Hauntings in Jacksonville

My name is Clay. I am originally from Jacksonville, FL. I moved into a condo in Jacksonville with my family when I was eight. The house was empty except for one of the bedrooms. My bedroom closet had a Ouija board left in it. The previous owners wife liked to play with the Ouija board but for some reason she left it behind.

I started schooling and came home regularly and was home alone for a few hours until my older sister came home from school followed later by my mom. Strange noises from up stairs started happening like someone pacing around. I would yell hello, and start naming off anyone who could be upstairs and no one would answer and the pacing would stop. The noise would occur often after school and would change way it would sound.

One time the noise was of someone running around almost from room to room, and would end with a door slamming somewhere. The scariest moment was when the pacing started briefly then ended with what sounded like a bowling ball dropping to the floor. At the time my sister was three and I was playing and having her chase me around. I ran upstairs thinking she would follow while chasing me and a girl was coming up the stairs but it wasn't her, this girl was around the same age but her clothes were a blue dress almost like what was worn hundreds of years before. It didn't take me long to realize the girl wasn't my sister and the girl vanished through the wall as if it was a hallway.

Over time the noises occurred but I was young and got used to it living in the house for so long it was almost normal, and I never knew why when I told people they didn't believe me.

A few years went by in the house and surprisingly no noise was heard, the ghost seemed to just vanish as if they never were there. It wasn't until September of 1999 when the apparitions returned after not being around for a couple of years. My bedroom where the Ouija board was discovered when first moving in six years earlier had a ghost in the room with me. This one is the only one that really freaked me out worse than any other paranormal event in the house.

I was laying in my water bed and I got a paranoid feeling that there was something standing next to me. In the dark room there was only a street light that gleamed through the room. I saw what looked to be a hooded apparition no face all black, about six and a half feet tall and the form came through real good when it passed the window where the light passed around it. It appeared to be gliding over to the closet which was on the other side of my feet right side of the room. Then I glided back over to where it began, which was four feet from my face, then it glided back to the closet, then I watched it start to glide to where my door is (again opposite side of my feet but left side).

The problem is that my feet was hanging off the end of the bed and the apparition had to go through it to get to where it was heading and I watched it move across towards the wall by the door and I was to scared to move and right before it crossed my feet I hid my face under a pillow and my feet went from feeling the room temperature which was warm in my room eighty degrees to a freezing bitter cold then back to the room temperature. I then got up and ran out of the room not caring if the apparition was still there or not. For some reason now I have a foot phobia where before I wasn't bothered by feet, maybe there's a connection? I also sleep under a pillow, been like that ever since.

It started getting worse for everyone in the house. I went from being the only one that could hear the ghost, and I seen two apparitions already before my younger sister encountered a ghost in the same bedroom I stayed in before I moved to Connecticut. The door in the room was closed and something cracked it open, then my sister heard a little girl's voice say "Amanda come play". Amanda looked, rolled over and asked my older sister Alison who she shared a room with "did you hear that?" in which Alison replied she did.

I moved backed for a year and the ghost were still present in the house. I heard almost every night loud pacing up and down the stairs. It lasted for several months, I eventually had to yell shut up so they would stop and I could get some sleep. I told my mom about what I hear every night on the staircase and she shrugged it off as she did with all my other stories.

One night when she was home by herself she heard something running up the stairs, she thought it was an intruder in the house and she said she laid there helplessly waiting for the intruder to break into her room, but nothing happened and there was no one in the house.

Some time before that when my mom stayed in one of the three rooms in the house (the one next to the Ouija bedroom) she actually saw an apparition at the end of her bed. Sitting at the end of her bed was an old woman looked of Native American decent glaring at my mom, then she disappeared, then my mom did something like sit where the apparition was and said out loud "this is my house now this is my room" then went back to sleep.

She had the house blessed however, shortly after the staircase incident, unfortunately it didn't work because the doors would open on their own, sounds of walking around in my room was happening on a regular basis, thank God no apparition to go with it! There were pictures taken in the house that has orbs in it, though no apparition was ever caught on film in the house.

We now live in Connecticut where my mom is originally from. We moved to apartments called Mohegan Park apartments located in my hometown of Norwich, which is located minutes from both the Casinos here in Connecticut. Nothing happened in the apartment. There was no apparitions, no poltergeist, no walking around, or voices calling your name. It felt good to live in peace. We moved in those apartments in 2002 and lived there until 2006.

I moved out on my own and now live at another apartment complex in Norwich. The problem is that for the last two summers I have been fascinated with the supernatural, remembering what happened in Florida. My friends like to drive through back roads supposed to haunted by ghost. One road in particular is Hells Hollow road. The road is located outside Plainfield,CT. I took pictures off a lot which is located off the road while hanging out with friends and a very defined fog of a small person with a decomposed face was in the picture with us, and in several pictures which sparked my interest in ghost hunting.

I've went to several graveyards and experienced different feelings each time. My interest stuck with Hells Hollow. I've heard what sounded like Native tribes in the woods making noises with their mouths. I have also seen a large dark floating figure float from tree tops across the sky and into other tree tops (and I am positive it wasn't a bird). A woman named Maude was murdered about three-hundred years ago there accused of being a witch, as well as a young Native girl and her family by British troops in the same area. I took a picture in Hells Hollow, and the picture shows thousands of orbs and what looks like Native Americans being slaughtered or tied up. I still have this picture.

I also visited Maude's grave and took pictures there late at night and took friends and my cousin from Florida there and video tapped the event. A few days later while driving home from work I felt this pushing on the back of my seat. I got out of work at midnight. My friends thought it was weird, and a few nights later we hang out in a circle lot for a few minutes, then we got out open the trunk to get something from the back. Keep in mind both doors were left open. As soon as we opened the trunk something invisible ran from the trunk pushing objects aside then my driver side door slammed shut.

Since visiting Maude's grave and taking pictures of Hells Hollow trying to capture ghost this past summer, strange things been happening at my apartment. The trash can with a hinged lid appears to be hit by something and move back and forth until it stops. Doors pop open on there own and then close themselves. When I sleep at night I wake up feeling nervous and I feel like something is watching me. I feel like something is watching me, and tries to invade my mind with fear and anxiety that there is something around the corner. Vividly loud, evil looking beings enter my mind sometimes before I open a door as if I am being warned or just being attacked mentally to put me in fear.

I am fascinated by the paranormal after my experience as a child as well as what I experienced searching for them. I found that what I was interested in from my past was probably evil of no good, and by ghost hunting, I might be bringing that evil back into my life. I try to understand what I can't explain, and are they following me?