Once upon a time, a long time ago, there lived a little girl and her two sisters.
One day, their parents whisked them all away to a whole other state. A state that had no hills or valleys. Only rows and rows of yellow cornfields and a flatness without end. They moved into a very old house in a very old neighborhood. The house was made of a grey stone far older than anything the girls had ever known.
The main living floor was quite normal: Living room, dining room, kitchen, master bedroom and spare room.
But the staircase... the staircase was like something out of a movie and so amazing to their little eyes. It went up a few steps, turned squarely, then more steps, another square turn and then the last of the steps. They had never seen a staircase like this before!
The second floor was a large dormer that became my sisters' room with an unfinished room off to one side. Now this unfinished room had no real floor and was very dangerous for anyone to walk across. The door was always kept shut. My grandparents came shortly after we moved and my grandfather finished the room and it became mine. And oh, how I loved that little room with it's slanted walls!
Being so young, I'm not sure how long we lived there before it became apparent that the house had ghosts.
In the living room, my mother had hung her cuckcoo clock. Alas, one of the ghosts didn't care for the little birdie that sang out on the hour. Every so often, at night, when the clock struck 3am, the ghost would pull it down from the wall.
Now maybe you're thinking that it just fell on it's own, but see... the clock would always be on the floor on the other side of the room! And in the spare bedroom, there were 3 shelves on the wall above a desk. These shelves "fell" at night, but instead of landing on the desk, as if they'd fallen on their own, they'd be on the floor past the desk.
My mother saw one ghost quite often. She’d catch a glimmer of something passing by the living room or the dining room. Usually, it was a flash of a long white gown.
Now upstairs in the big dormer room, the ghost roamed as well. Sometimes in the mornings, my sister J would say "My white blouse came out of my closet and floated by the end of my bed." J also saw something 'dark' floating directly above her bed. Our parents thought maybe a bat or some bird had gotten in and searched the entire house to no avail. To this day, she does not like to talk about the entities she saw as a child.
Not long after we moved here, I had trouble sleeping and absolutely refused to go to sleep unless the light was left on in my little room. However, the ghost had other ideas and would not only turn off my light, but shut my door. I’d wake up screaming. And then there were the times I’d be playing in my room, in the middle of the day and my door would just shut. Once the ghost even locked me in my room!
Here is a view of my room's window from the outside. The original photo was one of the whole house and no one ever noticed anything wrong with this window until we scanned it into the computer. What do you see?
We lived here for about 2.5 years before finally moving back home.
More recently, my sister K and her husband, after much traveling, decided to rent a small house about 2 hours south of me. Here in this house, she'd hear 1920s style music randomly playing. No radios or TVs were on. When K stood at the kitchen sink, she'd feel someone standing behind her. K would turn around quickly, thinking it was her husband or son, but no one was there. Then one day, she started to see a little boy, aged about 8-9. She only saw him when she was in the bathroom. He'd walk by the bathroom door, into the kitchen and disappear into her bedroom.
I became leery about visiting her house, but finally, went. I didn't see or hear anything while there but... there was an incident....
We were playing Yahtzee, a game I rarely do well in. At the start of one of my turns, I said "Little boy ghost, if you are here, then please let me have a yahtzee". I rolled 5 fives in one roll! And to prove it wasn't a coincidence, I asked the ghost two more times and rolled two more yahtzees. K finally said that she was getting spooked, so we stopped. A few weeks later, my sister asked the ghosts to leave the house. K & family had no more paranormal activity for the rest of the time they lived there.
Now I still love old houses, but I don't think I'd like to live with any sort of ghost again. Once was definitely enough.
Thanks so much for dropping by and reading this long post!
