Growing up in house that was haunted by the previous owner who build the house, and us kids playing with a Ouija board in the basement has affected me over the years. Weird dreams, and strange happenings for years. began tapering off after about 6 years, but I'm still a believer.
We bought the home and turned the previous owner's workshop into two bedrooms. We had a non standard crawlspace of about 18in and broke through it to install an egress window, akin to a reverse dormer. I'd leave the window locked open 4in, and most nights I'd wake up and the window would be closed and locked. the only way to access the window was to climb on top of me, in my bed, to do it. I'd leave the radio on to a local station over night because I didn't want to hear the house
"settle." Most mornings, the station would change to, you guessed it, the favorite station of the man who built our home.
Parents would hear floors creaking in the upstairs bedrooms like someone walking down the hall. My mother once saw a figure standing in front of the wood stove one evening when we came home, gently illuminated by the glowing embers. Some nights, you could hear the kitchen cabinets quietly banging open/closed.
The woman who sold the house would come for several months after we moved in to pick up checks and on one occasion, I was with my mother when she answered the door. after the casual, friendly transaction, the woman began to walk away. She was apparently into mysticism and crystals, and energies and such but she wheeled around and asked if she could ask my mother a curious question: "have strange things been going on in the house?" My mother stammered for a second and finally said, well, yes small things have been going on. The woman nodded in confirmation and said, " I thought so. The past several times I've come by, I've felt like Ron is around."
One night, I had a dream or a night terror, I wasn't in my room anymore but laying on a stone table and paralyzed. I could see stalactites and stalagmites and glowing areas, like small fires or lights behind rocks and outcrops. I heard a deep, slow laugh or chuckle, and felt like ice fingers run from my waist to my neck like dragging fingers with long nails, as something walked around the head of the table into my field of view, and it looked just like the demon from Dio's Holy Diver. I began screaming for my brother who was (supposed to be) sleeping in the next room, and as the cave fades away and returned to my room, I realized I was barely making a sound, instead of screaming.
Funny thing was, I never knew what Tinnitus was until I retired and dealing with it now, but it seemed when I tried to move, a whine in my ears would modulate and seemed to prevent me from moving that sounds just like Tinnitus.
We had a mirror wall at the bottom of the stair case which on the landing, you could go left into the basement or right, into my bedroom and my brother's. I could never walk up or down the stairs striaght forward. it always felt like I was being watched and would walk sideways with my back to the wall.
My baby sister inherited our older brother's room after he moved out, and was playing "grab-ass" with one of her friends, flipping the light off and running over and scaring my sister, after sitting on the bed. After several times, her friend flipped the light off and kept it off a bit longer, when my sister said to her friend, "C'mon, get off the bed and stop trying to scare me." Her friend immediately flipped the light on, wearing a look of fright, to demonstrate she had not ran the 6 feet and jumped on the bed that time. My sister swore she did, saying she felt the bed compress, and felt someone sitting next to her. I don't think that friend ever came back to visit.
Lots of happy memories!
