Reader Submission: The Haunting

“I have decided to share my story because I feel that my family and I have experienced a great ordeal. We moved into a house when I was in the second grade. We could have not been happier. We had an entire year where things seemed to be normal.

A problem we had is that you had to go through our garage in order to get to the basement. So my dad decided to build stairs inside so it would be more convenient to get downstairs and so we could get more use out our fireplace which was in the basement. This is when things started to happen.

The Footsteps

My room was right across from the stairs. I would lay in bed and listen to what sounded like people running up and down the staircase. I didn’t say anything to my parents for a long time, but I later learned that they heard the same thing. They would also watch as something paced in front of their door. They could see the shadow through the crack near the floor. My dad would get up and open the door, but there would be nothing. We learned to ignore the sounds when they happened.

My aunt stayed with us and told me the basement gave her a bad feeling and that didn’t feel comfortable sleeping down there by herself. So I said I would sleep downstairs with her. Early the next morning, the sound of one of the cupboards slamming from across the room woke me up. I sat up in bed and shook my aunt awake. We both looked towards the cupboard and then started to hear footsteps on the thick, shag carpet. As the steps got closer, we looked at the floor and saw the imprint of a foot as it traveled across the floor in front of the bed. When the imprints made it to the hall, they got louder because of the change in texture. It went quiet for a minute then the door handle to the bathroom started to jiggle very loudly. At this point, my aunt and I started running up the stairs and out of the basement.

The Figure

One Easter we had gone on with our holiday tradition,s and my mom had taken a lot of pictures. I was sitting down at the computer, uploading the pictures, when I came across a photo of me and my brother. Right next to my hand was a bright blue orb of light This didn’t surprise me as orbs had appeared in pictures taken in our house many times before. What made this picture unique, though, was the background. In the mirror I could see the outline of a figure, and it seemed to continue past the mirror.

It Followed

The weird sounds and such continued up until the day we moved out. I figured the haunting would stay with the house, so I was okay with moving after my parents divorced. I was wrong.

Not long after moving into an apartment, my mom developed a habit. She would come into the house, walk up the stairs, go into her room, open the window, smoke, and then shut the window. She would later go into the restroom and come back to her room for bed. Her bed was old, so it would creak when she sat down and again when she got up.  When I heard her go into her room, I would go and say goodnight. One night I listened as she went through this routine which I had heard so many times before. I got up to say goodnight, but when I opened her bedroom door the room was empty. Not even two seconds later, my mom walked through the front door. She just returned  from work.

The noises happened less at that apartment than they did at the house, but my problem was that they were stll there at all. We soon moved out of that apartment and into a duplex. The first night we were there, we heard what sounded like dishes falling to the ground and shattering. When my mom and I ran to investigate, we found all the dishes and everything in the house in perfect order.

I was worried now because it was clear that whatever was at our first house had followed us. What made this even more unsettling is that when I went to visit my dad’s house, we were all in bed and heard what sounded like a large piece of furniture being picked up and dropped. There was no clear cause for this noise. Then my dad told me that he heard something going up and down the stairs that same night.

The last thing that happened to me personally happened only a short month or two ago. I woke up to see that there was a light on downstairs. When I looked at the clock and saw that it was one in the morning, I decided to turn the light off. When I got downstairs, I saw my four-year-old brother yelling at something I couldn’t see. He said, ‘I don’t want to play with you anymore, go away.’ I picked him up and put him into bed with my mom. Then I turned off the light and went back to bed. No sooner had I closed my eyes, and the light was back on. When I saw that no one was in the living room, I decided to leave the light on and go back to bed. Not long after that, my cat started reacting to unseen things.

This is still happening to us, just not as badly as when were at our first house. I can’t deny that the evidence is there that whatever was at our old family house followed us.”

Have you lived in a haunted house? Share your story here or email christy@ghostsnghouls.com!