The Bungalow

My family moved to a small mining town in northern Minnesota. We moved into a small, single level bungalow when my brother was barely a year old. I was four. I remember hearing that they got a good deal on the house and that no one had resided in the home for quite sometime. My parents were excited to have their first home with a garden and backyard for us kids to play in. My parents started remodeling the home the following summer. They started redoing the basement, the walls, rebuilding the deck, landscaping the yard, and whatever changes they put their mind to. These remodels occurred throughout the fourteen years we lived there.

As soon as these changes began, the warmth of the home changed. I felt uneasy when walking into my room, especially. My first experience, I remember being in my room and asleep in my bed. I woke up in the middle of the night from the sound of something falling and hitting the floor. I got up and walked over to the light switch to turn on the light. On the floor was one of my porcelain dolls, Samantha (the first in the collection my grandmother started for me when I was born). I examined her. Not a crack. I figured she must have been too close to the edge of the shelf, grabbed my chair from my vanity set, climbed up on it, and placed her back on the vanity shelf.

The following day, I came into my room and noticed that the dolls had been rearranged and Samantha was face down on the floor once again. I placed her back in her spot and proceeded to rearrange my dolls back into their places.

I woke up again that night from the same instance I did the previous night, only all of my dolls fell to the floor. My mother came in to see what the noise was and I showed her the dolls fell and I didn't know why. She helped me put the dolls back on the shelf and tucked me into my bed. Some time later (I think I was nearly six if not six), my brother came into my room asking if he could stay with me. I remember telling him things were okay and he was just having nightmares. He insisted that he couldn't go back into his room. I asked why and he said he couldn't sleep with the man staring at him. I asked him what he meant and he insisted there was a man standing over his bed.

I walked to his room thinking maybe someone had gotten in through the window and saw no one. I told him to go back to bed and things were fine. He got upset with me and insisted on telling mom so I set up a bed on the pull out mattress. That same night, I woke from a breeze. I got up and shut the window and crawled back into bed. The window opened. I sat up, confused, and got up to repeat the same steps a few more times before witnessing the window open and close on its own. I went over to the window and stared at it a moment. Then, I heard breathing over my shoulder. It was warm and I could feel it. I turned around and caught a glimpse of a face in the vanity mirror, a man staring through the window. Blonde hair, blue eyes, a green jacket. I looked back and the window and there was no one, glanced back into the mirror and saw the same face. I screamed, woke my brother up, and started to tell him. My mom came running in and asked what I was screaming about. I told her what happened. She insisted we both were dreaming and tucked us both into bed. My brother insisted on staying with me. I remember him telling me he believed me and that he saw him too.

The activity increased from there. At one point, I watched my stereo (one of those old cassette players where you had to press the button and hold it down to get it to stop) stop, pause, rewind on its own. The step repeated to the same song over and over. This is probably the reason why I can't listen to the song Thriller anymore. I unplugged the CD/cassette player only to hear music coming from it later in the day. I went back into the room and the machine was still unplugged. I checked the back for a spot for batteries and found none.

The dog would bark at thin air from time to time. She'd walk over to the hallway and flip out, growl, and if I looked up, I would see him peering from the hallway, smiling at me.

Sometimes we'd hear walking through the house, walking up the staircase from the basement, and the same breathing while we slept. We'd get a feeling like someone was sitting at the end of our beds and walking between the rooms while checking on us.

Another time, I remember sitting in my room with a friend and hearing my pet bird talking to himself. I asked the bird who he was talking to. He would say "Steve." I asked if Steve was his imaginary friend and his answer was, "No. He lives here." I asked him what he meant and he said "Steve. Died. Here." My friend asked me if my bird was possessed and I simply ignored it for the time being. I was freaked out and didn't want my friend to know that my brother and I had been having experiences that we couldn't explain. When my friend left, I asked the bird to talk to me about Steve. The bird just stared at me. I had to figure out a way to get him to talk. I asked him what he and Steve talk about. The bird stared at me without a word. I then asked if he could see Steve. He stuck his head out of the cage bars and nodded his head up and down. I asked him if he talks to him every day and got the same reaction, a nod. I asked him if he thought Steve was bad and got a "No." I later told my brother about what happened with the bird.

My brother insisted on trying a Ouija board to connect. I was terrified to as I firmly believed nothing good could come from a Ouija board and opted out. He used it with a friend instead, from what I was told. I became deathly ill at the age of thirteen, not long after my brother used the Ouija board, and the events became more frequent and became darker. I started seeing more than just Steve in the home. There was also an elderly woman who would often be seen "gardening" the garden early in the morning, shadow figures that I couldn't explain, and even noises. My bunkbed would shake violently at times too as if several people were climbing the ladder and racing to the top. I thought that maybe being as sick as I was meant I was seeing things. I wasn't sure if it was my sickness that caused the new events.

At that point, I hadn't known my brother actually brought the Ouija board into the home. He decided to tell me once I got my Great Aunt involved as I had explained to her I was having suicidal thoughts and couldn't figure out why. I was very religious and it was not normal with how much I value life. Our Aunt is a spiritual expert of sorts and I wanted a second opinion. Doctors weren't listening when I had consulted to figure out if it was medically related. They concluded I was a dramatic teenager seeking attention. I wanted that second opinion and from someone I trusted with this "supernatural activity" confession that needed to be put out there. My brother wanted to keep it between us. She insisted that I talk to a priest about the happenings and took me to the Catholic church where I explained the happenings to the reverend.

He was in awe of the details I had to say and believed that the initial happenings could have been spiritually related as I had been ill for years and didn't know it. He came up with a theory of a "spirit guide" of sorts and referred to "Steve" as the Arch Angel "Gabriel" at times. I remember asking why only my brother and I would be experiencing these events. He had indicated that Gabriel appears to children who are close to death and could use aliases. This was a first for me. I had told him I was sure this was not Gabriel and was something else, especially with the darker entities coming around more and more. I informed him that this "Steve" didn't come around as often since my brother's Ouija board incident. I had felt more comfortable when Steve was around by that point. He came to the conclusion that maybe these darker entities scared the "comfortable" spirit away.

On a day that my parents were away at work, I had arranged for the reverend to come to the house once I was done with school (I was fifteen or sixteen) and bless the home. He hesitated to walk inside at first and indicated that something didn't want him there. He did come into the home after some time and proceeded to bless the homestead. I, however, was not allowed in the house until it was over.

We moved out of the home when I was sixteen or seventeen. I had quit seeing Steve.

One year ago, I went back to the home for a visit and knocked on the door to see if I could pick apples from the apple trees I had planted as a child. While talking to the new home owner, I caught a glimpse of Steve staring out my old bedroom window, waving at me, and mouthing some words that I could not understand. The woman looked at me and asked if I was alright. I nodded, thanked her for letting me pick the apples, and went on my way.

I returned to the home with a pie I baked as a thank you for them. She thanked me and insisted I didn't have to do that. Standing back in the hallway was Steve smiling at me as if I had never left the bungalow.