Wartime Experience In A Haunted House

Greetings. As English is not my native language, I would like to beg your forgiveness for my dull writing. I'm willing to discuss it later in the comments, so feel free to ask.

This experience happened not with me but with my grandfather, back in 1944 or 1945. At these days, he were serving Germany in the last years of the war. He was stationed with his unit in eastern Germany, and as far as I know it, it was winter time, or at least a cold period. Foreign soldiers like himself would usually find their comfort drinking and smoking while the enemy was coming. It was in a German bar that he heard a creepy story about an old abandoned noble household which was haunted.

First of all, some information that I know about the overall situation: As far as I know, the estate was abandoned long before the war, I don't know when it was built, but I would bet my money in XVIII century or earlier. Second, I can't tell you the region where it all happened. I know it were eastern Germany, and that my grandfather also pointed out, in his Catholic mentality, that the reason for this haunting is that in this particular region, noble families married with close relatives, or even brothers\sisters. I hope that someone more versed in German geography than me could point out the region, or even tell me if this practices were common in the countryside.

Anyway, he heard this with a friend, also a soldier, who was serving alongside him. They decided that the best course of action would be, bored as they were, to go to this house, and so they went. They drank to give them courage, which would explain the paranormal phenomena in part, of course (or it were a very well made German prank on the two foreigners), packed their cigarettes (as back in the day, grandpa used to smoke 8 packets a day), and went to the house. As he told me, it were far from the town where they were stationed, and, as rationing of fuel were in place, they walked the distance by foot, even to let the beer run off in the way. When they came to the house, it was dilapidated. Hailing from the petty military nobility, my grandfather could not explain the style of its facade, which is a pity, as the probability of identifying the estate would be greater. A thing he did note, as a good soldier, was that the house wasn't pillaged. Its windows weren't broken, door knobs in place, anything a peasant (or an Hungarian hussar) could take was still there after all that time. He thought that strange. As he recalled, there was a small stair leading to the front door. He remembered testing the wood, and the creaking were acceptable, so he went in. Someone had forced the front door, probably some earlier adventurer or brave drunken soldier, which made his work easier.

He entered the house with his friend, into a small hall. Again, things were dilapidated, but the objects were in place. There were many richly made Austrian plates, some antique weapons, but I do not know what else, as he didn't say. Well, they proceeded to a living room, with a fireplace. I mostly remember the fireplace being mentioned, and some more plates, cutlery and some chairs. He sat in one of them to wait for the thing to happen, as the peasants told him that the supernatural events only took place at midnight. They probably started talking or something, and were nearly giving up when they heard a rasping sound at the fireplace. When they looked, a plate was moving by itself. Startled, they rose up only to find that some things were levitating. They heard the sound of footsteps and an oppressive sensation of hatred towards them. My grandfather tells that the chair in which he just sat started levitating as well, and that objects were thrown at him with full force. Most of them weren't heavy, but some were furniture. He entered in a state of fear in which he did nothing more than run for his life. Such was his terror that when he recollected his self control, he was outside the house, squatting near the stairs in fear. Without knowing how much time had passed, he realized his friend was still inside the house, so he went inside just to find that things were scattered through the floor, and his friend was in fetal position, without making a sound, in a corner of the room. He rushed him out, and they returned to the town, in complete fear.

He says that this friend, later, started to grow white hair, and that the stress of the situation (and the war), made him look a lot older than he was. Later, he moved to the US with his family, and they never met again. Anyway, that's the story. I'll wait for feedback.