I Grew Up In A Haunted House (T)
Jan 7, 2016 8:47:17 GMT -8
Post by lyraalluse on Jan 7, 2016 8:47:17 GMT -8
I Grew Up In A Haunted House
© Emma Lee Downs
An essay about a haunted house I grew up in.
I Grew Up In A Haunted House
A more accurate title for this post would probably be that I grew up in a few different haunted houses. Even now we have an entity in our kitchen who we jokingly call the Fridge Ghost as it likes to hang out by the fridge and occasionally open it in the middle of the night.
But for this post I am going to talk about a house I lived in until middle school. It is located on a street called Cherry, which my friends and I always joked about for obvious reasons. However, nothing about the feeling I had when I lived in that house with my family was anything to joke about.
My friends never wanted to spend the night at the house I grew up in. All of them had the same bad feeling staying there; this sinking feeling that formed in the pit of their stomachs before something would happen. And unusual things enviably would, more often than not, happen.
Doors would regularly open and close on their own. This was something that I chalked up to the tilt in the foundation; at least at first. But when you hear doors (cabinets, doors leading into the house, essentially any door) slam in the middle of the night, you start to question if it is just regular house noises.
The windows would open and shut on their own as well, which is a little harder to pin on a shifting foundation. There were a couple times that the televisions would turn on and off on their own. Sometimes, the volume on the television sets would go up and down on its own as well. And there were other times that channels would show up on the television sets that I have never seen except for on those sets.
I could probably blame the odd television behavior on magnetism, or the fact that both television sets were quite old. However, the strange things I would see on those off channels through the static are enough to convince me that there might have been something else going on there.
I would often hear noises in the vents like things were crawling around in them. Sometimes it sounded like bodies were being dragged through the ventilation shafts. Sometimes I would hear scratching on the walls, or the windows, or other out of the ordinary sounds like footsteps on the floor.
My mom used to tell me that it was little woodland creatures who got into the insides of the walls. But I never saw these animals. The closest I came to seeing anything close to that was one family of skunks we found living under our porch. But after moving them out safely to the woods, we never saw any other animals that could account for making the types of noises I was hearing.
Sometimes I heard whispering, other times I heard yelling (like a faint cry through the walls). There were other times I would find weird yellow liquid on the walls, or other similar substances. My mom used to say it was mold and not to touch it until she could clean it up. But it didn't look like mold to me. It didn't look like any of those substances could be made by anything living.
I would also see ghostly figures wandering through the house. When I was young, I used to talk in great detail with what I think was a child, female entity. It was more like a one way conversation with the entity although sometimes it would answer in its own way. I wrote an essay about my friendship with that ghost for one of my classes later on and submitted it as fiction so the teacher wouldn't think I was crazy. But the truth is that my friendship with that ghost and some of the other presences was real.
Of course, there was the typical haunting stuff too, like objects being thrown, pulled, or just simply going missing all together. I used to joke with my mom that the wall trolls or house gnomes had made off with our stuff to which she would just roll her eyes.
When my mom started seeing some strange entities peering at us through the windows or as we were sleeping, she started to take my stories more seriously. She won't agree with everything I've claimed to see in that house, but she will definitely admit that there were presences that would appear.
I often saw toys come to life including a doll my aunt had brought me back from Russia. I had a dream that the doll was trying to kill me by choking me to death. When I woke up the doll was sleeping next to me in my bed. No one had ever moved it there that night. I ended up blessing the doll and throwing it away. To this day I don't like dolls and will not sleep in the same room with one.
I remember that the landlord who lived in the house next door was always asking us how things were going in the house. My mom told me to keep quiet about the things we saw because the rent was cheap and she didn't want to upset her. But even though I never got any direct answers from the landlord, I could see by her behavior that she must know something was wrong with the house.
Perhaps the strangest thing was that the house didn’t particularly have a dark past or a history attached to it that would make it stand out as a hub for spiritual activity. The landlord was cranky and her attitude could have contributed to the overall negative vibe. But other than that we never knew what in particular made the house haunted.
I didn't exclusively see evil entities in the house either. Like I said, I made some friendships with the ghosts, and I even saw other entities like what I can only describe as being little people, and entities that looked like what people say greys look like, but they were not aliens. This leads me to believe that the house was built on top of some leyline or portal that opened up into other realms. Maybe a more accurate title would be that my house was a gateway.
I am not sorry that I had the experience that I did. In fact, I think it broadened my horizons and showed me from an early age that there is more to the world than what we can physically see. I will always think of the friendships I formed with ghosts and other entities fondly. For some people, my experience might have a rational explanation and that is fine. I have always had an open mind and am happy to listen to many sides of an argument. But for me, the experiences I had in this house growing up were tangible and not just the imagination of an elementary school kid. They are something that has colored my view of this beautiful and mysterious world and has opened my eyes to all kind of realms of possibility.
© Emma Lee Downs
An essay about a haunted house I grew up in.
I Grew Up In A Haunted House
A more accurate title for this post would probably be that I grew up in a few different haunted houses. Even now we have an entity in our kitchen who we jokingly call the Fridge Ghost as it likes to hang out by the fridge and occasionally open it in the middle of the night.
But for this post I am going to talk about a house I lived in until middle school. It is located on a street called Cherry, which my friends and I always joked about for obvious reasons. However, nothing about the feeling I had when I lived in that house with my family was anything to joke about.
My friends never wanted to spend the night at the house I grew up in. All of them had the same bad feeling staying there; this sinking feeling that formed in the pit of their stomachs before something would happen. And unusual things enviably would, more often than not, happen.
Doors would regularly open and close on their own. This was something that I chalked up to the tilt in the foundation; at least at first. But when you hear doors (cabinets, doors leading into the house, essentially any door) slam in the middle of the night, you start to question if it is just regular house noises.
The windows would open and shut on their own as well, which is a little harder to pin on a shifting foundation. There were a couple times that the televisions would turn on and off on their own. Sometimes, the volume on the television sets would go up and down on its own as well. And there were other times that channels would show up on the television sets that I have never seen except for on those sets.
I could probably blame the odd television behavior on magnetism, or the fact that both television sets were quite old. However, the strange things I would see on those off channels through the static are enough to convince me that there might have been something else going on there.
I would often hear noises in the vents like things were crawling around in them. Sometimes it sounded like bodies were being dragged through the ventilation shafts. Sometimes I would hear scratching on the walls, or the windows, or other out of the ordinary sounds like footsteps on the floor.
My mom used to tell me that it was little woodland creatures who got into the insides of the walls. But I never saw these animals. The closest I came to seeing anything close to that was one family of skunks we found living under our porch. But after moving them out safely to the woods, we never saw any other animals that could account for making the types of noises I was hearing.
Sometimes I heard whispering, other times I heard yelling (like a faint cry through the walls). There were other times I would find weird yellow liquid on the walls, or other similar substances. My mom used to say it was mold and not to touch it until she could clean it up. But it didn't look like mold to me. It didn't look like any of those substances could be made by anything living.
I would also see ghostly figures wandering through the house. When I was young, I used to talk in great detail with what I think was a child, female entity. It was more like a one way conversation with the entity although sometimes it would answer in its own way. I wrote an essay about my friendship with that ghost for one of my classes later on and submitted it as fiction so the teacher wouldn't think I was crazy. But the truth is that my friendship with that ghost and some of the other presences was real.
Of course, there was the typical haunting stuff too, like objects being thrown, pulled, or just simply going missing all together. I used to joke with my mom that the wall trolls or house gnomes had made off with our stuff to which she would just roll her eyes.
When my mom started seeing some strange entities peering at us through the windows or as we were sleeping, she started to take my stories more seriously. She won't agree with everything I've claimed to see in that house, but she will definitely admit that there were presences that would appear.
I often saw toys come to life including a doll my aunt had brought me back from Russia. I had a dream that the doll was trying to kill me by choking me to death. When I woke up the doll was sleeping next to me in my bed. No one had ever moved it there that night. I ended up blessing the doll and throwing it away. To this day I don't like dolls and will not sleep in the same room with one.
I remember that the landlord who lived in the house next door was always asking us how things were going in the house. My mom told me to keep quiet about the things we saw because the rent was cheap and she didn't want to upset her. But even though I never got any direct answers from the landlord, I could see by her behavior that she must know something was wrong with the house.
Perhaps the strangest thing was that the house didn’t particularly have a dark past or a history attached to it that would make it stand out as a hub for spiritual activity. The landlord was cranky and her attitude could have contributed to the overall negative vibe. But other than that we never knew what in particular made the house haunted.
I didn't exclusively see evil entities in the house either. Like I said, I made some friendships with the ghosts, and I even saw other entities like what I can only describe as being little people, and entities that looked like what people say greys look like, but they were not aliens. This leads me to believe that the house was built on top of some leyline or portal that opened up into other realms. Maybe a more accurate title would be that my house was a gateway.
I am not sorry that I had the experience that I did. In fact, I think it broadened my horizons and showed me from an early age that there is more to the world than what we can physically see. I will always think of the friendships I formed with ghosts and other entities fondly. For some people, my experience might have a rational explanation and that is fine. I have always had an open mind and am happy to listen to many sides of an argument. But for me, the experiences I had in this house growing up were tangible and not just the imagination of an elementary school kid. They are something that has colored my view of this beautiful and mysterious world and has opened my eyes to all kind of realms of possibility.
