My Paranormal Experience

When I was about 9 years old, my mother and I moved to a house in John's Island, SC with her new husband, my stepdad Mike. The house is extremely old and felt eerie the moment we moved in. A neighbor told us the previous occupants had experienced noises such as chains dragging and rattles, almost like a rattle snake. He also informed us that the man who first owned the house had locked his wife and child in one of the bedroom's closet and they suffocated. He then shot himself and supposedly didn't die in the house but in the driveway. I don't know how accurate the story is, but it is what I was told.

The first experience we all had was the back door being wide open when we got home even though we shut and locked it when we left. My stepfather said before we moved in he woke up to someone grabbing his foot (he was very tall so his feet hung off the bed) and when he opened his eyes he saw a woman standing over him. He said he jumped up and turned the lights on and she was gone.

I had quite a few experiences in the house but my mother never admitted the house was haunted until we moved out. She was probably just trying to avoid scaring me because if I had known what was truly going on, I probably would've been terrified. Now that I think of these happenings and read other stories here that are similar to mine, it verifies what I was experiencing was in fact paranormal.

One day I had come home from school and hadn't taken notice whether my Stepdad was home or not. He sometimes parked his truck in the back of the house to offload dog food for his hunting dogs. My mom worked 9-5pm so she was never there, but sometimes he was. So I came inside the house, started petting my dog and went to my room. All of a sudden, I heard what sounded like my Stepfather calling my name. Thinking it was him, I ran outside to see what he wanted. To my amazement, he wasn't even home. I was there alone and my dog's ears were perked up as if he heard it too. This freaked me out and when my mom came home I told her about it. She said it was probably one of my stepdad's hunting dogs (he had a pen full of beagles out back that barked constantly but they were quiet this day) but I know what I heard and it was clearly my name being called. I then decided after school I'd go to my friend's house until someone got home.

One day when we were all home, the whole house suddenly vibrated. I asked my mom if we had an earthquake, but she said it could've been a plane landing. The weird thing is the only airport close by was 4 miles away and they weren't big aircraft that flew from there, they were small jets. There was no way that's what it was and no one else in the neighborhood experienced the shaking, so it wasn't an earthquake. At night, I always heard footsteps walking down the hallway, and even past my room but when I awoke to go to the kitchen to see who it was, no one was there. My dog slept in my room so it couldn't have been him. He heard it as well and there were times I woke to him barking or growling at our old gas heater in the living room, but nothing was there. There were times we'd come home (along with the back door wide open) and there'd be a foul stench in the air that smelled like rotten eggs. There was a marsh near our house but no paper mill, and it only smelled inside the house. The next day the smell would be gone and we could never find where it came from.

Like I said I was only 9 when all this took place and we ended up moving to a house down the street after 4 years. No one had occupied it for a while and a friend and I decided to go visit and the door was unlocked. We didn't experience anything that day, though it felt creepy, but the weird thing is I often dream of this house (I'm 26 now) and I can't figure out why. I guess it's unsettling to know what was taking place and I was clueless, thinking I just had an overactive imagination or hallucinating. Since reading stories from this site, I now realize what I experienced was in fact real. I am intrigued and curious about the 'other side' and look forward to reading more stories. I hope you all enjoyed mine.