CREEPY TALES || true Stories

24. Haunted House

These stories have been either submitted by one of my readers or discovered on other websites

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I lived in my grandparent’s house for many years while my mother got her life on track. The house was a large, 13 bedroom two story with a full basement and a finished attic. It was an old farmhouse that my great grandfather had built. Both he and me great grandmother had passed long before in the house. I never experienced anything malevolent, but there were countless occasions of unexplainable things which occurred.

Items missing for days only to reappear where they had been placed. We had all, my grandparents and myself, had numerous occasions over the years where we set something down and it would disappear only to return a few days later. This happened in all rooms to some extent, but seemed to be more common in the kitchen centered around the kitchen table. Mind you, we never ate at that table and it, like all flat surfaces in that house, was a catchall. My grandmother was what we would today call a hoarder. She kept everything in case she ever needed it again. The entire house was filled with boxes and paper bags of “stuff” in ever non used room. I mention the hoarding to reinforce the fact that my grandparents were not “neat freaks” who were putting things away constantly. They were also affected by the items being missing. If I recall correctly it only happened to items that were not necessarily in their designated storage location. I wonder if that is why I always put my keys, wallet and other such things in the same place to this day.

Washing machine running in the middle of the night. I cannot recall how many times I was awoken to the washing machine starting in the middle of the night. The washer and dryer were located in the kitchen near the base of the stairs. My bedroom was the first room at the top of the stairs. There was never anyone awake when the machine would start and I don’t recall it ever running a complete cycle when it did run “on it’s own”. My grandmother and I talked about it more than once and she also had no idea what was the cause.

Footsteps at night. As I said, the house was old and all of the floors were hardwood. The hallway that ran down the center of the second floor creaked when you walked. I don’t care how hard you tried, you could not traverse that hallway without making noise. Many a night I awoke to that creaking. On the rare occasion I braved to open the bedroom door the hallway was always empty.

Fear. I grew up with a constant, nagging fear. I would not enter a room that was dark. I would crack the door and slip my hand inside to turn on the light. Looking back now it was stupid as anything inside the scary room could have grabbed my hand and pulled me inside, but a child’s mind works differently. I would never go into the attic at night for any reason. Likewise, I avoided the basement after dark as well, even though it had no windows there was a difference between day and night for the basement. I had no problem in the basement during the day, but the attic always remained a bit contentious even in daylight.

Shared experiences with other family members. I touched upon my grandparents sharing some of the experiences above. When speaking with my mother, who grew up in the house, she related many of the same experiences I had observed. She made a point to never discuss them with me until after I brought it up to her. Her experiences went a bit further as she recalls numerous occasions when “something” would enter her room and sit down on the bed adjacent to her bed. She recalled hearing the floor creaking, footsteps, seeing her door open further than just ajar and hearing footsteps come around the first bed, culminating in a depression forming in the next bed. At this point she usually screamed out loud and the bed returned to normal, the footsteps retreated and the door went back to just ajar. She never said how many occurrences of this she experienced, but I inferred it was several. It was certainly traumatizing for her.

I attribute the fear to a child’s mind processing such events. I never once experienced anything even remotely harmful during my years in that house. In my opinion my great grandparents remained in the house after passing and would watch over us all. Perhaps they also liked playing small pranks on us, or were interested in the technology of the washing machine. I don’t know, but I grew up with an open mind to less accepted occurrences than many of my peers. In many ways I miss that house. It has since been turned into an office building and I live on the other side of the world from it, literally 12 hours apart in time zones. I would love to revisit that place, but I fear it is likely cleansed by now since no family members have any physical connection to it anymore.

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Stay tuned for the upcoming chapters.
Once again, this book exclusively features real-life events, not fabricated stories.
Thank you sincerely for your readership.
If you wish to have your stories published in this book, kindly send me a private message to potentially feature your story.