grabbed my hand, and as I got up, I went from the sofa to get my ring, and he said, “It’ll be there later,” and off to our room we went.
First thing the next morning, I went to get my ring. My ring was not there. I went crazy looking for it. He and I tore apart this room. We took out the area rug and shook it in the living room. We moved all the furniture, and we removed all cushions and put our hands down all the corners and crevices of the chairs and sofa. No Ring. I was sick about this. I saw it land on the area rug and stop against the corner leg of the coffee table. Where did it go?
A year later, Rick had to fix the chair in the sunroom because a spring was popping through its seat. He took it apart, repaired the springs, and put it back together again. Then, when one of my sisters was moving out, they were looking for hand-me-downs and I told her she could have Rick’s old furniture that we kept in the sunroom. I, of course, wanted to vacuum under the cushions and give it to her in the best way I could. As I went to lift the cushion, there it was, my gold wedding band, sitting right smack at the tip of the front of the chair. (across the room from the sofa)
Do you know how many times we looked there? For 1.5 years! When Rick took off the fabric and fixed the chair, it wasn’t there. How did it get there? Rhetorical because there is no logic to this.
• One day at work, someone had dropped off a copy of a book they wanted to be added to a gift basket for their friend. (I owned a cookie company) Their friend's mom had just died. While this woman had sent flowers, she wanted this basket of goodies along with the book to arrive a few weeks later, while she would be out of town. She wanted to show her friend she was still thinking of her. She wanted something not depressing, and a cookie basket with coffee, etc., was exactly what she had in mind.
I looked at the book after she left and thought it sounded fascinating. I really wanted to read it, and yet I knew I couldn’t open and bend the binding and make it look like it had been read. But one afternoon, I did it anyway. I barely opened it, and I read it ever so carefully. It was about a cardiologist who didn’t believe in God. He also didn’t believe in an afterlife or a near-death experience. Then as time went on, so did the number of stories that he couldn’t explain. He had a blind patient who died on the table, and they brought her back to life. She would retell him the story of what was said and what she SAW. Yes, a blind woman who laughed that they were all teasing the doctor about his blue and brown socks. How could she possibly know the color of the socks? It was only mentioned that he must have gotten dressed in the dark. Then it began with children. All spoke about peace and such a warm feeling of immense love. Whatever you believe, this book was a fascinating read. I finished it and told Rick I really want to read his 1st book. He came from a different point than most because he was such a non-believer, and I found it so interesting.
Fast forward 2 days. I wanted to make a quiche. But since moving in with Rick, I put all my boxes at the very edge of the steps of the attic. The real attic. The attic that was off the back of the house. You went up the stairs, and it opened on your right. There was nothing in there but a big chest at the end against the wall. I never went too far into this attic because, like the basement, I got the creeps. It felt like there were a lot of people here that I couldn't see.
Unlike the basement, this was not scary in the traditional sense, like cobwebs and wires, etc. It was a clean, empty room. I put my boxes right on the edge by the steps so I wouldn’t have to go all the way. I faced the boxes with the contents written on them toward the step so I could grab things and run. And I mean RUN. So this day I went up to get my quiche dish from one of my boxes. I had just been up there a week or so ago and saw that box right at the top, so it was going to be easy to get. As I got up there, I found a book sitting on top of the box with the quiche dish. I picked it up, and it was the 1st book of that cardiologist that I had wanted to read. It was from a library in a city I had never been. I ran so fast down the steps I twisted my ankle. I was screaming, so Rick came running. I just threw the book at him because I couldn’t even speak. He looked at me, and we both had no explanation. I wouldn’t go back up there to get my quiche dish or ever again for that matter.
I called everyone I knew. I asked my aunt if she had been to this city’s library, and she laughed at me. She didn’t even like to read, let alone go to this city to get a book. I still have that book, by the way. A little girl's photo is in the book. It looks like it was taken in the late 60’s or 70’s. I have no explanation for this at all.
I asked my Aunt for the 100th time about all the people who lived there. Only one was a non-relative and it was a good friend of hers, and she told me she would ask. Of course, her friend called and told me it was not her book, and she had never even been to this city before. Great, now how do I explain that one?
• And this one I’ll close with. We had an L-shaped sofa. It was a snowy Saturday, and Rick was taking a nap at one end of the sofa. I was knitting and watching TV way on the opposite end. I was sitting on the edge of the seat to be near the TV to hear it. I didn’t want it too loud due to him napping. He woke up and was stretching, and I said, “Hey, sleepyhead, did you have a good nap?” He at first smiled, then coiled his legs up to his chest, and he began to point at me and gasp for air. I didn’t know what the hell was happening. I thought he was having a heart attack. And then all of a sudden he said, “She was sitting right next to you! Didn’t you see her?” Now I was thinking he was dreaming or still sleeping. I went over to him, sat by him, and asked if he was awake. Oh, he was awake all right. His first thought was, “Why the hell wouldn’t you wake me if we have company?: But then, when he looked at her and realized he could see through her, she looked at him and smiled, and Poof was gone. It all happened so quickly. When I asked him about it, he told me he saw an old woman bent over, sitting smack dab next to me, and she was also looking at the TV.
So there ya go. I was never scared when living there, which I know sounds crazy. Except for one time, and I'll save that for another time. And honestly, I don't know why we weren't afraid of them. I know it sounds ridiculous. I just found them sometimes annoying. They didn’t harm us. They didn’t bug us every day. One day, when leaving, I yelled, “Hey, clean up the kitchen while I’m gone, would ya?” And Rick laughed. There were so many more events.
Fast forward 19 years, and we had just moved back east. We decided to rent a place for a year before we bought a house to be sure of where it was we wanted to live. We came home one Saturday afternoon after a day of errands, and I ran into the house directly to the powder room. As I sat there, I noticed the towels were askew. I came out of the powder room and said to my husband, “The towels are askew – let’s call the landlord and see if he was here.” Of course, Rick laughs at me. “I’m sure they were like already like that,” he says.
“Hello, Rick? Have you just met me? They were not uneven when we left, trust me on this. Or else something weird is happening again, and I just don't wish to go through this another time.”
So we called the landlord, and sure enough, he and his kids did a walk-through without our permission. His son used the bathroom, and hence the uneven towels.
So it wasn’t anyone I couldn’t see doing this, thank goodness. Just a dufus of a landlord that I had to set straight. That our lease states he can’t just come in willy nilly or at the very least leave us a note that he came by, so I am not so freaked out! He couldn’t believe I noticed something so 'minor' as he called it. So being me, I had to tell him the other things too because deflecting and calling it minor pissed me off. I told him that his kids were with him and their dirty hand prints were on the front of the fridge, and how someone had sat on our bed, and you had moved papers on our desk. All of which he now admitted to. I know he thought I was certifiable!
I told you I notice everything!
I know I should probably use this skill set for good or work for the FBI because I truly notice everything. It’s a sickness, unless of course, I got paid for it. I admit I was more uncomfortable with this nosey landlord than the people living with me that I couldn't see.
But I sure didn't want this to be happening again, that was for sure.
We moved shortly thereafter.
