I was 14 years old, living with my mom in rural West Viriginia. My Father had passed away that year from lung cancer, he was a coal miner and like many men in that profession, he developed black lung and lung cancer. He was only 59 when he passed. The house my parents bought was a strange little two bedroom house. The floor plan was odd. Upon entering the house one would find oneself in the kitchen, straight ahead was the only bathroom, just off the kitchen was my room complete with one of those pull down attic accesses, with the fold out wood stairs. Past my bedroom was the living room and off the living room to the rear of the house was the bedroom my parents took, which became known as the back bedroom. Creepiest room ever!
I still have nightmares about that back bedroom. One could stand in the living room just outside the doorway to that room and feel the cold air wafting out of the room, raising goosebumps on your arms. We did not have central air conditioning.
This is where this story actually begins... On a school night one evening, I was in my room listening to music, I had just discovered The Beatles and was fast becoming a second generation Beatles fan. It was 1979 and I just could not believe how I could have overlooked these guys and their music.
As I lie there in my room listening to Abbey Road for like the 7th time in a row that night, I became aware that the atmosphere in the room had changed, the air felt heavy and thick and there was something off about the way the lighting looked in the room now, it seemed darker somehow. There was a sound, faint at first but it was not coming from my stereo or John, Paul, George or Ringo and it did not fit in with the rhythm of the music. It was people talking, softly at first and then pretty loud but where was it coming from? I silenced the volume on my record player and sat and listened, and it dawned on me, it was coming through the wall from my mom's bedroom, the back bedroom to be exact. Whispers at first, then you could actually feel the vibrato of the male's voice as it resounded off of the walls. There was a woman's voice as well but it was softer, not as loud. I could not make out what they were saying but, it was a pretty lively exchange.
Wondering if maybe we had had company come in with out me hearing them arrive I got up to see who was visiting and why they were in my mom's bedroom. I went out of my room into the kitchen, and looked in the living room where my mom sat watching television. I asked her if she had been on the phone in her room talking to someone and she said no. I told her what I had heard and she just looked at me like I was certifiable.
To this day, I have no idea what I heard that evening. I did not hear those voices again, but that house was definitely haunted. The back bedroom stayed cold, refrigerator cold. My oldest sister Sue stayed in that room when she came home for a visit and told my mom she woke up to see a black figure standing over her. She would not stay in that room again.
I wonder if the voices I heard were residual? If so, wouldn't I have heard them on a regular basis? I saw a lone figure looking out of the window of that room coming home after attending a basketball game at the local high school. Dark figure, curtain pulled back... Disappeared when my brother's headlights shone on the window.
Other odd things happened in the house as well. We came home one evening after grocery shopping to find the attic windows standing wide open. Which was very, very odd since the windows were the old wooden type windows that were locked by a piece of wood on a nail the kind you have to turn to lock. The wood would swell every summer making it very difficult, if not impossible, to open those windows without a crowbar. Plus the windows locked from the inside.
We went up to the attic that night to close the windows and to make sure that there were no wild animals and, mind you, this was middle of summer yet that attic was covered from one end to the other in very, very old leaves. It looked like a violent windstorm had blown in with all these leaves but from where? It was the middle of summer.
Finally, after my mom passed, my sister, niece and I were in the house cleaning things out, distributing my mom and dad's furniture, knick-knacks and what-have-yous to those family members that wanted them, the rest was to go to charity. The bedrooms, both mine and the back bedroom, had been emptied of furniture and now stood empty. We slept on the living room floor in sleeping bags. The creepy back bedroom was just off the living room and so we decided to tie the door to that room shut using hemp rope that my friend brought with her for just that purpose...So, my sister and my friend looped the rope around the bedroom's doorknob, the old metal kind that rattle... And the other end of the rope is tied to the back door's doorknob which was located at a slight angle from the bedroom. They tied that rope tight. Looped it and tied it as tight as they could pull it...
Later on that evening, when the house was dark and quiet, as I lay on the living room floor, my feet pointed in the direction of the back bedroom, I hear the unmistakable sound of the rattling of that old metal door knob like someone is, well, turning it... I laid there terrified, finally fell asleep somehow and when we got up the next morning the door to the back bedroom was opened a good ways and the hemp rope I had watched my sister and my friend tie shut so tightly the night before simply hung limp and slack between the two doors...
To this day, that stands as one of the scariest things I have ever been through. I still dream about that house. The most frightening nightmare I had was when I dreamed that back bedroom was actually a cemetery complete with standing headstones, fog, creepy black trees. You know, the typical scarier than scary cemetery... But this one was in our house.
The house burned down two years after I sold it. I do not know if the new owners experienced anything while there or not. Someone told my brother that the old cemetery used to be located on part of that land. Where the house stood...
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