Haunted Home/poltergeist Activity And It Followed Us

This is all true. This is not a work of fiction. I wish it was because it was terrible to live through.

I grew up in the Bay Area in California. The house I grew up in was built from the ground up by my father. No previous owners. My father is not a good man (he's done horrible things and is a cruel angry person) and I do believe that a lot of the negative energy he carries was imbued into the building of this home.

Since an early age, I've apparently been surrounded by spirits. Me, my mom, my sister, and my brother all have abilities.

This is not a story of one singular incident. This is a collection of all the paranormal things that happened in my house while I grew up there.

When I was a baby, I used to share a room with my sister (who is 6 years older than me). She said when I was a baby sleeping in my crib, she used to see scary faces floating over my crib and it frightened her so much, she used to bring me into bed with her to keep me safe.

Strange things always occurred in my home and I don't know a single family member that didn't have an experience of some kind (although my father denies ever having any.) Our home was a toxic one. There was a lot of mental/psychological, physical, emotional, and some sexual abuse. I'd say it was a breeding ground for negative paranormal activity.

Some common events that would occur were voices. But it wasn't voices of someone else. It was always the voice of someone in the family. So this entity would mimic. I'd be home alone after school and I'd hear my mom come in the front door and call my name. I'd yell back that I was home and I'd hear nothing. I'd get up to look around and see where my mom was. I'd check the garage and her car wasn't in there. She hadn't even gotten home yet. I was home alone. This type of thing happened to all of us all the time. We'd hear our names being called, by what seemed to be family members, and 99% of the time we were home alone when it happened. If someone was home, it wasn't the person who was calling our name. Oddly enough, no one ever heard my father call for them. It was usually a sibling or my mom's voice.

We'd often feel like someone was right behind us, only to turn to and see nothing. We see things dart out of the corner of our eyes. We had cats in the house, but whatever was darting back and forth out of our peripheral vision was not our cats because it was as tall as a person.

Speaking of the cats, they would randomly stare at certain spots. Their fur would puff up and they'd growl as if being threatened, but nothing was there.

We'd feel tugs or taps on our shoulders or clothing only to turn around and have no one there.

The standard anomaly of things going missing would happen. At the time, each of us blamed each other for stealing something of ours, but as it turns out that wasn't the case. I think it's important to add, that while each of us was being haunted, none of us ever told any other family member what we were experiencing. It wasn't until we were older and things started happening to guests that we started sharing our stories.

Eventually, as we got into our teenage years, this entity took on form. I think because of all the negativity in the home, it just fed this thing and it got to the point where it manifested as form. Our house had a very long hallway (think the original Poltergeist movie) and it had bedrooms all on one side of the hallway and on the other side was just solid wall (with a couple of closet doors). It was dark, long, and scary and at the end of the hallway was the last bedroom. On the side with the bedrooms it went: bedroom, bathroom, bedroom, bedroom, and then at the end of hall (causing an "L" shape) was the last bedroom. The first bedroom was mine, then the bathroom, then my sister's room, and then an office, and at the end of the hall was my brother's room. I bring up the layout of the house because it's important in order to understand how this thing would travel.

It was a dark smoky (but not see-through) black form that would hover in the corner of my bedroom and travel against the wall and go through the wall to the bathroom, then through to my sister's room, then down to the office, and then to my brothers room. And it would randomly travel along that path terrorizing each of us at random times. We always felt like we were being watched. It was an overwhelming feeling of dread and pure terror.

I don't think I ever fully slept while I lived in that house, and I still have trouble sleeping to this day. I used to sleep with a knife under my pillow. I don't know what I thought this could do against an entity, but I felt I should at least have something.

It's M.O. Used to be that it would move things, call out our names, dart around, tap us, all during the day but the poltergeist-type activity happened at night.

I always slept with a night-light on and I'd fall asleep in brief stints (awake for 2 hours and asleep for 45 minutes type of thing). I would randomly wake up to see all of my drawers in my dresser opened, my closet doors open, and my armoire doors also open. I *tried* to shake it off as my sister or brother pulling a prank, but there was no way I didn't hear all of this happening. I was (and still am) such a light sleeper. The first time it happened I walked down to my sister's room and she was fast asleep and so was my brother.

So I'd just close all the doors and drawers and tried to go back to sleep. It didn't happen every night. Frankly, I think it would take turns bothering each of us. Kind of like it was making the rounds and just picked a person to bother that night. Everyone always had horrible nightmares.

My sister (who would also sleep with a light on) used to experience something pulling on her feet while she was asleep. She would feel like her feet were being pulled off of the bed. She would also feel like she was being strangled and couldn't breath. One night she heard a noise that sounded like someone was standing right outside her window. She said she was too scared to pull back the curtain, but she just listened and then heard heavy breathing. The odd thing was the window was closed. That had to be some pretty heavy breathing to hear it through the window if it was coming from outside! When she heard the breathing and then realized the window was closed, it donned on her that it must be *in* the room, not outside and she ran screaming down the hallway and got my mom up. My father justified it as a deer. We have a lot of wildlife in the hills of Northern California (deer, mountain lions...etc) and my father said it must have been a wild animal standing outside her window breathing heavily. Nevertheless my father, per our request, installed a motion-detection light outside.

Afterward, she never heard anything outside her window but we (my sister, my brother, and myself) would hear scratching and footsteps on the roof. This is a one-story ranch-style house with no attic. Again, my father said a raccoon must have climbed up our house and was running across the roof. The motion-sensor lights would go off, but when we looked outside nothing would be there. No sounds of animals running away. Our neighbors were right next door divided only by a fence and a wall of short shrubs. This always happened at night. And again, it was always random.

We had something occurring every day during the day with the voices, the darting shadow, the tapping, and at night something would happen somewhere to someone. Although, again, we never really talked about it until after my sister had studied abroad after high school and came back home to live. Growing up she thought all of it was in her head. It wasn't until she studied abroad and nothing ever happened to her while living somewhere else that she concluded it has to be the home.

After she got home and started experiencing things again, she knew it was something and she wasn't going crazy. She kept her suspicions to herself as to not scare me and my brother because up to this point, she thought she was the only one experiencing things.

The last straw for me was when I was 17. I was trying to go to sleep and I drifted off. When I opened my eyes I couldn't move and couldn't breathe. It felt as if a person were laying on me pinning my arms down. I could feel the hot breath on my face. I couldn't scream or move. It lasted probably 10 seconds, but it felt like an eternity. I finally got it to go away when I thought to myself "GET OFF ME!" It receded down my legs with a cold blast and was gone. I FLEW out of bed screaming down the hallway and got my mom. My brother tried to reassure me that it was sleep paralysis. I would have believed him if I hadn't had bruises on my arms where I was pinned down. I don't know if sleep paralysis can manifest physical evidence, but I was aware that people could hear and see things during sleep paralysis.

It was at that point I started sleeping on the couch in the family room. Two days later my sister started sleeping on the other couch across from me in our family room. There we were, one almost an adult and the other an adult sleeping in the family room because we were terrified of what was in our bedrooms. The activity lessened when we slept in there. As I said, it seem to primarily travel along the route of bedrooms down the hallway. It didn't seem to venture into other areas of the house (at least not at night).

When I asked my sister why she moved to the family room she refused to talk about it. She just said she didn't like being so far away from me.

All of the ghostly activity came out into the open when friends and family started to stay with us.

My brother had a friend who didn't have a great home life so he would stay off-and-on with us and he would sleep in my sister's room since she was sleeping on the couch. He said he didn't like sleeping in there. He said "I never sleep well in there. I feel like I can't breathe and I'm being strangled."

My cousin, who frequently came into town on business, would stay with us, and again, would use my sister's bedroom. He too said he didn't like sleeping in there. He said he felt like he was being strangled and couldn't breathe. He said he also felt like someone was climbing into bed with him. These are grown men being too freaked to sleep in there.

At one point, my grandmother got sick and had surgery. She ended up staying with us for a while and my mom and father put her in my bedroom. After one night in there she said "I won't sleep in there again. There are faces in the corners of the room and they are evil and mean to do harm." They ended up moving her down the hallway to my brother's room (who had moved out at this point).

One by one, people that had no idea what we had been experiencing came out and said they hated those rooms and had bad experiences in there.

It was at that point my siblings and I started to question each other and all our stories came out. We corroborated each other's experiences. The only one that actually saw a full bodied apparition was my brother.

My brother was a big guy. He was an athlete and lifted weights. He also used to sleep with his door closed and locked because he slept naked. He said one night he woke up to a man saying his name in his ear. "Wake up Tim." My brother, being annoyed and wondering how in the hell someone got into his locked bedroom, sat up and saw no one. He shook it off and went back to sleep. A little while later he heard it again, but louder "WAKE UP TIM!" right in his ear. At this point he was pissed and ready to kick someone's butt. He sat up and said he saw a man standing against his dresser. He was dressed all in white with a cane and a bowler hat. My brother said he didn't look evil, but he didn't seem nice either. My brother just said "What the f*ck do you want?!" And it just vanished. He never saw it again.

Eventually, all of us kids moved out. My mom said she never experienced anything there beyond the daytime stuff of shadows and voices.

Years later, my mom ended up sleeping primarily in my sister's old room because my father and her were in the process of separating. My brother and his wife were there from out of state for a visit with their 4 year old son. They slept in my brother's old room and refused to sleep anywhere else. My mom was right down the hall asleep in my sister's room when my nephew (who knew nothing about the house) came in very early in the morning (about 6am) and tried to wake up my mom. My mom told him she was still tired and sleeping and to come snuggle with her instead (which he would usually gladly do). He said no and walked out. A few minutes later he came back in and woke up my mom again and asked her to get up. She said no and that she was tired. She thought this was odd because my nephew is a well-behaved child and usually listens well. After she said no, he started to walk out, stopped, turned around and said "Granny, I need you to sleep somewhere else." Then he pointed to the corner of the room and said "There's a something." My mom did not want to scare him any further because his eyes were as big as saucers and he REALLY wanted her out of that room. So she just got up and walked out with him. It had been about 3 years of just my parents living there, but apparently this thing was still there.

Eventually (after my parents divorce), the house was empty except for my dad. When my parents divorced, all of us kids one by one fell out with my dad (that's a long, non-paranormal story as to why) and we haven't spoken to him in years. From what I've heard, he still lives there alone.

My sister still lived in California but moved to Southern California. I moved out of state and across the country to the East. My brother moved out of the United States and lives in Europe.

At this point, I'm married and have a child of my own. About 6 years ago I was having severe trouble sleeping. I was still having nightmares about that house and every time I have a nightmare, that house is where everything takes place. It doesn't matter what the subject of the dream is, it always takes place there. So I was going through a bout where I wasn't sleeping well and had a feeling of uneasiness. I would dream about being in the darkness--inside whatever this shadow figure was. I was struggling to figure out how to get rid of these nightmares when my sister emailed me and said "I saw the thing again. I woke up in the middle of the night and it was hovering over my face." I told her I was having nightmares about it. We contacted my brother and he said he too was having sleep disturbances and odd things happening. He'd never had a problem at his residence in Europe until then. We figured the thing had gotten bored or was lessening in energy and it started making the rounds between us three again. We all scoured our current homes to find anything that had a connection to that house. I had a nice upholstered chair that my father had made for me in my bedroom. My sister and brother both had found furniture pieces that we had all taken with us when we moved. We promptly got rid of them and the three of us together meditated and drew the entity towards us and one by one each of us stood our ground and took back all our energetic power it had sapped out of us over the years until it shrunk to nothing.

It hasn't bothered us since. It's been 15 years since I've stepped foot in that home and I know my dad still lives there all alone. I don't know if it still hangs out there or if me and my siblings finally banished it. I just know it hasn't been around since we all banded together to rid ourselves of it.

I've encountered other haunted homes and paranormal activity (as have my sister and brother) not related to the entity in our home, but I chalk that up to us all being sensitives. I'll share some of those stories another time.

Thanks for listening. Hope you enjoyed.:)