Reader Submission: Life in a Haunted House

“Hi, I hope you could use this story like “Terror on the Farm” that I submitted! Please excuse any errors as English is not my first language.

The White Lady

My wife and I bought a run-down house about two years ago. It has a nice, large yard and established garden with a swimming pool and a one bedroom flat at the back of the yard. For the first year, we stayed in the flat while fixing the home. We had quite a few strange occurrences happening in the new home including a strange photograph my wife took before we had started doing any work on the house. The photograph showed what looked like a bright white silhouette of a female with shoulder length hair. It was showing only half of the head and about a quarter of the torso. I posted it on a forum and someone mentioned that it looked like part of a finger In front of the smartphone’s lens. We were comfortable with the explanation as it seemed very logical.

A Fatal Accident

As time passed and we got acquainted with the house and its history, we started to understand. One of the previous owners around the early nineties used to own a few trucks and did the transportation of earthmoving equipment for the numerous mines around town. He did a lot of improvement to the home at the time and seemed to really love the home and the area.

One day around December, he was transporting a bulldozer on a low-bed trailer when he fell asleep behind the wheel. The truck left the road and hit a culvert. The force of the impact caused the chains holding the bulldozer in place to break causing the bulldozer to run over the cab of the truck and cut the man’s body in two just below his shoulders. His wife continued to stay on in the house until she passed from cancer around the mid 2000’s.

A Deadly Fight

The new owners who then bought the house boarded a room to a young guy in his twenties. As is the custom in small towns where there’s little to do, the boarder usually went out with friends to the local watering hole on the weekends. One night, while heavily under the influence, he picked a fight with the owner of the bar and got beaten really badly. Afterwards, he went home and got in bed never to wake again…

Paranormal Activity

We had bought the home without knowing its tragic history, but I guess we would still have made the purchase even if we did know as we got the house for an absolute bargain. In hindsight we now understand why the property was abandoned with accounts from neighbors of the sound of dishes being washed in the kitchen at night, people walking around the house, and the barking of a phantom bulldog in the garden. That said, we have become comfortable with the paranormal after having stayed in a house with poltergeist activity and me being sensitive to the spirit world since I was born.

The house became livable in April 2013 as we had finished most of the kitchen and bathroom, and we moved in around that time. The first night in the house we heard boxes being moved around and the furniture which was not yet in place being dragged across the floor. I grabbed pepper spray and went to investigate after my wife woke me up but found nothing. This went on for the first few nights and also included the rustling of cutlery in the kitchen at night and movement in one’s peripheral vision. Activity then quieted down quite a bit. It seemed as if the spirits were just checking us out!

The Activity Continues

My mother in law is a complete skeptic but once saw a cupboard door that is very hard to move open and close on its own accord. The activity never really bothered us as the home had a good, relaxed feeling about it. After the first week, it quieted down quite a bit with the occasional sound of doors closing or the odd footsteps here and there. We would also hear the odd footstep on the fixed wooden parquet floors and the sounds of doors being closed when all were actually open and no one else was around. What we did still see regularly though is a small white Jack Russell terrier similar to the two we own. We would see what we thought was one of our dogs in the house when they should have been outside. When we got up to let the dog out, we found no dog inside and both of our dogs were outside and all of the doors were closed.

The Dead Liven Up

Things have livened up in the past couple of weeks though! There’s been some of the usual activity associated with haunted homes such as cold drafts, footsteps, etc. The drafts could have a logical explanation, but they are occurring during high summer on days when it’s a 38 degrees Celsius outside and all doors, windows, and curtains are closed to keep the heat out.

What is less common to us is that we have now seen the bright white silhouette of the women we photographed passing from the kitchen into the living room on two occasions. I have also heard what sounded like a large dog growling right by our bedroom window at night when all of our dogs were inside. Our closest neighbor is about 100 meters from our house and they only own poodles which would not be able to growl like that. Our yard is also fenced off so no strays have access.

My wife and I recently awoke one night to see a very bright, bluish-white, perfectly round sphere of light hovering over us. It was completely silent and stationary. Is this what people actually refer to as orbs or is it another type of phenomenon?

I was sitting in the living room about a week ago when I saw what I thought was a bat. It was black but with a silver static type color in between. It swooped down from the ceiling in an arc before moving underneath a couch. I immediately got up and looked under and around the couch only to find nothing. I am familiar with the effects of high EMFs but our wiring is new and was done using a shielded power cord. I have also tested the EMFs in my home with my Samsung Note (though I don’t know how accurate it is) and did not get any high readings.

I must mention that my wife is now six months pregnant. Could it be that the pregnancy is acting as a catalyst? I have also become interested in the occult, not to the point of doing any spell work or playing with an Ouija board, but only by reading a lot about the subject. I guess I just have a deep interest in the paranormal! Otherwise it could be the time of the year or just our imaginations. I highly doubt it however as we both independently experienced the same events! Maybe it is time for me to hold my own little investigation? I would appreciate any feedback, especially with regards to the hovering lights, the ‘bat,’ and the escalation of activity just as we found out that my wife is pregnant.”

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