The House On North Street

The following is a story I have been wanting to tell for years. I have been on this site reading its multitudes of stories for some time, but this is the first time I am submitting my own. This story centers around a home that was in my family for years and the experiences encountered there occurred over the years to many different family members. I will do my best to relay the events as best I remember them and as chronologically as I can.

This home was purchased by my great aunt in 1946 and hosted a sort of extended family there. In addition to my great aunt, my grandparents (Father's side) my dad and his siblings, and assorted cousins lived there on and off over time.

There was a cluttered front porch that opened up into a dining room. The back right corner of the dining room would contain the entrance to the one bathroom in the house. There were two doors that opened off the dining room, one led into the kitchen and another into a middle living room. There were actually 2 small living areas leading toward the front of the house. The kitchen had an enclosed back porch that accessed the backyard. The kitchen also had an enclosed staircase complete with door that led to the 2nd story. The upstairs was a unique layout. The stairs led into a short hallway that opened into a large open area that was used for sleeping. At the opposite side of this room and parallel to the small hall, was another hallway. The first room off this hall overlooked the front porch and street and was the only one that wasn't wired for electricity. The hall led to an attic and off the back of the house, three different bedrooms which all linked together. To get to the 3rd bedroom which was my great aunt's you would have to walk through the other 2. It wasn't really designed for privacy apparently.

I'm not sure when the events actually started, but some of the neighborhood children playing alone upstairs, would come downstairs confused wanting to know who the woman was that was standing at the other end of the upstairs hall. They were certain that all of the adults were downstairs. My great aunt would go upstairs and look around and of course, no one would be up there. There was only one set of stairs and they were in the kitchen which is where my grandparents would camp out most of the day. It was a small town and many parents would just kind of watch the neighbors children by unspoken mutual consent. No one thought of kids wandering in or out or remaining unattended in the house if their playmates (cousins) would wander off.

It got stranger from there. One morning everyone was to leave for a fishing trip and only my Great Aunt and another aunt would be staying behind. My aunt went upstairs to be sure the beds were made and in one of the rooms, someone was apparently asleep huddled under the blankets. When my aunt went downstairs she mentioned to my aunt that someone stayed behind to which my Great Aunt replied she had just seen everyone off that was in the house, she knew everyone had left. This alarmed my aunt who went upstairs and saw the bed now empty but the sheets were rumpled, as if someone had just been in it. My Great Aunt had been downstairs and had seen no one come out of the stairway, while my other aunt was up there. The bed thing seemed to be a recurring issue, many times after all the beds were made they were found messed up again even with only one other person in the house. My relatives say it wasn't the kids wandering in and out because the kids always announced their presence and they could be heard when playing. This also happened after the kids were in school as well.

The sightings continued. One day one of my cousins wanted to know who the woman was upstairs who went into the attic. Of course another search found no one up there.

One cousin stated she had been pushed downstairs, but most of my family said she was kind of clumsy so they wrote that claim off. One of the cousins staying there had went to go downstairs to get a drink of water but as he entered the stairwell he saw a woman standing at the bottom of the stairs. He didn't recognize her but when she started to float up the stairs toward him that put an end to his desire for a drink, and he fled back to his room.

My Great Aunt would be woken up many nights to find a woman rummaging through her trunk at the end of her bed. The unidentified woman would look up and then fade away. Footsteps would be heard on the stairs at night, too many to be discounted as the house settling. Many nights my aunt would come down in the middle of the night and hear the sound of dishes being washed or the the floor being swept. The first time she was confused but didn't question it too much and went back up. The next morning the floor was still dirty and the dishes still dirty and in the sink. Many people had this kind of encounter over the years and to my knowledge no one actually investigated while the noises were heard. I finally heard years later from different family members that while they were having these experiences they rarely spoke of them for fear of being ridiculed and some just flat out refused to believe it was happening!

Finally one day, my dad while a teenager was upstairs getting something from under his bed. His bed was in the big open area upstairs. When he turned around, SHE was right there. It was the closest of the encounters that had occurred to my knowledge. My Great Aunt and grandparents (his parents) were at the kitchen table when he came downstairs apparently white as a sheet. He talked about it then but has clammed up over the years. He described this woman as wearing a purple dress, old fashioned, maybe like something from the 20's or 30's. She also wore a cameo pin. What scared him so bad was that she had no face, just a dark spot where her face should be. Prior to this, most people had only seen her in the dark, but this was in broad daylight. I had heard the story from my grandmother and fascinated I asked my dad about it, but he got kind of short with me and says it was so long ago he couldn't really remember.

My Uncle Pete, who was dating my youngest aunt had some interesting encounters. One night while he and my aunt were snoozing on the couch downstairs, he felt someone tap him on the shoulder and awaken him whispering his name. He came to and saw only my aunt near him sleeping soundly. He caught the movement of someone moving up the stairs. He knew full well that they were alone and so leaving my aunt he pursued the 'intruder' upstairs. He saw someone at the end of the hall go into one of the bedrooms, but when he went in there and turned on the light, no one was in there. As he turned around, he saw this 'person' go into another room further down the hall. When he got to that room, no one was there! This game went on for some time, before he gave up! Another night he came to their house drunk and though his memory isn't the best, he thought my aunt (his future wife) threw him out in the snow! In the morning my aunt told him she had stayed in her room the whole night and no one else had been at home at the time. My Uncle swears it was a stern angry sounding woman who tossed him out in a snow bank! No one admitted to this incident and my aunt says she didn't even know he had come.

In the 80's my Great Aunt leased the house to my aunt, my dad's sister, to have for her growing family while she moved into an apartment. My aunt woke up one night to see someone standing over her. She screamed and turned on the light but no one was there.

My cousin claimed someone grabbed him one night upstairs in the dark. Both of my cousins state that on more than one occasion they had seen a man lying on the floor upstairs and when they attempted to approach him, he would get up and go into another room and lay back down.

My Aunt & Uncle began to remodel the place and knocked out the walls to the downstairs rooms including the kitchen as well as moving the stairs from the back of the house in the kitchen to the front in the living room. They were making the whole downstairs one huge open area and in doing so found what appeared to be the bones to a hand, which they assumed to be a monkey's paw. They threw them out and didn't have them analyzed or notify anyone of what they had found. My other Uncle had told me that he had knocked a hole in the wall of the room upstairs without electricity and had found a mummified hand there. He also tossed it without telling anyone, god only knows why? This same Uncle one time entered my Great Aunt's bedroom while she was still staying there and saw a woman standing near the trunk, she appeared to looking for something in the trunk and promptly disappeared upon being discovered. I did hear that for a while, the footsteps on the stairs stopped and then eventually resumed. I guess moving the stairs must have confused the ghost for some time!

There is a 2nd part to this story, containing my own experiences there but it's so long already, I figured I'd split it into 2 parts. I wanted to include as much as know, not to make a longer story but to try and give a complete picture. I have always enjoyed the stories on here that were rather detailed. I will be glad to answer any questions I can. Be aware many of these older relatives involved have passed on, so questioning certain people is not always an option here.