I am going to break my chain of stories from my past and tell of a recent happening. In my adult life I have had one paranormal experience. It is not as in your face scary as the events of my childhood, but is disturbing on a higher level. For those of you that have read my other stories you probably have a good concept of my life as a teen and the happenings I/we had encountered. Those events were both exhilaratingly fun and chilled to the bone scary at the same time. It was a rush of a sensation that often left me thirsty for more... So I continued to dig deeper and go to the places others would not dare and I dragged my friends into it. We eventually dug too deep and went too far and got more than we bargained for. After a very nasty experience we all quit, stopped and thanked our lucky stars that it was over with. I never looked back.
As scary as those times were... They do not compare to the psychological dread that I was briefly put through a few years back. When you are a kid, you can be frightened to a level where you think you will die a tragic or horrific death and that level of fright feels terrible. I am sure many people reading this have had a close encounter with this type of fright. (The cold blood, time stopping, heart exploding fear that grips your soul and paralyses your abilities to think and move.) But when you become a parent, that fear gets brought onto a whole new level. Not only is the threat to yourself being experienced, but the ice cold fear that the being of your innocent child is also in harm's way. And the harm is both something that you cannot control or understand. That is an experience worse than all the fears summed together.
That is the fear that a parent feels when their child is threatened, and that is how I felt in my first house with my young son.
I was a young father in life and I chose to work hard, finish school and secure a good job in the automotive world (as it was the cash cow of my area.) I devote myself into being a good father and family man. All my hard work paid off and I bought my first house at the age of 23. It was a nice little farm house on the outskirts of town. It was a severance of a larger family owned farm. The house was on the market for only a day and we just narrowly locked in our offer before a larger offer was made. It seemed that fate and luck smiled on us as we got our first house. It was nothing great but is was home, and was so much better than the little apartment we had before it. It had a nice yard with a little forest and a larger garden. It was an acre of land and the house was situated in the center of the lot. It was the perfect location too, just out of town, closer to Windsor/Detroit where I worked, yet very near the rest of my family.
The house was originally owned by an old couple who were infirmed. It was evident by all the extra safety features throughout the house. The house had been vacant for several months, as one of the old couple had passed and the other was placed in long term care.
The first thing we did is clean through the house and did a repaint. One of the oddities that I noticed when cleaning was that all the windows had a tiny little crucifix on them (small pewter crosses with a tiny brass Jesus on it, sitting on the window sills) I thought this to be weird, but did not remove them. I feared they were put there for a purpose and I did not think it was a good idea to ignore that. So they stayed. After a few days I felt as if we were not alone in the house. It wasn't anything too unusual and I had no indications of another presence, just a funny feeling in my gut that I was being watched. I associated this feeling to being in a new house and living in a different place, so I disregarded the feelings and continued life as normal.
It was a small house with only 2 bedrooms so my oldest daughter had her bedroom, and my baby boy stayed in our room. He was about 1 year old. He was able to stand on his own in his playpen but could not walk yet. We painted our room a nice sky blue and it was a comfortable warm happy room. (Especially with the nice late summer breeze coming in through the window.) The house was surrounded by farm fields. Usually they planted soy beans or wheat. (I love the golden wheat in the fall before harvest. The wind rushes along the wheat field and the wheat tops wave like silk blankets in the breeze. And the little shimmering blue swallows would swoop along the wheat and perform wondrous acrobatic flips through the air. These are some of my warmest memories that I cherish) Sometimes they would plant corn and I was not a big fan of corn. It was very dusty and all kinds of trouble seemed to lurk in corn fields.
Regardless, this was a good starter home. But as time passed I was more convinced that there was a presence there and that the crosses had something to do with it.
Not too long after we moved in we had a series of troubles that seemed odd. We had the hot water tank explode in the basement, the furnace igniter burnt out, and several electrical fusses would continue to pop. Not very unordinary, but after professionals checked them out and determined that nothing was specifically wrong with the units, I got skeptical. But still I maintained the opinion that it was just the "new house blues" (the time period after you get into your house and realize that everything is not perfect)
A few weeks later we awoke to the fire alarm going off in the middle of the night. I tried everything to stop it (as there was no smoke, and the other fire alarms were not going off.) I pushed the rest button, I pulled the battery (as it was a battery unit) and it still continued to ring. So finally I pulled it off the ceiling and destroyed it, busted it up and crushed the little metal buzzer. Finally it was quiet. (I really, really dislike being woken in the middle of the night, especially when I have to get up at 4:30am to go to work)
After about 20 minutes, I finally started to drift back off to sleep when the back doorbell rang. It was a chime bell and it rang continuously off tone, as if it was under powered. Angrily I went to the back wall where the bell box was. (we did not have a back door bell button, the system was old and cut out but the box still hung on the wall) I pried open the box lid and pulled the tiny wires out of it. It also still rang, so I pulled it off the wall too and crushed it. At this point I was having trouble going back to sleep. I was wide awake and fresh with anger and frustration. But I gave it my best effort to go back to sleep.
After another hour another alarm went off. It was a toy fire engine in my son's toy box. (in our room) Like the others it ran after I pulled the batteries. So I pitched the toy out the front door as far as I could. I returned to the bed, but was not able to sleep well at all. No more alarms went off, but I swore I could hear someone stomping around the house from time to time. And the feeling of being watched was now stronger than ever and it felt as if we were being treated as trespassers and were being given warning to leave. (this is how I felt) My wife was also very strung out and she agreed with my feelings. Needless to say the night passed slowly and the morning only came too quickly.
In the early morning pre-sunrise light, I got myself ready. I was really dragging my butt as I was too tired to drive. I let myself run late and called in to let my boss know I was going to be late. After a bear of a morning I finally got ready to go out the door when I realized that the front window was cracked. The front window was a plastic frame window (the fold out kind) and the top pane was cracked from the bottom corner halfway through to the middle of the window and back to the adjacent side.
Angrily I went to work. Needless to say I had a long day and when I got home things got worse. My wife had noticed that every window in the house with the little crosses was cracked. Some were only cracked on the corners. Others right through the window pane from corner to corner. The windows were all cracked in the middle of the night. (Being that we had just recently painted the house I know the windows were not that way before)
To be safe I placed clear packing tape on the larger cracks. (As we had little money and could not afford to replace them) It was a stressful next few days as we had very restless sleep, even though nothing happened. I knew something was starting to happen but I did not want to believe it. The one joy I got was the greetings from my young daughter and son. My daughter would jump up and hug me when I came home. My son would stand up in his playpen and hold his arms up to be picked up. He would do this to people he knew well. (Mainly us parents and the grandparents)
About a week later things started back up. I could hear the walking in the house at night and at times I swore I could see a shadow pass the doorway. Several times I would get up to see if someone was there and was half expecting my young daughter to be up to go to the bathroom or something. But every time it was nothing. My wife convinced me it was just my nerves playing tricks on me because everything had stressed me out. I really wanted to believe it so I desperately tried. But I had past experiences with this stuff and I knew there was trouble in that house that was building. Someone was still there and did not want us there. This was polite right now, but I could see it getting worse and I felt that it was coming soon.
In the past, I had gotten myself in deep paranormal trouble and a holy man saved my butt from the tortures of my own foolishness. So based on the success in the past, I took action. Being that the holy man was now long removed from my life, I turned to the local church. (that I never attended) I felt very foolish talking to the old priest. I am sure he thought I was nuts in the beginning, but after a short story about some of my experiences of the past and how they were dealt with and the fears I now had over my new house, the priest took me to a side room in the church. (I attended the church as a young boy and knew the layout pretty good.)
He took me into the prep room to the side and took a small flask of holy water and gave it a blessing. He told me to sprinkle it on the windows and where ever I thought the angry soul may be. Then he told me to tell the soul to move on, to tell it that it has passed and must rest at peace. (Again I think this was for my benefit but I was getting desperate) I took the holy water home and sprinkled the windows and said my speech. (I was home alone as the wife left for the day with the kids) The house did not seem to change, nor did there seem to be any affect, but I hoped for the best.
A few peaceful nights passed and just when I started to believe we were alone and the problem was solved, the walking through the house at night started back up. Then I could see the shadow more clearly. It was a little old lady. She paced back and forth from one end of the house to the other looking into the rooms. (She was still very much just shadows, but I could tell when her head was turned looking into my room.)
I felt she was confused, and was wondering why we were there. I immediately assumed it was the old woman who lived in the house before us. I started thinking that she probably lived her whole life in that house and raised her children and grandchildren in that house. She evidently had a strong connection to it. I did not feel immediately threatened, but the looming thought that her confusion could quickly turn to anger really bothered me. Also it bothered me that she seemed to have a very specific interest in my room, specifically my very young son. I knew she was looking at him and I immediately felt very protective. I had no idea what I could do to prevent her from messing with my son, but I was going to get in the way if she moved any closer to my room. I think she felt this because she backed away and disappeared for the rest of the night.
I reluctantly fell back to sleep, and as I was drifting off I entertained the notion that this could be a friendly spirit and could bear no harm to my family. She was after all someone's mother, grandmother. Surely she would not want to hurt a young family or more specifically a baby or young girl. These thoughts rattled through my mind for a few more days.
I did a little research on the house and discovered that the old woman was the great Aunt of the farmer who sold it to me. She had lived there her whole life and she had children and grandchildren in the house. I had a brief talk with the farmer and asked her name and he told me. Then he said something that completely convinced me that we were being visited by her spirit. After asking him who owned the house before us and their names, he specifically asked me if I was having any troubles in the house. It wasn't that the question was right out of place but it was the way he said it. He knew she was there and that I was having troubles. He knew that was why I was asking about the house. I had kept the conversation very general and the questions very typical of any new house owner and he immediately put me into the position to tell him about the happenings in the house.
I did not tell him anything... I wasn't sure how he would react or how I should react to that topic. So I just told him I was curious. But I knew he had known there were issues. After that the next several days I would feel her presence daily (at night or late evening) After a week of broken, uneasy sleeping it all caught up to me.
It was on a Saturday and instead of working around the house or yard, after breakfast and a quiet morning of TV I climbed back into bed and drifted off into a very comfortable sleep. The day was a lazy summer day and the cool breeze was drifting through the window and everything was very tranquil. I needed that sleep and dozed the whole day. I periodically drifted into a lighter sleep just long enough to feel the gentle breeze on my face or the warm sunlight on my skin. I remember hearing my wife place my son down in his crib for his nap. We both slept for some time.
Then I was awoken by the sound of him quietly playing in his crib. With one eye open I watched him innocently playing with his toys. It was late afternoon and the sun was low in the sky. Shadows filled the corners of the room. I was wide awake and well rested, but I still refused to move and make the effort to get up. Besides I enjoyed watching my little boy puzzle over the toys he had in the crib with him. He was playing very nicely then he looked behind him as if someone had entered the room from the wall behind him. He looked up and seemed to be noticing someone. He seemed happy to see them and then he got up and stood up, all the time looking up into the corner of the wall and ceiling.
I looked too and the shadows looked and felt odd. But I could not see anything wrong... Even though I now felt that something was wrong. I watch my son stand by the wall side of his crib and raise his hands as to be picked up. Then I saw the movement in the shadows above his crib. It was the old lady. Not so much her body, but her face. Or the form of her face. She was looking down into my son's crib at my son and he was looking back. Worse yet, he was familiar with her and seemed to want to be picked up.
I immediately felt a deep slice of fear cut into my soul. She could have been visiting him in the night as we slept, when we weren't looking... When ever but she had definitely been visiting with him before. This placed a level of fear into me that could not be described in biblical terms. I immediately jumped up and grabbed my son and left the room. I could feel that she was angry and wanted us out but she wanted my son to stay. I sent my wife and kids out to visit her mother. She was not sure why I was upset but listened.
With my son and family out of the house I returned and grabbed what was left of the holy water on my dresser. The house was quiet. I could feel the confrontation building as I walked through the house. I felt very alien in my own home, as if I was not welcome there. I could feel her watching me and I could feel her anger directed at me. I was angry too. (but mostly scared of the situation) I threw the holy water on the walls around the crib and in all the shadows where I felt her eyes watching me. I yelled out her name and told her that she needed to leave the house. That we were a good family that would take good care of the house, but it was now our home and she needed to pass over and leave us alone.
It was a very honest plea for our safety and sanity. The house seemed to relax. I felt relaxed and at peace after that. I think I convinced her that it was time for her to leave.
That night my wife and family returned, after several nights of worrisome sleep I was able to relax and settle in. The feeling of being watched was gone.
After some time the feelings never returned.
We lived happily in that house for several more years, but when the conditions where right and the opportunity arose, we sold the house.
Now we live in a 200 year old house. It was built in 1760s. It has some serious history but when we first saw the house we felt nothing but a house wanting to be a home again. (The house was abandoned for many decades and then moved onto a new foundation and to its current location.) It was a museum house and offered period dressed tours for several years before the home owner sold it. It was on the market for a while, because it needed cosmetic work on the second floor. But it was very cute and homey on the first floor. I did not want to get into a house with history but after both me and my wife feeling that this home chose us, we had to buy it. Now I spend my days fixing this house and I still feel as welcomed as the first day I stepped into it. (I can just image the generations of families that have lived in this house, the wars and times that this house has seen. It is really neat.)
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