Childhood Tormentors

In 1986 my parents purchased and moved into a house. It was an older home and had been inhabited before. I have heard that during the 1970's it was owned by the boys basketball coach from the local high school; supposedly he was a pederast and was fired for making advances towards his team members. This is unsubstantiated.

I was born in 1988 and lived there until we moved to another house across town, in early 2004 (I was 15 1/2 at the time). During my childhood I experienced a variety of troubling phenomena and was very, well, troubled as a result. I constantly felt as if I was being watched, followed, and having my thoughts read; I also felt that something was listening to me while I spoke. As a result I was always afraid and could never be left alone; I was always running up and down stairs, looking behind me and looking over my shoulder.

There was also visual and auditory phenomena. Often out of the corner of my eye I saw shadow figures darting through rooms and then disappearing. One night in the summer of 1998 I heard guttural laughter emanating from the far corner of my room; it seemed to echo and multiply itself before eventually fading and ending. In early 2003 I heard a few (2-3) tortured sounding voices calling my name, again in my bedroom.

The phenomenon was the most intense in the upstairs (my bedroom) and in the backroom of the basement. It seemed to decline and eventually end as I entered puberty.

At the time both my parents were staunch evangelical Christians who believed firmly in the existence of spirits. Oddly enough, however, my father did not take me seriously and dismissed it as a form of separation anxiety. As a result he took no action on my behalf. In hindsight I should have been taken to a therapist (to determine if this was simply a product of my mind and if so, why was my mind producing it). If it was not they should have consulted a religious official to have the house examined and, if need be, cleansed.

Alas, he did neither. In fact it didn't even occur to him to do either and I lived in torment as a result. (His lame band-aid solution was to stay up with me until I fell asleep).

I was discussing this with my mother recently and what she said surprised me. She conceded to me that she too had experienced exactly the same phenomena. However, she began to feel it when they first moved in (1986) and for her it lasted until we moved (early 2004), basically the entire time she lived in the house. She even discussed it with my father.

For his part he maintains he never experienced anything out of the ordinary there, except for a vague sensation of darkness once in the back of the basement.

This has left me with nothing but questions:

Was there a connection between the activities of the previous inhabitant and what I experienced?

Why, despite my parents' religious faith, were the entities capable of entering our home and afflicting us?

Why did my mother and I experience it but not my father?

Why was my father so passive and complacent in dealing with it?

Any and all responses would be greatly appreciated.