Suddenly, across the room, the television turned on all by itself, and the volume kept increasing until it was as loud as it could go. My sister and I looked at each other in shock and forgot about whatever had caused our squabble.
One afternoon soon after that, I returned home for lunch. I had been the last one to leave the house that morning, and knew everything had been quiet when I had closed and locked the door on my way to school. But now, when I stood on our front porch unlocking the door a few hours later, I could hear music blaring from inside the house. It was so loud the windows were actually shaking and our dog was frantically running around, trying to escape the noise.
When I got the door opened I ran into the dining room and saw that a Christmas album was playing on the record player in there, with the volume turned up to maximum. I knew the house had been silent when I left for school that morning, and no one had been using the record player for several days prior to that. But now, when the house had been unoccupied since I had left after breakfast, the record player had somehow been turned on, with the volume fully cranked. Our dog was relieved when I turned off the music, but it took a while before she stopped shaking.
It then became a fairly common occurrence to hear music playing within the house. Sometimes it would be audible but faint, and walking around the house would not help in determining where the noise was originating.
Conversations between at least two people, and sometimes what sounded like several, could be heard as faint murmuring too; and this, even more than the music, confused and frightened us. The voices would continue until we entered the room where they seemed to be, and then they would abruptly stop until we left the room again.
My sister and I seemed to observe the most activity, although on one occasion our mother nervously admitted she had seen a young man with a guitar slung over his shoulder walk down the hallway and stop at her bedroom door. He looked in the room to where she was lying in bed, reading a book. They stared at one another for several seconds and then he just simply vanished.
We were surprised to hear our mother share this experience, and to see how frightened she was, because she had not seemed to believe our own claims up until that point. After that, though, she did not so easily shrug off our constant stories of doors opening by themselves and appliances (the television, and radio, etc.) being turned on and off by unseen hands.
Although the haunting was really frightening at times, nothing harmful ever happened. The ghosts definitely made their presence known, but not in aggressive ways.
One day, though, my sister and I were sitting on the bed talking in her bedroom when, from several feet away, a small rubber Super Ball suddenly shot up off of the dresser (neither of us had been near it or touched it). With incredible force it bounced itself off of every wall in the room and whizzed by our heads. We ran screaming from the bedroom. And as soon as we left the room, the ball stopped, and it was sitting still, on the dresser again, when we felt brave enough to return. That incident definitely scared us the most.
Ten years after our family moved into that house, my mother died suddenly after a brief illness. The paranormal activity in the house, which had occurred so frequently up until then, completely stopped from that day on. And although we remained in the house for several more years after that, I can’t recall there being another single incident.
Maybe my mother’s spirit was protectively watching over us and wouldn’t let other spirits bother us anymore.
The House Beside the Mill
My experience is very much remembered through the eyes of a child, as I was only about eleven or twelve for the bulk of the time that I lived in this house. My family, particularly my aunt, who owned the house, would provide a far more insightful articulation of this story, but I doubt it is a story she would care to retell. The experiences in this house were not at all pleasant and were the impetus for her to relocate her family to another home.
My aunt was puzzled by the high vacancy rate of the house and the surprisingly low lease payments that were being asked by the owner, who was trying to sell it. She was, however, ecstatic about the find and gratefully signed the lease and moved her family in.
The house was located in a small town (population around three thousand), at the end of a small dead-end street beside a mill that had burnt down sometime at the turn of the twentieth century and been rebuilt.
The house itself was beautiful. It was built in the colonial style and was two stories, with white wood siding and four ominous (but stately) dormers across the front. Upstairs, there was a master bedroom, a regular bedroom, and a third bedroom that had a small room off of it. At one time it must have served as the quarters for a nanny or wet nurse. The main floor contained a kitchen, dining room, living room, and drawing room. The floors were connected by a grand spiral staircase.
One of the strangest features of the house was the basement, which contained many antiques and treasures that must have come with the original house and that, surprisingly, no one had taken. There was a door down there that led out, underground, to a tunnel connecting to a smaller house on the street behind. This, apparently, was the tunnel that connected the main house to what was perhaps the servants’ quarters behind it. While the house was by no means a mansion, it was somewhat strange and out of place in comparison to the other houses in this small town.
I lived in this house for two months one summer, when my parents shipped me off for summer vacation, and I spent many weekends here as well. I can’t quite recall how long my aunt actually lived there, but I don’t think it was much longer than a year.
I realized very quickly that there was something unusual about this house. The day my aunt moved in I was around to help unpack the boxes, and I remember feeling a weight in the house that was unsettling. It’s hard to know if this was a child’s intuition or simply the discomfort that comes with being in an unfamiliar place, but it was there nonetheless.
The darkest and most unsettling room was the bedroom on the second floor that served as the nanny’s room. It is hard to describe, but it was a cold and damp and heavy-feeling room, quite unlike any of the other rooms. For the duration of the time that my aunt lived there, it remained very unused. It served as a guest bedroom that everyone refused to sleep in, though no one ever really articulated why.
My aunt’s two-year-old son slept in the small room off the nanny’s quarters, and her baby daughter slept in the master bedroom with her parents. The other bedroom was also a guest room, and my room when I stayed for the summer.
The first occurrences in the house revolved around the sound of a child crying. In the first instance this was not unusual, as my aunt had two small children. But when she went to check on them she would find her children fast asleep or playing peacefully with no sign of being distressed. Later, we would get used to hearing the sound of a child on the stairs, sliding down on their behind, one [step] at a time, and laughing.
There was also the constant sound of someone pacing in the hallway, back and forth, for hours on end. Only when we climbed up the stairs to see who was there would the pacing stop. There were days where we would hole up in the kitchen, with the pacing overhead, clinging to the hope that whoever, or whatever, was up there would not come down the stairs and show themselves.
My aunt’s young son seemed most tuned into the presence, and would often blurt out, “Who’s that man?” He would point to the corner shadows of the room where no man was ever seen standing. Some nights he would wake up screaming, obviously afraid, and would refuse to return to his small room to sleep. Near the end of my aunt’s stay at the house, everyone crammed into the master bedroom to sleep.
Doors
