I was born in Washington DC and lived in an old home in a neighborhood near an area called Mount Pleasant. My parents were renting the basement to a couple who recently came to this country and their three small girls. I was a small child so I'm remembering this story as it was told by my Mother and Sister, both now deceased. The story I'm about to tell happened in 1961.
One day the Father was supposed to be watching the three girls while the Mother was at work and left them unattended while he ran an errand. The eldest girl started a fire and both the basement and part of the first floor became engulfed in flames. Unfortunately the three girls were killed and the house sustained enough damage to force my family out until repairs could be made.
My parents were working when the fire broke out and my Sister and Brother were at the movies. I was being taken care of by my Godmother. The house was ultimately repaired and we moved back in living there another three years before my parents sold it and moved to the suburbs.
Years later I remember my Mother telling us a story about the weird occurrences that went on just days prior to the fire. She said that for three straight nights before the fire there was knocking on our front door during the evening. The weird part was that the screen door was locked so it would have been impossible for someone to knock on the door itself. My Mother and Sister also claimed that they remember something knocking on their bedroom doors at night again for three days before the fire. My Mother was a very religious woman from Mexico and firmly believed in the paranormal as did my Sister.
When I was four, right before we moved out of the house, my Sister, Brother, a family friend and myself were home one night when scraping noises could be heard coming from downstairs. It sounded like the furniture was being pushed around on the concrete floor. By this time there was no one living in the basement. The noises became very loud and we all went running screaming and crying upstairs. My Sister called our neighbor and he called the police. After the basement was searched and nothing out of the ordinary found everyone left.
My Sister also said she remembers hearing the laughter of small children when she would be ironing downstairs and my Dad said he would often get blasts of cold air shooting through him when he was in his work shop down there.
We moved out in 1965 and the house is still there. The neighborhood has gone through a huge transformation and we've always wondered if those little girls are still there or have finally found peace.
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