New Housemate Alters House

I have a rather odd experience to relate. In September of 2011, a friend of mine that had been living out of state for the past twelve years returned to New York. We made an agreement that he could stay with me and help with the bills of my home and such.

It was not a smooth transition; he arrived on September 19th and almost immediately it felt as if the atmosphere in my home changed. The first night he was here, he and his helpers (he had two people help him with the move), one of them stayed with us. The other went to visit family that lived in the area. They spent most of the evening after unloading the truck, talking about the events of the trip.

Things of course, for some reason, ended up taking on a supernatural bent, and my friend Jack informed me that my driveway was unsettling. Now I have lived here for nearly 12 years, and my driveway has never bothered me before. I said it was most likely because he'd been living in a large city for the past 12 years, and perhaps being in the country would take getting used to.

They told me about some strange and disturbing occurrences that happened on their trip, driving through various places, before they made it to my place in New York. I just sort of brushed it off as being over active imaginations. However, I admit to having had an uneasy feeling that I could not place.

The next ten months proved to be a strange combination of things that took place rather randomly in and around my house.

My driveway was suddenly unsettling. I am not afraid of the dark as a rule, and normally have no issues getting out of my car and going to the gate. I do not suffer from panic attacks or irrational bouts of fear, but I started to. It felt like something was watching me from the woods, and as the moon waned, it seemed to grow bolder, getting closer and closer, until each night I worked I dreaded getting out of my car. I hate to admit it, but I carried a flashlight with me, something I had never done in the past.

The sensation would leave almost as soon as you closed the gate. On the nights when there was no moon, it sometimes felt as if it was still watching you. The hair on the back of your neck standing on end kind of thing, but it never tried to follow into the fenced in areas.

Inside the house underwent some changes as well. I have to explain that my life was not free of activity before Jack moved in, but it was a very different kind of thing. For me, it consisted of single incident years earlier, which involved a full-bodied apparition in a flannel shirt and jeans, and a few constants that did not inspire any form of dread.

In my house on occasion you would hear music playing, and able to find no source, like a CD on repeat. I cannot tell you how many times I have found myself checking all my radios and players before I'd realize the sounds seems to be coming from outside. It can be heard when you are outside, but I have never been able to locate its source, and it strangely stays the same level of sound, like you can't walk closer or further from it. Sometimes, very few times normally during the summer months, someone will randomly call out my name.

Jack reported hearing someone or something call his name on a number of occasions. On those occasions, he normally thought it was me, because the voice was female and seemed to be calling from outside, though I was never home for these instances.

I experienced three very strange things while Jack lived in my home. I was in the house by myself one afternoon, and I thought I heard the front door open and footsteps on the kitchen floor. I assumed Jack was home as he was a very large, tall man, and his footfalls were normally clear. When I called out he did not answer, and after a few moments, he did not appear, so I went to see if it needed help with anything, only to find the kitchen empty and my front door ajar.

The second occurrence happened around 1:30 am. I awoke suddenly, of course my room is dark except for the clock light and the light which seeps in through the window from the lamp in the yard. I laid there for a moment not sure what had woken me, when there was this loud crash. A sound like pans falling from the cupboard. For a moment I was thinking I should get up, but there was another noise, like loud footsteps running down the hallway. It freaked me out because the only other person in the house was Jack, and he could not physically move that quickly.

I stayed in bed and just listened. The footsteps went up and down the hallway before finally stopping as suddenly as it had all begun. This happened more than once according to Jack, although this was the only instance I was awake for.

The last thing I experienced myself was more of a strange thing that I still can't explain. I have a Kindle Paperwhite. I have had it for some time, and I misplaced it. I couldn't find it anywhere. I turned my bedroom upside down. I looked through everything and every room in the house. I was beginning to think that perhaps it had been broken or stolen or who knows. I decided as a last-ditch attempt to find it to check all the drawers in my dresser. I thought perhaps I had set it on the dresser, and it had fallen into one of the drawers. I opened the drawer; no Kindle. But on a whim, I pulled the folded clothes from the drawer, and the Kindle was nestled between two pairs of pants as if someone tucked it inside for safe keeping. Three items from the bottom of the drawer and three items from the top. Strange thing was that I had put those clothes in the drawer before the Kindle ever went missing.

Jack also felt very uncomfortable about the hallway outside his room. I admit that sometimes that hallway gives me the creeps too, but Jack couldn't sleep without lights on. So rather than turning on a hallway light, I hung fairy lights to chase away the shadows, and placed dream catchers in his room to hopefully ease the bad dreams he reported.

The dream catchers and the lights seemed to do the trick and eventually he told me that he felt as if there was some sort of creature in the hallway, that it smelled of wet dog, or some other wild thing, and that it growled at him. The night he told me that I noticed the smell, and strangely I think I might have even heard a growl, but I chalked my experiences up to his telling me what happened.

Now the strangest part of all this is perhaps that the very day he moved out of my house. The atmosphere changed. It seemed to grow brighter. That night when I returned from work even though it was dark, I felt no fear standing in my driveway. It still felt as if something was watching me, but the fear was gone. It didn't scare me the way it had for the past ten months.

Inside was back to normal. I heard the music the following day that I had off from work. Just like always, and it had been strangely missing in those ten months he lived with me.

So I guess what I am wondering has anyone else had an experience where another person seems to bring something nasty with them. Or that, that person seems to rile up what might already be present but calm. I wonder this because from what I understand there is no activity happening where he currently lives.