My parents insist that the old two-story house in which I spent the first 6 years of my life was haunted. Having been such a young child at the time, I don't remember much - except being afraid at night and refusing to set foot in the basement. The house was on a historic street in a small town, right next door to a house where Abraham Lincoln once spent a few nights before his presidency. We lived on the bottom floor and owned the basement, while our neighbors rented out the top floor and the attic.
Various small things happened: lamps swinging, cats pawing and staring at the basement door every night at midnight. My parents would come home to find themselves locked out; the only latch locked being the one they never locked because they didn't have the key. Once, while joking about the house being haunted, my mom and dad witnessed a kitchen shelf randomly collapse. However, there are two instances about which I tell people because they stood out.
The first took place one night when my uncle was in town, staying at our house. That night, he, my dad, and my mom were busy cleaning out the basement. In our unfinished basement, there was a main room.
Attached to the main room, connected by archways, you could enter a side room - and beyond that, another side room. It was in that dark room, in the farthest possible corner from the basement steps, that my parents and uncle found the stone bust of a young woman. Engraved across the bottom was the word EXPECTATIONS.
Wondering why such a statuesquely beautiful object had been shoved away into the darkest corner of the house instead of being displayed above the fireplace, my parents brought it upstairs. Along the way, my mom commented that the object might be haunted - because of how old it looked. Jokingly, my uncle dared it aloud, "Okay, then. Haunt me." And at the time they laughed.
They felt strange after that. The bust was placed on a table in the entrance hallway, and dusted off. I recall my mom saying that something just didn't seem right with that bust being out in the open, in their company.
That night, my uncle was asleep in the pull-out sofa bed in our living room when he awoke to the sound of a loud thud. He sat up to notice that the large painting hanging on the wall just above his head had fallen, landing just inches away. Without question, he attributed the incident to the dare he'd made against that bust. He told my parents about it, and the next day, EXPECTATIONS was back in the basement where it apparently belonged.
The next incident happened when I was about four or five. My mom had a friend named Molly who used to visit us, along with her nine or ten year old daughter Mina. My mom and Molly would catch up while Mina and I played. Molly always claimed to be somewhat of a medium or psychic, but my mom never really thought much of it.
One night, Molly and Mina were sharing the same pull-out sofa bed in our living room. Molly lay awake; the nagging voice of an old woman just wouldn't shut up. "I told you," she kept saying, "I told you I didn't like that color." Over and over again, amidst random indiscernible mumblings. "I told you I didn't like that color. I told you I didn't like that color." Molly thought nothing of it at first until she realized that she couldn't hear any other voices in response - so it couldn't be the neighbors on the floor above.
Besides, the voice was too clear, too nearby. To make matters worse, she noticed that Mina had stirred and could also hear the voice.
The next morning, Molly told my mom about the old lady's parrot-like voice. My mom told her that was strange, because usually the neighbors' conversations couldn't be heard through the ceiling.
Fast forward a month. We were having electricians do work on the wiring above our old drop ceiling in the kitchen - the type where, above newer tiles, there are wires that were added after the original ceiling was built. My mom walked into the kitchen to survey the work and noticed that one of the tiles was on the floor, so she could see the wall above the tiles of the drop ceiling.
The wall above the tiles was a light pink color my mom knew as "shrimp" - because she had painted the kitchen cabinets the same color about a year before, except she hadn't painted above the ceiling! With horror, she left the room and was struck with the realization that this was what the old lady had been complaining to Molly about. "I told you I didn't like that color, I told you..." The kitchen had been painted that color in its earliest years, and then, so many years later, my mom had gone and painted it the same darn color again - much to someone's distaste.
We moved from the house when I was 6, but as I have began to take an interest in the paranormal, I am very interested to visit again. I wonder if the current residents have had similar experiences. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what could explain these strange incidents?
Thanks for reading!
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