my ghost encounters
the paranormal has been a part of my life for as along as i can remember. even when i didn't go looking for ghosts, they always seemed to find me. it seems like things have calmed down now, although things still happen from time to time. the most recent (as of june 2026) is hearing and feeling someone (a former coworker) follow me around the seconde floor of the storage warehouse at work when no one else is up there. i'm fairly certain i saw the spirit on one of my first days, as well.
a part of me wants to get into paranormal investigation. the only problem with that is, i'm terrified of the dark. the idea of sitting in a completely dark room with the possibility that someone or something is lurking around me makes me want to vomit. maybe some day i can get past my fear. for now, i'm just going to relive the stories of strange things that have happened to me.
baby's first ghost
my dad once had a friend who i called uncle charlie. he'd known charlie since his late teens or early 20s. once a year until i was about 5, we'd make a trip to visit charlie and his family. usually around christmas time. they lived in a three story stone colonial house in the mountains. i don't remember much about it except their dog, their old sideshow trailers, and parts of their house.
my dad used to tell a story about my first visit when i was about 3 or 4 months old.
while the adults ate dinner downstairs, my parents left me in a playpen (one of the old ones with vertical bars) in our room which was either on the third floor or the attic. my dad got a feeling that something was off and went upstairs to check on me.
when he got to the room, he found a little girl of about eight looking down at me over the playpen fence. she wore distinctly colonial clothing and had a different look about her face.
the little girl looked up at my dad and spoke to him without opening her mouth. she asked why i was in jail. she didn't understand what a playpen was. he explained that it wasn't a jail, but something to keep me safe.the little girl nodded and then disappeared, seemingly happy with the explanation.
it isn't some spectacular, spooktacular story. it's really very mundane for a ghost story. but it's my first ghost encounter and i wasn't even old enough to remember it.
my dad never said anything else about it, if anything else happened or if i had been awake for the encounter. sometimes it seemed like there was more to the story, but he wouldn't tell me.
the burned man
when i was about 8, my step dad's coworker invited us (step dad, mom, and me) over to his brother's old farmhouse while he housesat. the house looked to have been built in the late 1800s or early 1900s, and the moment i set foot inside, i got a bad feeling.
we were greeted by the owner's two boxers. they were huge compared to me, and i was afraid of them at first. but as the night went on, i relaxed around them.
my stepdad's coworker gave us a tour of the house. as we walked through the attic-turned-bedroom, the coworker told us about the man who built the house. story goes he was jealous, bitter, abusive man. he despised his wife and children, and didn't give them a moment's peace. one night, while drunk, he decided he wanted to kill them. he poured an accelerant around the house and set the trail of liquid on fire from the attic. the accelerant on the ground didn't catch fire. his pants did. soon he was fully engulfed in flames, killing only himself. the house remained untouched.
i remember the coworker's wife had a bad reaction to the story. she said something along the lines of "oh, would you stop it? i hate when you tell that story."
the tour ended in the large kitchen. for some reason, the adults left me alone with just the dogs while they went upstairs to do... something. i'm not sure what. i begged my mom not to leave me alone. i still resent her for it to this day.
the dogs had a little nook of their own in the kitchen, sort of a small sun room or rectangle bay window, with a tv in it. yes, the dogs watched tv. mainly tvland when it still used to play old shows. i remember standing outside the nook and watching the tv with the dogs. i had the worst feeling in the pit of my stomach. after a while, it felt like someone had walked up behind me, but i never heard the adults come back down. i didn't want to turn around. i had no intention of turning around.
then the dogs, whose eyes were glued to the tv, turned towards me and peered around me.
someone was there.
my mind wasn't on ghosts. i had been hurt that summer by an adult, and my biggest fear was being hurt again, so i turned around.
standing across from the island counter was man. at first i thought he was just a black man. maybe a friend of the owner or a neighbor. but as my eyes adjusted, i noticed something wrong. he was naked. his skin was black, but not african black. charred black. patches of red and pink like webs where the skin had cracked, weeping blood and amber colored liquid.
at first he had no expression. he had no eyelids, so he stared at me with bulging, dry eyes. a smiled started to creep across his lips which cracked and bled the wider he smiled, until he had this almost impossibly wide, joker type smile. his teeth stood out against his body. maybe they were yellow, but they looked bright white compared to his burnt flesh.
then i started screaming and crying. it took forever for my mom to come back. i think she ignored me. at some point as i squeezed my eyes closed, the burned man vanished. the adults came back and chastised me for being afraid of "nothing." we spent the rest of the night in the barn on the property which had a home arcade in it. at some point i had to go to the bathroom, which was in the house, and refused to go in until my mom agreed to go with me.
now, i know you're thinking "it was just your imagination." and i would like to think that's true, but there are two reasons i don't believe that.
1. the dogs reacted to them. they saw him before i ever turned around. they watched the spot he stood in even after he vanished from my site.
2. i saw a fully burned body for the first time years later, when i was slipped into my teenage edgelord phase and consumed copious amounts of gore content. remember, i was 8 when i saw the burned man. i didn't watch horror movies, disaster movies, war movies, or documentaries. i had never seen a burned body of any kind, human or animal. i was a child. but seeing that burned body on whatever shock site i was on solidifed that experience as 100% real for me. the person in the pictured looked exactly how the burned man did. it was no my imagination.
the ghost in work boots
when i was 13, my mom, step dad, and i took a trip to pennsylvania to visit some of my mom's internet friends and go to gettysburg. if you're expecting civil war ghosts, i'm sorry, but this is the wrong story.
mom's friend and her husband lived in this beautiful house in the mountains that was built some time in the mid centry by her grandfather. it was fairly isolated, far away from her nearest neighbor. sleeping there was hell because i had to sleep on the sofa and two of the living room walls consisted of floor to cieling windows with no way to cover them. at the time, i was terrified of uncovered windows at night. evnetually i turned on the tv to help me sleep and accidentally knocked over an ash try when i reached for the remote. i picked up the butts and left the ashes, telling myself i would clean it up in the morning when the adults were awake.
at some point in the night, mom's friend came into the living room to check on me and turn off the tv, which i remember because i apologized for leaving it on. a couple hours later, i woke up to a shuffling sound right next to me. i looked down and saw a worn work book scuffing the ashes into the carpet as if to make them less visible. i looked up and saw an old man in worn overalls. i didn't reccognize him. he wasn't a member of the household (mom's friend, her husband, her grandmother, and her grandmother's friend, who i'll talk about later.) but somehow, i wasn't afraid.
i told the man i was sorry about the mess and that i had planned to clean it up in the morning. he smiled at me and said, "shhh, go back to sleep."
my head hit the pillow again and i was out instantly.
when i woke up, i thought i'd had a dream. i got up to find the vacuum and when i looked down i noticed that the ashes were mostly gone, having been scuffed into the carpet. i was awake before everyone else. no one else knew i had knocked over the ash tray.
i decided not to tell anyone about it, figuring it had been my mom’s friend’s husband. there was only one thing wrong with that explanation. when he gets up in the middle of the night, he wears a robe, slippers, and was nowhere near as old as the man I saw.
i mentioned it to my mom a few years later who told her friend about it. her friend believes i saw her grandfather’s ghost, especially by the way I described his boots and clothes. she said he was a kind man who adored children.
grandma's "friend"
during that same trip, we were introduced to my mom's friend's grandmother, who lived with her. she was nice, but fairly frail and kept mainly to her bedroom. mom's friend also had two cats, a calico and a black cat. the calico was super lovable and sweet. the black cat did not like people, and avoided us the enitre visit.
as we were being introduced to the friend's grandmother, another woman came out of her room and stood just outside. she was solidly built compared to the grandmother. she wore a black, calf length, old world looking dress and a see through black veil. the veil didn't cover her face, but covered her hair and trailed down her back and shoulders. we were never introduced to her. she never spoke to us. she just stared. i got the distinct feeling she hated me, because when she stared, she had this look of sorrow and hatred.
i assumed the woman as a friend or relative of the grandmother. she, like the grandmother, kept to that bedroom. when she came out of the room, the black cat would go in. sometimes it would interact with her. maybe, i thought, the cat actually belonged to her.
sometimes the woman would come out of the room unprompted and just stare at us, mainly me, from the doorway. i tried to ignore her. she was terrifying for an old lady. thankfully, she never came out when i was asleep, only during the day when everyone was awake. i figured she was a friend or relative of the grandmother, and nobody introduced us to her because she was so standoffish.
years later, i was talking to my mom about that trip. i mentioned the creepy old lady, and she assumed i was talking about the grandmother. i told her about the lady in black. neither she nor my step dad ever saw her, even when she stood right in front of them.
as far as i know, the grandfather was the only person to have died on that property at that point. mom's friend never mentioned any other deaths. maybe it's the land (honey, the land.) maybe she was an old world immigrant who died in harsh conditions. sometimes i wonder if she was an omen of death. i didn't tell my mom's friend about her when i told her about her grandfather's ghost.
the shadow in the corner
i was 14, and hopelessly obsessed with doing all those silly little paranormal sleepover activities i saw in movies and tv shows when i was growing up. light as a feather, stiff as a board, holding a seance, playing with a ouija board, etc. i very rarely convinced anyone to go along with it, and when they did, they didn't take it seriously.
during one sleepover with two friends from girl scouts, i convinced them to do a seance. they agreed, and for the first few minutes, they pretended to take it seriously. then one of the girls started doing this gutteral moaning. it was obvious she was messing around. the moan turned into a fake scream, into laughter, into the two of them screaming and laughing and calling me stupid. they stood up and pretended to be posessed. eventually, they started convulsing and grabbed on to each other.
as they fake seizures, they fell on top of me, knocking the wind out of me. for some reason, they started to play wrestle on top of me. i guess they figured that, since i was the biggest person in the room, they couldn't do much harm to me. but i was in a lot of pain.
as those two carried on acting like morons, i felt another presence in the room. i looked over at the corner to my left and saw a black, shapeless shadow. it shifted and pulsated, and as i struggled to push them on me and get up, it dashed forward, coming within centimeters of my face and vanishing into my chest.
the others didn't see it. when i asked them about it, they laughed at me and called me stupid again (this was one of the last times i hung out with them outside of girl scouts.) not long after, i called my mom and asked her to pick me up. i started feeling sick and i didn't want to be there anymore.
over the next few days, something took a hold of me and i had what most people would describe to be a depressive episode, except it wasn't. it felt like something was inside of me. it was suffering and looking for help. my mom noticed i was acting different. catatonic. even in my other depressive episodes, i didn't act quite the way i did in this instance.
sometimes it felt like someone was talking inside my head. not my voice. not even my internal dialogue voice. a voice i didn't recognize begging for help.
i drew something during that time. it was a woman bend backwards, a spirit coming out of her mouth, writing on the walls around her. i don't remember drawing it.
the episode or whatever it was lasted a few days. i had a dream one night that the shadow left me, and the next morning, i felt better.
i have no clue what the hell happened. a spirit? a demon? a mental breakdown of some kind? i'm honestly not sure. it felt paranormal in nature, but i'm open to it having a more reasonable explanation.
the hat man
i was about 15 the first and so far only time i met the hat man. this story once again takes place during a sleepover, this time with a friend who lived in my dad's town.
she lived in a dutch revival house which wasn't very old and as far as i know had no history of paranormal activity. we spent the night watching tv and went to bed around midnight.
the way the house was laid out, the area above the living room was open all the way to the ceiling, with half of the second floor being used for bedrooms. the stairs and landing overlooked the living room.
as we climbed the stairs, i felt that familiar dread of someone entering the space who couldn't or shouldn't be there. at the top of the stairs, i heard a man's voice call my name. my friend's grandfather, who she lived with, was asleep in his bedroom to the right of me. the voice came from the left.
i looked over and saw the shilouette of a man with a wide brimmed hat at eye level with me. the moon shined through the second floor windows, illuminating his outline perfectly.
i whisper-cried "omg, go go go!" at my friend, who didn't believe me when i told her what i saw. the fact that i saw him to the left of me made no sense. he either had to be floating off the ground or 20 feet tall.
i had no idea who the hat man was at the time. it wasn't until a couple weeks later, as i was watching youtube videos about the paranormal, that i learned about him.
hide and seek tag
another sleepover story? another sleepover story.
during this sleepover, i was at the house of a friend i knew through the girl that, at the time, i called my best friend. we'll call her a, and we'll call the best friend b. a lived with her parents and her (i believe) maternal grandparents in a little one story house.
as the sun went down, one of the girls, who i'll call c, proposed we play hide and seek tag in the dark. c had a tendency to be scary. she was a rough and tumble tomboy sort of girl. when she decided to be "it," i knew it was game over for me.
when the game started, a, b, and me dispersed. there were a few cars in the driveway to hide behind, and two lights to barely illuminate the yard. one street lamp and the back porch light. as i heard c counting, i decided to head back to the house. i knew she'd target me because i was the biggest and slowest of the bunch and at that point i'd had enough of being the target.
as i crept back, a and b came out of hiding from behind one of the cars and followed behind me. one held on to my shoulders, the other held her shoulders like a terrified conga line.
c stopped counting, and we stopped moving, hoping to figure out where she was. i felt a presence behind us and turned around. behind a and b was tall, skinny shadow person. a boy, it looked like, with shaggy hair and baggy clothes. it reached its arms around a and b as if it was trying to grab me.
i screamed and tried to run, but at the time i was wearing a massive pair of tripp nyc bondage pants that had the same dimensions as jnco pants. i didn't realize that one of the girls were standing on the hem that dragged the ground. i tripped and fell (haha, tripp. tripped. ha.) bringing a and b down with me. and, just like at a previous sleepover, they fell right on top of me.
c jumped out from behind a car and laughed at us. i sat up and tried to find the boy. he was gone. c never saw him. no one really believed me or wanted to believe me when i told them what i saw. i know a was freaked out for the rest of the night. so was i.
c looked nothing like the shadow boy. she was short, shortter than me. the shadow boy was taller than me. c had long, straight hair. the shadow boy had shaggy hair that seemed to come down to the bottom of his ears. c wore skinny jeans and a fairly form fitting t-shirt. the shadow boy seemed to be wearing a baggy t-shirt that looked 3 sizes too big. c was skinny compared to me. the shadow boy looked malnourished as skinny as his arms and hands were.
my poppop's haunted house
in the 60s, my poppop moved to delaware and bought a little two story farmhouse. i don't know much about the history of the house or the land beyond that the house had been moved from about a mile away in the late 50s (i think.) the area was known for one of delaware's few cryptid sightings (the fence rail dog,) and up until the 90s, was mostly farmland.
poppop died in 1999. my mom and i moved into the ramshackle house in 2000 for a few months until we found a place of our own.
i'd like to say that i saw my poppop's spirit, that he watched over and protected me during a terrible time of my young life, but he didn't. he wasn't there.
i didn't know it until years later, but when he was alive my poppop saw ghosts and other things that no one else in the house saw. i never got much detail about what he saw. just people who weren't physically there, i guess. and i guess he's part of why i have that ability.
for the first month or so, i refused to sleep in my bedroom, which had previously been my mom's childhood bedroom. something about it bothered me. before she started dating this weird guy, i slept in my mom's bed in what was my poppop's room. the feeling in that room was worse, but it was bearable with my mom next to me. then she moved that asshole in, and things went even further down the drain.
i hated her boyfriend. he tried to force his strict religious beliefs (that we're genuine, but a way to manipulate others) on us, from what we watched to what we listened to. he tried to read the bible to me at bedtime, and i put up a fight. everything about him was fake. even i knew that at 6 years old.
between him, my dad's explosive anger, and whatever was in that house, things were beyond bad. they got worse one night when i looked over at some boxes across the room and saw things moving. there was a pair of old shoes on top of the boxes and an old sombrero my grandparents bought during a trip to mexico in the 50s hanging by a nail on the wall. the shoes kept taking little steps forward, turn around, and walk the other way. the sombrero bounced around as if it was trying to free itself from the nail. nothing outside or inside the house was causing the movement. the rural road had next to no vehicles on it that time of night. the washer wasn't running. there were no earthquakes. this happened multiple times.
one night, things took a turn when i felt that infamous presence in the room with me. i pulled the covers over my head and tried to ignore it. then, i felt something brush up against the bed. against my better judgement, i looked up and saw four people in old timey clothes looking down at me. i told myself i was dreaming and tried to go back under the covers and ignore them. a minute later, i looked back up and they were bent over with their faces lower, hovering just above me.
i screamed and got up, pushing past the people. i felt them. physically felt their clothing and solid bodies as i shoved past them. and for a moment i thought they might have been real people.
going to my mother for comfort didn't do much. she rolled her eyes and groaned and told me to go back to bed. he got angry. neither of them believed me.
eventually i learned to just stay in my room and deal with the people. they'd come back, sometimes standing over me. sometimes standing in different corners or in doorways. they didn't do anything except watch me, and they were easier to deal with than him.
the shadows on county rd
when i was a kid, my step dad loved to take this one road as a "shortcut" from point a to our house. it wasn't a shortcut. it was a long, dark, winding, treelined road that didn't get a lot of traffic. it served as a dumping ground for people who didn't want to pay to have large items taken to the landfill. even during the day, that road gave me most disgusting vibes. it felt hostile, like the road itself didn't want us on it.
traveling down that road was an experience i, as an adult, avoid at all costs.
i remember my first time on that road just after sunset. i watched intently out of the windshield and saw what i thgouth were people. first one. then two. then dozens. it didn't make sense. people don't usually walk down that road very often even during the day. there's no sidewalk or shoulder. the grass on either side is usually pretty thick in places, and the few cars that do go down there don't observe the speed limit.
i noticed pretty early on that these people, shadows really, didn't seem to be moving. they looked like still frames of people running or biking or just standing on the side of the road in various mundane poses.
i knew better than to point out what i was seeing. even if my mom and step dad saw them too, they would have just told me to ignore it or told me to be quiet. my step dad did not believe in the paranormal, or thought it demonic to some degree.
this would happen multiple times throughout my childhood. only on that road and only at night. eventually, i decided to close my eyes any time we drove down that road at night, for my own sanity.
debbie
this story takes place during a trip to gettysburg, pa in 2020. yes, 2020. yes, we were stupid. we got word from a friend that tourism had basically died, everyone was masked up, businesses were desperate, and b&b/hotel owners were taking extra percautions. we got an entire floor of a b&b to ourselves, got an entire tour bus to ourselves, and avoided other people to the best of our abilities. you can be angry at us for this. we deserve it. we were jaded from our jobs that didn't take percautions and exposed us to the worst of the worst types of people daily during the pandemic, so we didn't really think much of it at the time. would we do it again if i could go back in time? no. no we would not.
with that out of the way, this story does not involve civil war ghosts. it does involve spoilers for a "game" you play during an overnight ghost hunt through one of those ghost tour companies, though. it's also a story i feel weird talking about, because the spirit involved still has living family who have to deal with her story being exploited by a tourist trap. i found out recently that surviving family tried to stop the ghost tour company from capitalizing on her murder, and had i known that at the time, we wouldn't have taken part in it.
we got roped in to doing the ghost tour by the guy running it. he struck up a conversation outside the museum where it started (the museum of haunted objects i think?) and said there were only two spots left, $90 each. for some reason, we agreed. why not? it's not something you do every day.
the ghost hunt started at the museum, and while some things did sort of happen that i still have my doubts about (white talking to a little haunted doll, the spirit box called me a retard,) things really picked up when the ghost hunt went down the street to an apartment.
the apartment was above a business and the building was built in the (i think) early 1800s. the tour guide didn't tell us anything about the apartment or why it was haunted until we got situated inside. the moment i walked in, i got a feeling. it felt heavy. lived in. the apartment was empty for the most part. a couch and chair in one part, a desk with a computer in another. no other furniture. but it still felt like someone lived there, and the feeling was a lot warmer than those other feelings i'd gotten in other hauntings. even the museum didn't feel this way.
before the tour guide started talking to us about the haunting, i kept hearing a woman pleading with someone in my head. i felt pain in my chest and back. not a real pain, but like something residual. we then learned about debbie, a woman who was murdered in the apartment. she had been shot by her fiance after he saw a guy flirt with her at a bar. he ran home to grab his rifle and she stopped him. he "accidentally" shot her. twice.
before the tour guide gave us our mission, i could already see the scene in my head. i felt myself slip into a trance of sorts, like i was inheriting someone's memories. i saw the fiance. i saw him threaten the guy. i saw him run home.
the tour guide told us we needed to find out through debbie where she was shot, the name of her fiance, and her middle name.
before anyone had a chance to really start an investigation, i kept seeing the memories in my mind. "he came through the back door," i told the tour guide. "the bar is back this way behind the house. she got between him and the door."
i had no idea where the bar was, but apparently i was right.
i saw him aim. it wasn't an accident.
"she dragged herself into the dining room," i added. "then he shot her again. she died here."
the tour guide corrected me. she died at the hospital.
i corrected him. "her soul left her body before her brain died."
i ruined that part of the hunt for the other people. i don't think we were supposed to figure that out so soon. sorry to anyone who was there.
after the vision, i started breaking down. one, because i saw the memory of a real woman being murdered. two, because i felt what she felt. three, because not long before this, i had gotten out of an abusive relationship and, not to make it about me, but i recognized that had i stayed, i could have ended up the same way. i got the feeling that debbie's fiance was also abusive. of course, it doesn't take a ghost communicating with you through otherwordly means to come to that conclusion. good men don't murder their fiances.
as i broke away from the crowd, trying not to let anyone see me cry, i felt arms wrap around me and a sense of warmth and love that i'd never felt before. i think it was debbie. i remember crying harder and telling her i was so sorry.
the second most eventful moment from that night was, while sitting with my husband in a bathroom away from everone else, asking debbie her middle name. almost immediately, the spirit box came back with a woman's voice.
"louise."
there was another presence there. something that kept to the upper floor. i didn't pay it much attention. it felt angry and spiteful, and i had no time for whatever it was. probably a demon. although when i talked to the guide, he informed me that demons have never roamed the earth. ok, buddy.
recently, i looked up her apartment and read experiences other people have had with her. she's seemingly one of the most active ghosts i've ever heard of, assuming there isn't some trickery at hand. i doubt the ghost tour company has the technology to give me visions or feel someone embracing me. i feel conflicted knowing that debbie's family did not want her story to be exploited but realizing that, as active as she is, her haunting might be pivital in proving the existence of an afterlife if the ghost tour company would be willing to let legitimate researchers have at the place.
the resident of a condemned house
as a teenager, i spent a couple of years exploring abandoned properties with my dad. i called it rural exploration because they were always old farmhouses in the middle of nowhere that were scheduled for demolition. one house to this day still upsets me, not so much because of the haunting, but because of how big it was and confusing the layout was. hidden passageways, servant stairs, doors that lead to rooms up narrow flights of stairs, a massive pantry covering one wall with a small flight of stairs that lead to another room, a summer kitchen with a huge hearth, and a full size attic that, for some reason, was split in two with two seperate entrances. i still dream about that house and i mourn it like an old friend.
the vibe when we arrived was that of disturbance. someone was there, and while they didn't want us gone, they were weary.
during our walkthrough, we found signs that people had been there recently. mattresses on the floor, blankets strewn about, backpacks with highschool workbooks, and notebooks in a corner of the room that were filled with pages of a young girl's life as a neglected daughter. at that point, my biggest fear wasn't a paranormal encounter, but running into a living person.
it was late winter. snow was still on the ground and sounds traveled fruther than they did in the summer. we made our way up to the second floor. the floorboards creeked with each step.
i can't remember the exact layout of the second floor. it was like a labyrinth in some parts. all i remember was standing in a hallway. there was a window overlooking our car to my right, two small bedrooms to my left, and the door to the main bedroom ahead of me.
dad went in to one of the small bedrooms. i stayed in the hall and stared out the window, half expecting to see cop cars pull up at any minute.
suddenly i got the feeling of being watch. i turned towards the main bedroom door, which was open slightly, and saw a tall, dark figure staring at me behind it.
i screamed and started yelling for my dad. the figure moved back from the door at an impossible speed. it didn't turn and run. there were no sounds of footsteps or stomps. it almost looked like it hovered away at an inhuman speed.
"someone's here!" i shouted over and over until dad ran out of the small bedroom. i pointed at the main bedroom door and he kicked it open the rest of the way. no one was there, but there were servant stairs on the other side of the room leading down to the kitchen.
we didn't see or hear anything else. the way those floors creaked under the slightest movement, there was no way anyone could have been in that house without us knowing. and to be honest, i felt better knowing that i probably came face to face with a ghost than a person.
whoever tore that house down to put up mcmansions, ya mom's a hoe.
my dad's haunted bungalow
when i was 14, my dad bought a little 5 room bungalow in a small town downstate. the house and the town were nothing to write home about, butg my dad was proud of them after spending half of his life in a shitty little metal trailer on the desolate outskirts of the city. the day we moved in, dad jokingly asked if i thought the place was haunted. i said that i wasn't sure yet. there was a feeling, but i wasn't sure what it was at the time.
that feeling turned out to be something bigger than we expected.
it all started with the smell of floral perfume. the smell was so strong that it woke my dad up in the middle of the night. at the time, he had been living there for a couple of weeks. i didn't own perfumes or body sprays at the time, and i had been at my mom's house for those past two weeks. the household cleaners he owned were lemon or pine scented. nothing in the house should have smelled like floral perfume with strong notes of roses.
fast forward to the first big snowstorm of the season. The snow began to melt and our cellar, which we were told had never flooded while the previous owners lived there (lies) had flooded. on top of that, the sump pump died. i awoke to my dad shouting "we have a problem!" from under the floorboards. the rest of the day was spent trying to fix the problem.
that night, i asked my dad why he yelled to me from the cellar while i was still asleep. he replied, "still asleep? i heard you walking around upstairs."
"no?" i said. "i was still in bed when you yelled. you woke me up."
dad's face dropped.
during my first few visits, i'd hear the sound of furniture being dragged across the floor in the attice above me. except that wasn't possible. the attic floor was unfinished. there was no real floor, just beams, insulation, and the ceiling below it. think of that scene from national lampoon's chirstmas vacation. it wasn't even possible for anyone to be up there because the only way to get in or out of the attic was a hatch in my bedroom. the ladder came down right where my bed was.
it only got worse from there.
when i was 18, i moved in with my dad. i learned that the longer i stayed in that house, the more odd occurances i noticed. footsteps, voices, anomolies around the property.
one day, while dad was at work, i was doing laundry, i went to get clothes out of the dryer and saw the dryer door open. that dryer was a bitch and a half to open. when it was closed, it stayed closed. there were times when i had to put my full weight into opening it. it never just popped open.
as i was getting the clothes out, i heard a dog barking inside the house. at the time, we didn't have a dog. i looked outside and didn't see any dogs walking or in any of the yard. besides, it was very obvious that the barking came from inside the house.
then the talking started. at first it was two voices whispering. the sound came from around me rather than from one spot or room. gradually, more voice manifested. whispering, talking, yelling. i couldn't make out what any of them were saying, but just like the first two, the sound came from all around me, like people were insie the walls.
i looked outside again to make sure nobody was messing with me. the yard was empty.
i ran to my bedroom, closed the door, and laid on the bed. it was the only place i felt safe. i started crying and begging god or whatever to make it stop. eventually i cried myself to sleep. when i woke up, the voices were gone. the house felt relative calm. i spent the rest of the day at a neighbor's house.
then we got a dog.
i still have her. somehow, as of july 2026, she's still kicking, although she's old and grumpy and probably won't make it much longer. her name is ferris, and she was, at the time, my biggest proof that something weird was going on.
i didn't have internet at my dad's house, so i spent most of my nights watching movies in the living room. there was a set of folding french doors between the dining room and the living room with glass panes going down nearly the full length. i kept them closed when i watched movies so that i didn't wake my dad. the first time i watched a movie with ferris in the room, she stared at the closed doors and growled. i tried to ignore it, but eventually i gave in and looked over.
towards the bottom of the door, on the opposite site, were hands pressed against the glass and what looked like writhing flesh below them. not people. not bodies. just undulating flesh.
i turned off the movie and went to my bedroom. sadly, it became a semi-regular event. did i have the foresight to take a picture or video of it? of course not. i was terrified. i wish i had.
and somehow, it got worse.
my dad had drawers under his bed on either side, leaving no room for someone to hide underneath. despite this, i was alone one day when i walked through his bedroom to go to the bathroom and a hand shot through the front of a closed drawer and grabbed for my ankle. later that night, i stood in my dad's room telling him about what happened. he had a wooden curio cabinet in the corner across from the door. the back of the cabinet had mirrors on it. as i was retelling the story, i looked over at the curio cabinet and saw a woman dressed completely in white victorain style clothes, with pale white skin and white hair standing in the corner behind me. i never saw her face, but it wasn't the last time i saw her.
things started to ramp up. it was normal to hear and see things in that house. there was a hunchback man who i saw only once, following behind me in the reflection of a cabinet in the living room. i don't think he was malicious, but he did scare me because i didn't expect to see him. i heard voices, saw things behind the french doors. there was even a time when i was singing, and at the end of the song i heard someone clapping in my bedroom.
at the time, i was in a long distance relationship with someone who was very demaning and accusatory. one day, we'd been at each others throats, so i left my phone in my bedroom to charge and not have to hear the notifications of his dms. at some point, i was sitting in the living room and heard talking from my bedroom. i figured it was whatever the hell was in the house with us and ignored it.
hours later, i checked my phone to dozens of missed calls. when i called him back, and he went off on me. he demanded to know what i was "playing at" because at some point, he had called me on skype and someone other than me answered. he didn't see them, but he said they spoke. he said he demanded to know where i was and who they were. he said the voice replied in a pained, drawn out drone, "you'lllllll... never... knoooooow..."
he knew about the hauntings and still insisted i was cheating on him with someone who ansewered the phone to mess with him. my dad told him we were alone and that no one had been in my bedroom. he called us both liars.
simultaneously, other strange things started to happen that i just don't want to talk about. it's a sore spot and something that will get me a lot of sideways looks, moreso than my experiences with ghosts. but during this time, the paranormal activity ramped up to a terrifying degree. i had an experience where the white woman tried to harm me. i don't remember much about it. i was texting my mom as it happened, and from what i can gather, she tried to reach into my chest and grab my heart. yes, i know that's the plot of some movie from the 80s or 90s. i hate telling this part because of it. i only know this happened because of those texts, and i don't even remember sending them.
there was a night when i woke up early in the morning just as my dad was getting ready for work. i jolted awake because i felt a hand grab my face. it could have been a very realistic dream, but when i sat up and looked around my room, i saw a bald head with a sickly, childlike face staring down at me. i had kept a hand knit shawl hanging on my wall on the opposite side of the room. the head was nestled in the head hole as if it was wearing it. not a body in sight.
later that day, i kept having expereinces. i ended up running out of the house and talking to my next door neighbor. she told me that if anything else happened, she'd take me to work with her so i didn't have to be alone in the house. as we were talking, i looked over at the kitchen window and saw a face looking out at me. i screamed, and before she had a chance to turn around, the face ducked to my right. it didn't make sense because there were cabinets there.
i ended up telling her i was going to try to stick it out. i went inside and as i passed my dad's room, i saw the white woman standing with her back towards me in the far corner. it was very blair witch.
i threw random clothes on and ran out the door just as she was leaving to go to work. she worked for the department of elections, and i know her coworkers thought i was a crackhead by the way i dressed and the fact that i fell asleep on a decorative couch outside of a confrence room. in my defence, i hadn't been sleeping well, even before the head in a shawl incident.
i can't think of any other big experiences off the top of my head. i moved out not long after that last one.
i haven't been to that house in 11 years. partially because of my relationship with my dad, and partially because of my experiences. that wasn't a happy place for me. i do not look forward to going back when the time comes.
