The Farm Haunting

The following account took place approximately June of 2002, on a farm west of Hurley, South Dakota.

I was 18, and had just began dating a girl I worked with, but there was a lot of driving involved for us to see each other. We lived better than 50 miles apart, and worked in a city in between us. To spare myself the commute, I decided to move to a farm outside of town with her uncle, who was a friend of mine.

It was more or less a shabby hobby farm, as nobody living there was working the surrounding land. The house was dirty and run down, and the living room would practically flood whenever it rained. I brought myself to deal with it so I could be closer to my girlfriend; besides, I was really only going to be there to sleep.

I had been there about a week, sleeping on the floor in what was pretty much the upstairs "living room" each night, because I never made time to clear all the junk out of what was supposed to be my room. Sleeping on the floor for this long proved to be more than my back wanted to tolerate. One night, around 11:00PM, I had had enough and decided to clear out the room, and move my things in. I was probably at this for 2-3 hours, and finally laid down in my newly remodeled room around 2 am to catch a few winks before I had to be up for a 35 mile drive and a long day at work.

I was awakened by the sounds of bootsteps coming up the stairs, and the hallway light being turned on. It startled me, because both the uncle and the homeowner were away for the week, and my girlfriend had no license, or means of transportation to get to the farm; especially at 2 something AM! I was home alone, and had shut all the lights off before going to bed. As the steps reached the top of the stairs, I squinted my eyes open just far enough to see the silhouette of a man leaning against one side of the doorframe, before closing them again. At this point I believe I have an intruder.

The new set up of my room included a long coffee table against the wall to my right, upon which laid a sword that I use in my study of Japanese martial arts. I made the decision that I'm going to explode out of bed, and simultaneously draw the sword and cut this guy down. I got my breath right, and the very instant I'm about to leap out of the bed, he starts talking to me... But his voice is directly next to my ear. This means in 2 seconds he crossed the hardwood floor to the back of the room without making a sound, knelt down in the 12 inches of space between my mattress and a smaller coffee table, and began speaking as though he had been there all along!

I, however, didn't bother processing all of that fully, because I recognized the voice to be the uncle's. At least I thought so at the time. His room was upstairs next to mine, and I figured he was home early, and on his way to bed had noticed what I had done to the room.

Even the next day I couldn't have repeated our conversation verbatim, but I do remember the first thing he said to me was to the effect of, "I see you got the room all fixed up", and "It looks really nice in here now." We conversed about it for maybe a minute, then he said "Well, goodnight" and the hall light turned off after he left the room.

The next day I went about my routine, went to work, and hung out with my girlfriend for the rest of the night until around 10:00 PM, then went back to the farm to retire for the night. When I got there, I found all the lights on, and the uncle tooling around in the kitchen. He acted all surprised to see me; it was kind of strange. We hung out for an hour and a couple beers, when in the middle of conversation, I asked him about something he had said to me last night when we were talking in my room. He shot me a very confused look, and explained that he had just got back from his trip today, and only a few hours ago at that!

The flood of adrenaline that went through my body at that moment was almost crippling. Unless the "intruder" had bothered to lock the deadbolt as he left, and knew of some way to latch the door chain, and lock all the windows from the outside - I had spoken to a ghost.

- SECOND INCIDENT

Because I had no other place I could go, and because the encounter was relatively friendly, I stayed in the house for a few more weeks. I always had to know when someone else was going to be around though, because I refused to be there by myself! I guess I was always kind of waiting for something else to happen, but nothing ever did.

Then I woke up one morning and started down the stairs. As I came around the wall, and made the sharp left turn halfway down the staircase I caught, with both eyes wide open, the bare foot and leg of a woman, under a white gown, step quickly from the bottom step in front of me. I stopped in my tracks, because there should be no such woman, in any such clothing here right now!

I immediately thought it must be my girlfriend and started calling her name while heading the direction I saw her run. I realized something wasn't quite right, because my girlfriend doesn't wear gowns, dresses, or skirts, and she wasn't responding as I called her name. I searched through all the rooms downstairs, and realized that the uncle and homeowner were both gone, and they were both single anyway. I braved the creepy, cobwebbed basement nobody ever goes into, I went back upstairs and searched those rooms, I even went outside and searched the property, the barn and sheds but there was nobody.

I left after that, and found my girlfriend at her house, waiting for me to show up. When I realized it wasn't her I had seen, we went back, moved my things out, and I have never returned.