A Rental Haunting

This story takes place from November 2004 to September 2005. My family had recently moved in a rental home in Racine, Wisconsin. When I first looked at this home it was so bright and it felt light and peaceful. I loved it at first sight.

I only had 2 children at the time and the house had 4 bedrooms and a large attic that is accessible from the second floor right next to the upstairs bedrooms. The house had so much space, as well as a laundry room right next to the kitchen. The laundry may have been a mud room at one time as the back door was located in there and if you went through the laundry room the basement stairs were there. The living room is located right under the attic. Between the living room and dining room is the bathroom with a large closet outside the bathroom. Sorry I am taking so much time talking about the house but I just want you to know the layout.

The activity in the house started slowly. The first night I was unpacking and putting some things in the closet by the bathroom and a toy flew off the top shelf and hit me in the head. At the time I had just thought maybe I bumped the shelf from underneath and didn't realize it.

My daughter's room was on the first floor and the rest of us were upstairs. Before you ask, my daughter was always getting sick and for some reason her bedroom was the hottest in the house and I thought it would help her not get sick any more. She never was sick anymore but she started sleeping more than a normal one year old. Whenever she was in her room she sleep sometimes 15 hours, not even waking up when I would give her a bottle or change her. During this time she was not hitting the growth milestones, she wouldn't walk or even talk, only crawl. After a couple of months I started noticing bruises on her. One time her eye was black and she had a goose egg on her head. It just came out of nowhere. I had put her to bed like any other night and in the morning she was bruised up. This freaked me out and I moved her crib into my room.

My son's (he was 2) room was right next to mine, but since the first day he was terrified of his room. If I put him in his room he would just scream and cry until you got him out of there. I remember times when he would fall asleep with me and I would lay him down in his room and within 10 minutes he would wake up screaming. He would be so scared. So now both of my children were sleeping in my room.

After several months in the house, I started to feel a change in the environment. It was not the same feeling that was there when I fell in love with the house.

During this time I had thrown a birthday party for my children and my family was over (my mother's side has always been in tune with the other side either being able to see, speak to, or hear them). My grandma was in the kitchen and she was just looking around and appeared to be listening. This made me nervous and I remember telling her if she sees or senses something not to tell me because I didn't want to be scared in my house so she didn't. As she was leaving though, she looked at me and said, "Be careful and watch your babies" (those words freaked me out).

About a month later I was cleaning the kitchen floor on my knees when the door separating the kitchen from the laundry room started to shake. I remember looking up from the floor and it stopped. As soon as I started cleaning again it would shake even harder. This went on for at least 5 minutes when I just got up and went and sat on the couch. I remember trying to convince myself that it had to have been a breeze.

After the kitchen episode the activity began to increase. It was now July and I was sitting in the living room with my kids watching cartoons when suddenly we started to hear large noises coming from above us, the attic. It sounded like stuff was just falling to the floor. We never used the room and I knew there was nothing in there to cause it. I turned the volume up and tried to ignore it. After about 20 minutes of this and not feeding into it, I just felt like someone was staring at me. This started to freak me out, I froze. I don't know how long I sat there but the next thing I hear scared 10 years off my life. I heard a blood curdling scream come from my daughter, coming from upstairs (I have no recollection of my children leaving my side). I ran as fast as I could up those stairs to find my daughter screaming on the floor with blood all over her face and my son standing in front of her with a zoned out look, holding a hard wooden napkin holder. I yelled his name and it was like a light came back on. He dropped the object and started crying. At this moment I just grabbed the kids and ran out of the house. We sat in the car outside and I was cleaning my baby up when I felt like something was watching me from my son's window. I started the car and went to my mom's house in the next town over.

We returned a couple nights later. I remember being scared to go home. That night the kids and I were in my room sleeping when I started hearing muffled voices coming from downstairs. I heard the laundry door slam and then heavy footsteps coming running up the stairs. I was laying there petrified, my bedroom door was locked. I finally got the nerve to check it out. I had my children's safety to think about. I grabbed the only weapon I had, a screwdriver, and started walking around the house. Nothing was out of place, the house was still locked up. I called my mom and she said she would pray for us. After a long night of being locked in my room and huddled in the corner with my children, morning finally came.

That was my last night in that house as my mother and family showed up with u-haul.