When I was younger, around seven or eight, my mom's husband bought a house on the outskirts of Muncie, Indiana near the old Ball family mansion. It was built around the 1900's on an Indian burial ground. It was huge and even had a tennis court and a pool/pool house, but it was pretty cheap because it had been vacant for two years and was pretty rundown.
Our house was previously owned by an old women and her husband. Before them, it was owned by the woman's family who had been pretty wealthy. The actress that the movie, "Mommy Dearest" was based on even stayed in our house once. The woman had died in the house in the master bedroom, and her husband had died in a plane crash. The old servant quarters were now apartments and a man named Jack had lived in one when the old couple were still alive. He informed us that the couple were now buried in the woods behind the house because they loved it there so much. He also told us that a little boy had drowned in the pool during the 1920's. Even though I was little, I was very interested in the history of the house. That is, until all the weird things started happening.
When we first moved in, my mom and I had been sitting in the sun room when we kept smelling really strong old woman's perfume. We looked everywhere but couldn't really seem to tell where it was coming from. Nothing else really happened until a few weeks later.
My room was on the end of the house and you had to go through a hallway and another room to get to it. My room was also the only room in the house that had carpet. The stairs curved and led into the hallway. Then there were French doors you had to open in order to get into the other part of the hallway and the other room which lead to mine.
My bed was faced towards the door so I could see into the other room. At night, I would always hear heavy footsteps walking up and down the stairs. Then they would go into the hallway through the doors and enter the other room. One night was really horrible because I heard them coming through the other room, and then when it entered my room it stopped. I could hear a faint breathing noise. Sometimes I would go get my mom but she would tell me I was just imagining things, even though later on she admitted she heard things all the time, too. Most of the time, I would just hide under my covers and cry.
When I was on summer vacation one year my mom would sometimes leave me home alone so she could go to the grocery or the gas station, something along those lines. I would always see weird black things out of the corner of my eye when I was sitting watching tv in the living room, but when I would turn to look it would be gone. One time, when I was completely alone in the house, I heard something moving upstairs. When I muted the tv, I heard loud heavy thumping and then heaving footsteps moving quickly back and forth through the hallway and the master bedroom.
I was never really terrified to the point where I thought they were going to harm me. I'm pretty sure they were just curious to see who had moved into their beloved house.
Towards the end before my mom and my step-dad got a divorce, I had a few friends over to the house. We went down in the basement which had a old coal burner, another room with a giant safe that was broken, a steam room, and the laundry room. My friends and I were pretty curious about the coal burner, so we opened it up and found a ton of old newspaper clippings and animal bones, which was pretty odd.
Another weird thing that happened was that we always used to smell tobacco smoke, like someone was smoking a huge pipe. When we told Jack about it, he said the husband who had died in the plane crash always walked around with a giant pipe in his mouth.
Even though I moved out of that house I will never forget my experiences there. I am just thankful that our ghosts were nice ones and not there to harm us!
I was wondering if anyone else has ever smelled anything out of place in their houses and if that is common?