We Should Have Moved

I've always believed in ghosts but never had an experience myself until about two years ago. This is my first attempt at writing it all down so be kind, may be kind of rambling.

Summer of 2013 I had just graduated college. My then boyfriend (now husband, same-sex couple) and I decided to take the plunge and move in with each other. We didn't have ties to anywhere in the state so we went on vacation in Charleston and ended up deciding to stay. After over a month of living in one of those extended stay hotels we began really looking around for a permanent residence. Nothing, however, was in our price range. Then I got the call. Cute little two bedroom home for rent at just what we could afford. We viewed the home, and should have said no right then.

Let me be clear on the state of this house, just to set the scene in your mind. The house itself was two bedrooms, one bath. No central heating or air, a glass pane missing from every window except the master bedroom, no working stove, no yard to speak of, and in the middle of one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in North Charleston. The landlord told us he was fixing up the house and it would be ready by the time we were to move in and we believed him. That didn't happen.

Soon after we moved in, we realized that on top of the less than ideal living conditions there was another problem in this house. It started the first night we moved in. Normally I can acclimate to new surroundings very easily (I never felt uncomfortable in any living situation I was in in college) but this night I was very on-edge and could not sleep. My boyfriend snoozed peacefully beside me but I just laid on this mattress on the floor and stared up at the sealing. Then I heard it, an unmistakably human sound coming from the living room. I woke up my boyfriend in a panic telling him someone was in the house, so he instantly jumps up and patrols the house... Finding no one. He came back to bed (kind of annoyed that I woke him from a deep sleep) and that was it.

After that both of us just had an uneasy feeling in the house. Then my boyfriend started noticing things. It started with shadows. I would be in one room and there would be a shadow in the hallway twenty foot away from me. Then footsteps. Day or night didn't matter. Then one morning he woke up before me and went to brush his teeth. When he walked back by the bedroom the covers were being pulled off of me in a straight line. It wasn't like they were falling, they were moving in a completely straight line down the bed as if someone was sitting on the floor and pulling from both ends (and yet he let me continue to sleep...).

Then we got two dogs, and the dogs began noticing things too. It could be completely calm and silent and they would sit up and stare at something, then watch "it" move away. They would bark at nothing, then sit back down just as calm as can be.

Around this time we both had jobs and one of us would normally be out of the house. One morning I sat in the living room on the phone when I heard loud footsteps coming from the hallway. I wouldn't say I brushed it off, but I definitely decided not to pay attention.

We had a lot of these little occurrences but three stand out for me... One night we were in bed and I had just gotten to sleep when I feel my boyfriend shake me awake. "Do I have a fever?!" he asks. I'm now ready to have to rush him to the hospital, but he was completely cool. "Good," he breathed, "just wanted to make sure I wasn't hallucinating." He then proceeds to tell me that he was just about asleep when he heard a child's voice beside him exclaim "Mom!". Now this is 3 in the morning, no children around, completely quiet outside. He was so creeped out he couldn't get to sleep.

Another time I had a friend over while cable was being installed. I was in the kitchen with my friend and she suddenly asks me where the cable man is. I tell her that he's outside and has been for the past hour or so. The color drains from her face and she tells me she had just heard a door creek open and saw a shadow move past the hallway. We were the only two in the house.

But the most freaky occurrence happened a few months before that. I came home from work about 9pm and every light in the house was on. My husband is a stickler about turning lights off when they aren't being used so I knew something was up. He comes out of the kitchen and tells me that he is terrified. According to him he was cooking and all of a sudden he heard loud heavy footsteps in a circle in the hallway. Even the dogs look up and watch whatever it is move around. He tries to ignore it and go back to cooking and then out of the corner of his eye he sees what he can only describe as a child's face peek around the corner and watch him cook. That was the most terrified I have ever seen him.

Things slowly began to settle down and by the time we finally moved (after a year and a half) there was little to no occurrences left. When things were very active I brought in a paranormal team who did two investigations on the house and found nothing. They told me that whatever it was was not an intelligent haunting, more like residual (think of burning toast and smelling it in the kitchen for hours.) It probably didn't even know we were there.

Whatever it was left an impression on us and we still talk about our first haunted house. After that we moved more into the country and had a much more peaceful experience. There have been a few very minute instances that creeped us out but nothing like before. We do have to wonder if what was there may have followed us and will keep doing so.