My grandparents live in an old, gabled house built in the 1920s. Apparently owned by a mine boss, the house has its share of oddities: my sister and I were hanging out in the basement when we noticed that classical music was coming from a coal shaft that led into the laundry room.
We deduced that the shaft led to the living room, as we found a covered "ash door" in the bottom of an unused fireplace there. Deciding that the music had to have come from there, we tried to find a radio or CD player. We didn't find anything, and we didn't hear anything once we went upstairs, and we remembered-with a start-that our parents and grandparents had driven to a nearby town to buy some gardening supplies. Of course, the music could have come from a neighbor's house, but we were still creeped out: after all, the walls in this old house are more than a foot thick, and you can't hear family members calling you if you're on different floors.
We mentioned the music to our grandparents, who denied having experienced any paranormal activities.
Then, at Christmas time, the entire family stayed in that house. I was a little relieved that there'd be so many people staying there, because creepy old houses feel less threatening when they're full of happy people on winter break.
My sister and I were pushed from room to room as more relatives arrived. Eventually, we ended up sleeping on an old pull-out sofa in the den above the garage. Now, I had been totally scared of this room which was in what had once been the "servants' quarters," along with a musty-smelling red staircase and maid's bedroom, when I was a toddler, for reasons I can't remember.
We volunteered to sleep with my aunt's dogs, which were two friendly, stinky pit bulls. At 1am a few nights before Christmas, I woke up for some reason. Unable to fall back asleep, I got up to use the bathroom, which required walking past the maid's room. OK, this sounds really weird, but I'm 100% sure I wasn't dreaming:
There was a light on in the maid's room. This was the only room that wasn't being occupied, as it was used by my grandparents as a storage room. They'd left the furniture in the bedroom and put a bunch of boxes on the bed and dresser and on the floor. I knew that there wasn't anyone in there, so
I decided someone had forgotten to switch off the light. I went to switch it off, but as I walked toward the door, it creaked open very slowly and I heard the sound of extremely loud snoring.
Now, there were quite a few toddlers sleeping in the house that night, so I assumed that some parent was trying to calm an infant in the unoccupied room and had simply fallen asleep there. Not wanting to disturb them, I went to the bathroom, and then returned to bed. When I passed the room a second time, the snoring was even more evident.
The next morning, I asked if anyone had slept there the previous night. Every one of my many relatives denied it, and most were a bit weirded out by my story.
I checked the maid's room, and sure enough, no boxes had been moved from the bed. Furthermore, the dust covering every surface was undisturbed. No one had pulled a prank at 1am to scare me or my sister. (That had been my final mental resort that some relative, thinking to scare us, had been pretending to snore in the room, with the light on.)
Even weirder: The day after that, my cousin (a toddler at the time) and I were playing with trucks in the unfinished basement. Pointing at the walls, he said, "Look at all the people!" He was very adamant about what he'd seen. "Why are those people looking at me?" he asked. My aunt, hearing this, picked him up and ran upstairs with him.
Later, my grandmother told me that the house had been broken into close to the time of its construction. Apparently, the maid had been the only one home at the time of attack, and she had grabbed a knife and hidden in the downstairs closet. No one was hurt, and nothing was stolen, but the owner was extremely angry with her for "allowing" someone to break into his house.
I guess no one died in the incident, but the owner must have been a pretty nasty guy to have punished his maid for hiding. I wonder...
Thoughts? This happened a couple of years ago. I swear I wasn't dreaming.
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