My Personal Experiences With Three Separate Hauntings

I am a 19 year old college student in the United States. I live in one of the most haunted cities in America, or so I was told, shortly before moving here.

I have always felt I was a hypersensitive, or someone who is more susceptible to the "other side." It all started when I was young, and I saw a terrifying apparition appear behind me on the staircase, in the form of a mutilated hand, reaching around the corner, and the smell of burning wood (keep in mind that 3 of my 5 experiences were in different cities, and on (my first) in a totally different state).

Fast forward 6 years from the mutilated hand incident. I was laying in bed one night, and I hear my name being called. I look up, awakened, and see a shadow of a person sitting on my bed. I can feel the pressure of the person on the mattress, and suddenly I hear a girl giggle, and then the apparition was gone, leaving behind the smell of (again) burning wood.

As you can tell, so far my experiences have been pretty mellow, nothing too crazy happening, just things that could be passed off as my eyes and ears playing tricks on me. I also suffered night terrors as a child, so this could have been another incident. I passed them off as such, and didn't ever really think anything of it, until I moved to the city I now reside in.

I lived in a 2 story, mint green historic house, over a hundred years old. Creaks and things of that nature are to be expected, so don't look for any of that here. The first event happened when I was alone. I was washing dishes downstairs, and above the sink is a window. When it is dark and the light is on in the living room, you can clearly see everything in the living room, almost as if you were looking at in inverse of the room. I heard small footsteps coming from behind me. The pitter patter of small feet on the ground, scurrying around the room. I looked up in the window, half expecting to possibly see my 5 year old cat up and about.

The reality was much more frightening. I saw a shadow dart towards the staircase, sitting just outside of the field of vision, and heard someone running up the stairs, where there is a bathroom and the 3 bedrooms. I heard a door slam, and a small girl screaming. I walked up the stairs, anxiously, after finishing the dishes, to see all the doors wide open, or locked, as they usually are. Inside my room, I found my cat, scared in huddled in a far corner of the room, acting panicked. He was obviously spooked, and it has been proven that animals can see thermal, and therefore are believed to be able to see ghosts and the paranormal.

The next event was almost exactly 3 weeks later, but was not witnessed by me, instead by my fiance, who is a skeptic... Or at least was. I had to work early that morning, and apart from the two of us, only one person was home, a roommate of ours who is elderly and rarely wakes up before the evening. As she tells it, nobody had cooked that morning, and she had taken me to work, as is customary for us, and upon returning she found that the stove was on high, and the oven had been preheated. The kitchen was really hot and had obviously been on for a while. My work is about a 15 minute drive. The stove and oven were both believed to be off when we left. She smelt burning wood all through the kitchen, which was a cause for concern, as our house is of course made almost entirely of wood, and paneling. We dismissed this as possible signs that our roommate sleepwalks, or something of that nature.

A few months later, I came home from work on night rather late, to find my roommate outside on the front porch looking frantic. When I asked him what was wrong, he simply asked where I had been. When I told him I had been at work since the morning, his complexion went as white as snow. He said he heard me calling him about 15 minutes ago, from my room. When he went to investigate, figuring I needed to talk to him about something, he saw my room was empty, so he went around the house, calling my name, and apparently his phone went off, and it was from an unknown number. When he answered it, he heard my voice, sounding pained, asking for help. So, as a reliable person, he called the police, who made it to the house shortly after I did.

Upon looking at my call log, I found out that my phone wasn't the one used to call. The police thought we may have been trying to prank them, so they gave us a warning, and told us that the next time they had to come out here, it had better be for good reason.

Fast forward to about 5 months later, and the reason I ultimately moved out. I had a few friends over and we were smoking sheesha from my hookah, as we usually do. The three of us were the only ones in the house at the time. One of my friends, who's name shall remain confidential, we shall call him "James", went downstairs to grab some tea. He claims that on the way down the stairs he heard the sound of a television show, but once he reached the edge of the living room, he claims the sound shut off. As he walked out of the kitchen, with the tea in hand, it cut back on. With myself being the only one who believed in my house being haunted, though I had told them stories before, we laughed about it and went back to smoking sheesha.

However, about 15 minutes later, we all heard something that to this day, chills our bones. The sounds of a TV show. Again, we were the only ones home, and the sounds had not been there before. We all went quiet and looked at each other. My other good friend, "Stan", laughed and said the ghost was watching TV, and no sooner had he said that, then the sound cut off and footsteps could be heard.

Thinking one of my roommates were home, we went outside my room to see who it was, however nobody was home and all my lights were on, as they had been previously off. We shut all the lights off and hurried upstairs. We sat there for a while, until my fiance returned home from work. As she got to my room, she asked why all the lights were on downstairs. Now, keep in mind, we had JUST turned them off. At that time, the TV had cut on, as the power in my house went out. Yes, I said that right. EVERYTHING went out, and the television cut on.

We went down to investigate, but everything was off, these were just sounds we were hearing. As we sat in disbelief of everything, the Television suddenly cut on again, right in front of our eyes. Figuring maybe the remote was in the couch, we laughed, however the laughter was cut short when I realized that the remote was actually sitting face up on the entertainment stand. We took off upstairs, where we shut the door and sat there for a few hours, until everyone was calm enough to leave.

Less than 2 weeks later I found someone to take my portion of the lease and I moved out and into a new apartment. Upon moving out, I spoke with the owners of the house about the previous owners. He said that he bought the house from a new family, who sold it to him for a really cheap price. The young man and woman, were only about 28-30, so he figured they were probably moving closer to home and only needed a few thousand to set up a new place. I asked the property manager if he knew anything about it, and he said the house used to belong to a family of 3, though it was bought from a couple. They had a daughter who was about 8 or 9 years old, as my property manager, had also been their realtor when they sold the house.

With all that said and done, here comes the strangest part. Before one of my roommates lived there, we had another roommate named "Max." One day, we noticed that two rooms had entrance to the attic. A small room meant for a child, and the master bedroom. Being young, we decided to see if we could get into the attic. The attic door, we realized, opened upward, but was deadbolt locked from the inside. What little amount we could open the attic door, we realized we could see boxes, like moving boxes, all marked "Sarah", the name of the little girl.

Was is possible that something terrible happened in that house, resulting in the death of a little girl, and a spirit that just couldn't let go? Was my old house haunted by a spirit who just wanted us to know the truth about what happened?