First of all I thought I submitted this in early December and it was titled "Voices". Since it still hasn't posted, I have remembered more things about the house and added to the story and have resubmitted it under this new name so if you start to read this same story, I apologize for submitting it twice.
I've lived in a lot of homes throughout my lifetime and experienced many peculiar things. Some homes have had no activity at all, others have had quite a bit. I am writing about the first home we moved to in upstate, New York.
When I was 9 years old, my family moved to beautiful western New York. Most people think of New York City whenever I tell them I've lived in New York; however, the state is predominantly rural with lots of farmland, rolling hills and mountains. I've lived in 3 homes in this state, all being in the country. The first home was on a farm, the next was in between 2 dairy farms and the last was butted up against the Alleghany forest and with all 3 homes, I had Amish for neighbors, just to give you some indication of the area.
We moved into a huge 3 story (4 if you count the very large attic), early 40's farm house. In the corner of our kitchen was a door leading down to the basement. At the bottom of the stairs on the right was a fairly large "meat hanging room", which was very creepy to me and I didn't like going down that way. I preferred coming into the basement area through any other door except the one that would make me pass by that room.
The meat room didn't look like it was built at the same time as the rest of the house. It looked like someone had dug a huge room out of the ground. The walls were made out of a different material/mortar altogether. It seemed to stay much cooler than any other part of the basement even during the hottest months of the year. We raised cows, pigs and chickens mostly and this was the room where my dad would cut up the meat and also do his curing. On the wall that was facing the front of the house was a door that had been closed off with bricks and mortar, so it appeared that the door would have lead out into and under our front yard. I'm explaining the lay out of this meat room because I think it might have some correlation between it and the voices.
When we first moved there, my mom did some research on the history of our town at the public library. She found that there were homes in the area and even on our road that had underground railroads to help the slaves escape during the 19th century. The previous owners never gave my parents any history about our house other than the original home had burned to the ground and was rebuilt in the same spot in the 1940's, so my mom thought that that's what the sealed off door in the meat room could have been used for.
One weekend my Aunt and Uncle came to visit from Boston. They wanted my mom and dad to show them around the area and stop and get a bite to eat. My brother and I didn't want to go so he, being 13, offered to babysit me while they went out. We were playing upstairs where our bedrooms were. The top floor bathroom was located on the back side of the house that extended across the entire width of our home. It had a large laundry shoot that we used to drop our dirty laundry down that would fall into a basket in the basement. My brother had the idea to take a rope and climb down the shoot.
As we were getting things set up, we started to hear voices in the basement coming from the shoot. It sounded like men and women talking. We assumed our parents were home so we decided to eavesdrop in on their conversation. We both leaned in the laundry shoot to hear what was being said. We could hear people talking but not anyone familiar, nor could we figure out what was being said even though it sounded like they were speaking English. My brother looked out the bathroom window to see who it could be but didn't see anything so we figured it had to be our parents.
We decided to sneak down to the basement and jump out and scare them but there was no sign of anyone down there. Everything was still locked up like they left it. We flew back up the stairs and ran to my brother's bedroom and locked the door.
When our parents got home, we asked them if they came home earlier and they told us they hadn't. This was the first time we heard voices and let me just add, the TV was not on nor any radios. This was clearly people having a conversation in our basement.
About a year later... My brother had moved his bedroom downstairs in what used to be "the study". One afternoon my mom, dad and I went to the grocery store and left my brother home. While at the grocery store, I heard my name paged over the intercom to come to the front of the store for a phone call. Who would be calling me at the grocery store? I answered the call and it was my brother on the other end. He asked me to stay on the phone with him because he was scared but not to tell mom and dad. I asked what was going on and he told me that he was laying on his bed resting and a voice started to talk to him (in his head). It told him to go to the gun cabinet and take the shotgun out and to shoot himself. He said he felt like something was pulling him toward the gun cabinet. I told him to not listen to the voice! Even though I was just 10, I knew that something evil was going on. I stayed on the phone until my parents finished with their shopping and told him we would be home soon and not to move! Once we were home, everything was ok.
My brother had a set of twin beds in his room and asked me to sleep down in his room one night. He woke me up in the middle of the night and asked me if I could hear the voices. I told him I couldn't hear anything. He told me to get on his bed with him. We sat and listened intently and I finally heard what sounded like 2 or 3 people engaged in a conversation in the basement. Like before, we couldn't make out a word being said even though it sounded like they were speaking English. We sat and listened and after about 10 minutes, the conversation seemed to end. I honestly don't remember if we stayed in his room or wound back upstairs that night, but my brother moved back upstairs to his old bedroom right after that.
Besides the voices, other strange things happened that we couldn't find any logical explanation for. For instance, tapping coming from the windows on the second floor. Also, one night I was in the living room sitting on the floor in front of our coffee table cutting out paper dolls and something hit the coffee table 3 times so hard that I felt the vibration hitting the table. My mom heard the noise of the smacks and we both jumped up and yelled for my dad.
One more thing... The winters in upstate New York can be pretty brutal with temperatures that can go into the single digits to sub-digit numbers and with the wind chill, can reach -60 degrees. (Back then anyway.) One morning while everyone was gone, my mom decided to go out and get the mail. It was frigid cold that morning. She put her heavy house coat on and her winter boots. After all, she was just going to the end of the driveway and back. She kept the kitchen door ajar that lead onto our large screened in side porch. On her way back to the house she heard the kitchen door slam shut. She hurried back to the porch and went to open the kitchen door and it was locked up tight. It was clearly shut and locked which really scared my mom because she had purposely left the door unlocked and ajar. She had no choice but to walk to the neighbor's house that was about 1/8 of a mile away. She almost didn't make it to their door before collapsing. If she had to go much further, she could have easily frozen to death before reaching help.
She called my dad home from work to take her back to the house. When they got there, the door was just as she left it. My mom always stood by her story and said that she had made sure the door to the house was unlocked and slightly open and there was no wind or draft that would have caused the door to slam shut like it did and even if it was possible, she still made sure the door was unlocked.
I hope this wasn't too long and thanks for reading...
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