I’ve been blogging about the haunted farmhouse I used to live in and thought I’d share a few more odd occurrences my family and I experienced while living there.  If you haven’t read any of my other posts about that house, you should check them out!  This being the month for ghosts and goblins, what better way to get into the spirit of Halloween than to give some firsthand accounts of a real haunting?

The last year we lived in the farmhouse was pretty busy with paranormal activity.  The cold drafts were constant, even on hot summer days. We just could not warm that house up.  The sense of being watched never went away.  We were constantly checking over our shoulders because we couldn’t shake the creepy crawly feeling that someone was standing right behind us.  Items continued to disappear. Although we often found them later, there are some things that were never recovered.  I still wonder where they went? An alternate reality?  Were they vaporized?  Who the heck knows.

During the last couple years there, we were sharing our ghost stories with anyone interested to listen.  We even had someone come by the house who said she was sensitive to the presence of spirits.  I remember very well the night she came over.  She walked slowly through our house in alert stealth mode while Mom and I followed close behind.  Every now and then she’d stop and put out her hand.  “Feel this cold spot? They are here alright and they don’t like me.  They don’t want me here.”  She didn’t stay long.  I was pretty worried after she left for I wondered if we’d upset the spirits by having her come to our home.  I didn’t sleep well that night.  The whole thing creeped me out but then I was about 13 at the time and everything creeps out a 13 year old girl.  I do remember this clearly, however, there was a feeling in the air that put us on edge.  Something about that house was OFF.

I remember one afternoon my sister came running down the stairs screaming that the ghosts were in our room.  She said she heard a noise in the boys’ room (to get to our room, we had to pass through our brothers’ bedroom) and she decided to find out if it was a spirit who made the noise.  She spoke out loud (she was sitting on the bed at the time) and told the spirit to shut the door if anyone was there.  The door shut.  My sister was off the bed, out said door, and down the stairs in two seconds flat.  Don’t ask them to do something if you aren’t prepared for them to do it!

On another occasion, my three brothers were playing in their bedroom when all three of them came screaming in terror down the stairs.  Something was in one of the beds they said.  It was making the blankets rise up in the air.  The first time it happened, they thought it was one of us girls trying to scare them and they yanked the blanket off…nothing was there.  When it happened again on another bed, they didn’t bother with the blanket, they ran.  My mom went straight up the stairs to check it out.  Sure enough, the top blanket looked as if someone had lifted it up from the center and let it go.  She searched the entire second floor thinking maybe it was one of the cats that had crawled under the blankets but they were all outside.

Another incident in the boys’ room involved one of my young cousins.  Brad was about three when he lost his father (my favorite uncle!) and so he came to stay with us for a few days.  For several nights, he woke up crying because he was cold and when my mom checked on him, the blankets were all laying on the floor.  Thinking he must have pushed them off himself, she tucked the blankets under the mattress to keep them on the bed and a short while later, Brad was again crying because he was cold. Once again, the blankets were on the floor.  Now, Brad stayed with us several times over the ensuing months and we observed that he is not a restless sleeper.  Even if he was restless, the blankets shouldn’t have all ended up completely off the bed.  My other three brothers toss and turn quite a bit but they didn’t lose their blankets.  The curious thing about this is that Brad called to his dad each time the blankets were pulled off. Was his dad trying to let us know he was there?  I like to think so.

On another night my sister and I were settling down for the night when Lisa suddenly jumped up from her bed with a frightened cry.  I immediately sat up and looked over at her.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen her move that fast.  She scrambled out of that bed and into mine in no time flat.  As I am five years older than she is and she was about five at the time, she felt I was old enough to save her.  She claimed something growled at her through the pillow.  She would not go back to her bed even after I gathered up the nerve to go put my head on her pillow and listen myself.  I heard nothing.  She was insistent that something growled at her and I knew she wasn’t making it up.  She was just too scared.  That happened a couple other times as well and so my sister more often than not slept with me in my bed.  Thank God my pillow didn’t growl!

One evening my parents went out and left us with a babysitter.  I was about ten at the time and my step-sister Kelly was visiting.  She is a few months younger than me.  The babysitter put the younger kids to bed but let Kelly and I stay up with her.  We were in the living room watching TV when it sounded like someone jumped on the hood of a car right outside the front window.  The driveway was to the right of the house. The two front windows faced the front lawn.  The noise was very loud and it made all three of us jump up and scream.  We were absolutely terrified.  The babysitter checked to see if the doors were locked and we ran into the kitchen where the phone was located.  She called our nearest neighbor who also happened to be our landlord.  Merle came straight down to check out the area and see if anyone were lurking about.  He checked all around the house but found no one and nothing that would account for the sound we heard.

One curious incident that happened involved my sister when she was about two.  My dad went up to bed one evening while my mother went about shutting off lights.  He called to her from the stairs and said that my sister was sleeping on the top step.  Alarmed, my mother ran to get her.  Though it took about five seconds to get to the stairs from the kitchen, Lisa was not there.  Dad was in their bedroom by this point and Mom asked him where Lisa was.  Dad turned around in surprise, incredulous to see that Lisa was gone.  Swearing she was there a second ago, they went in search of her.  She was sleeping peacefully in her bed.  Totally baffled, Mom decided Dad was “seeing things” for there was NO WAY two year old Lisa could have managed to get through the boys room and into ours in the few seconds it took her to get up the stairs.  The incident was such a curious thing that it was discussed with friends and family later.  Everyone found it remarkable and left it at that.  Until it happened again.  And just like before, my dad called to my mom and told her to come get Lisa because she was sleeping on the stairs. Once again, he stepped over her though he couldn’t explain why he didn’t just pick her up himself. He didn’t even remember the previous incident until my mother brought it up when she once again found no sleeping little girl on the stairs.

The last few months in the house, the spirits really enjoyed bothering my parents.  They shook them awake, they shook their bed, they made noises during the night which had dad running to investigate, to no avail of course.  They opened doors while we were sleeping (the front door, the barn door and even the dreaded cellar door!).  They wouldn’t leave the lights alone.  If the lights were off, they turned them on, if the lights were on, they turned them off.  Light bulbs were constantly blowing, a typical phenomena in haunted houses.  My mother even thought she saw one of the ghosts out of the corner of her eye.  She was vacuuming the rug in the living room when she saw a little old lady walk across the doorway in the kitchen.  Of course when my mom went to investigate, no one was there.

Moving out of that house was such a relief to me and my family.  I had so many nightmares while living there and I was looking forward to finally getting some decent sleep.  The first night in our new home, my parents went to bed while my brother and I stayed up to finish watching a show on the television.  The house was dark except for a light over the kitchen sink.  I remember sitting in the darkened living room feeling safe for the first time in a long time.  And then the blender in the kitchen came on.

My brother and I jumped off the couch and stood frozen in shock.  Although we didn’t dare leave the living room, we had no problems with our vocal cords.  “Mom!”  She came running out of the bedroom to see what was making the racket.  We pointed to the blender.  She went over and shut it off.  “Must be Daniel,” she said (through the Ouija board, we learned that the most active spirit in our house was Daniel).  “Just letting us know he’s still around.”  And then she went back to bed.  My brother and I looked at each other and all I could think was, “You gotta be kidding.  They FOLLOWED us?”