Old Haunted House

We moved into our 80+ years old house a little over 5 years ago. Our youngest son was 2. He refused to go in the bathroom alone. He said he saw "black eyes" in there. We brushed it aside thinking that he didn't want to be potty trained and/or he had a very active imagination. Not too long after we moved in, things would disappear from where we had just sat them down... hairbrushes, keys, cups of coffee etc. and reappear in another area.

We often felt like we were being watched. I would feel taps on my shoulder as I worked on the computer. My children would come to me and say "what?" because they thought I called them but I had not. One of my sons and I were in the kitchen talking as I did dishes. From across the room, a box of cereal flew from the top of the refrigerator, hit the window over the sink and fell into the sink. We just stared at each other without saying a word.

I began to see a large, dark figure going from the bathroom, into the hallway, and through the wall and back again. My husband doesn't believe in spirits, well, he didn't. But he saw it too. The kids began telling us that they saw a large black "thing" walking around the house. We had NOT told them what we had seen.

One night, a friend of mine came over and we were watching a ghost cam online. The lights were out in the computer room. All of our kids were over our shoulders looking at the cam with us. The lights turned on. Thinking it was one of my kids, I said, "hey, turn them back off" the lights went off. My friend said that she kind of liked them on actually, instantly the lights came back on. One of the kids said "whooa, who did that?". We turned around to see all of the kids right there with us nowhere near the light switch. I said, "Well, I want the lights OFF" and they turned off again.

One night, I was in my bed watching T.V. My husband was at work, my 2 youngest boys were asleep on the sofa's in the living room, my daughter was at a sleep over, and two of my older sons were watching T.V. In the living room. My son came in to ask me if I had heard anything. I laughed and said no, I asked him if he was watching a scary movie and got spooked. He said no, they were watching Family Guy (nothing spooky about that hehe). I told him he was being paranoid. He came back in a few minutes later and asked me to come into the living room. Ticked as I was, I went in and started working on a sewing project just so I could keep busy while waiting on them to feel more comfortable or fall asleep. Both boys looked frightened as they said "Mom! Did you hear that?". I had the sewing machine going so I hadn't heard anything. I sat and waited about five minutes. Nothing happened. I started sewing again and they stopped me again! I was really ticked by then. Frustrated, I began putting up my sewing project. I was stopped by a VERY loud thud from the second floor above me. The boys kept asking me if I had heard THAT. I blamed it on the cats. My son pointed to the two sleeping cats on the floor. Before I could come up with another logical explanation, it happened again. And again. And again. For about an hour we heard continuous sounds of banging, thuds, and the sound of furniture moving on the wood floors upstairs. We attempted to go up the stair way to see what was going on but we were honestly too afraid to go up the first step even.

Finally, the sounds stopped. The boys fell asleep, but I stayed awake until my husband came home at 6:00am. He asked me why I was up so early. I told him that I hadn't been asleep. I was hesitant to tell him what had happened since he really did not believe in hauntings or spirits despite having seen the dark figure before. He asked me what was wrong. I told him. He laughed and headed up the stairs. I was right behind him. He stopped before the last step. I looked around his shoulder and saw that our oldest son's room had been demolished. Boxsprings were off of their beds, the mattresses were leaning on the walls, the dresser was in the middle of their room with the TV on top of it, toys, books, papers and clothing were strewn all over their room. Without speaking, we cleaned the room.

I talked to a friend about it and she suggested that we use white sage to cleanse the house. I also did a lot of googling about hauntings. I took my digital camera upstairs in the dark and took pictures wherever I felt "funny" or cold. When I came downstairs, I also took a picture of my fireplace because I had always felt "funny" there. Nothing showed up on the L.E.D. Screen of my digital camera but I uploaded the pictures anyway. We saw orbs everywhere. In one area of the upstairs hallway it looked like a galaxy of sorts, hundreds of orbs all around. At the bottom of the stairs there was a red blob. The photo of the fireplace showed a white woman in what appeared to be a bathrobe of sorts and she was very bright white. Wanting to make sure that I didn't suggest to anyone what it looked like, I just showed friends and family the photo... Everyone said it was a woman.

We went and got some white sage and burned it all over the house, outside, inside, everywhere. Things calmed down. I was talking to a neighbor and she said that devil worshippers had rented our house before we moved in. She said very odd sounds came from the house and that after they had been evicted, the neighbor and her husband had come to visit the owners while they cleaned and were horrified to see demonic graffiti sprayed on all of the walls. I thought that explained it and was glad we had cleansed the house.

Within a couple of months, it started back again. My daughter yelled for us one night, we ran up there and her new television was flipping channels. I told her she was sitting on her remote. She pointed to her night stand, it was on her nightstand. I took the batteries out, the T.V. continued switching channels. The next day, our older boys yelled for us, we ran up to their room and were astonished to find that every channel was french speaking. We don't have satellite TV, just cable, we don't live in a french speaking area or normally have french speaking television channels. We turned off the television.

Our bath tub began running water while nobody was even in that part of the house, and our toilet would flush on its own. I had a self cleaning oven. You know when you slide the lever to lock the oven door to turn it on for the self cleaning how it makes a buzzing sound? While we were in the living room watching T.V. The buzzing sound began happening over and over. We walked into the kitchen to see the lever going back and forth very quickly and the digital clock/control was changing from numbers, to letters, to symbols at a furious rate. We stood there watching this in silence for almost 5 minutes. My kids looked terrified so I felt I had to take control somehow, I yelled in a very stern voice "Knock it the f**k off!". IMMEDIATELY it stopped and the oven door completely fell off onto the floor. I inspected the door, it looked as if the metal semi-circular hinges had been cut.

I tried to talk to the spirits. I don't know why, but I feel one is the elderly lady who had grown up here and inherited the house. I have no idea who the "dark" one is. I said that they could stay if that is what they wish to do but please don't frighten our family anymore. I said that they would be happier if they went to the other side. Thinking I felt a little foolish for talking to them, I stopped. I began feeling very depressed and sad. I felt like crying. At that point, I began a 3 month battle with deep depression. I just felt so hopeless and there was no real reason. My life is great, my family is great, there was just no real reason for my sadness. When we would leave, I felt much better. If we went away for a weekend I would be fine until we returned to the house. I love this house so it wasn't my living situation that was depressing me.

I am working through that, I seemed to "get better" after I acknowledged that maybe I was feeling sadness from the spirits. My kids have began seeing the dark thing again. Now it seems to like the area of our foyer and living room, kitchen, bath, hallway, and my daughter (who does NOT believe at ALL in spirits) said she saw it standing at the foot of her bed.

A lot of visitors to our home say they feel kind of freaked out. We don't tell people what goes on here so they don't have any preconceived ideas of a haunted house here. They just say that they feel frightened or as if something is watching them.My daughter's friend is spending the week with us, she said she felt a very cold spot in the living room. I felt it where she pointed it out. I brought a stool into the area and sat there. My back got cold. My son and the friend touched my back and it was ice cold, my face, hands, arms and legs were warm. She knew nothing about our issues here. She said that earlier when she had taken a bath she got creeped out and felt she was being watched. She hurried and rinsed the soap off and ran out of the bathroom. I asked her if she felt "funny" anywhere, she kept talking about the fireplace.

For the past 4 months, I have woken up with very deep burning scratches on my arms, legs, back and face. I have scars from some of them. They BURN. Usually they are in groups of three... Like this /// . Almost always, the middle one is the deepest. I do NOT have fingernails, and there is nothing in my bedding that would cause scratches. It's not our cats either. We don't have the cats anymore. We have a dog, but she sleeps in my son's room. Sometimes she stops suddenly and growls at "nothing".

I don't know if I am being singled out because I did the sage so it hates me now, or if it is ticked because I am not afraid of it, I don't know why I am the one scratched up. I am leery of trying the sage again because I don't want to piss it off again or provoke it to do more. My mom wants us to move out of here. I don't know if it would follow us or not. For now, we are just dealing with it.