Haunted Beginnings

Well I promised quite a while back to tell the stories of my haunting's that I've encountered, so no better time than to start now. This is a long post and gives details to the first of my haunting's that I remember.

This picture is where I remember it all starting once I was out of my parents house. I was almost 21 when I moved in this old farmhouse that unfortunately has since been torn down. It was a beauty inside. Lots of original stuff inside, I'm not sure why they tore it down but I've noticed lots of old beautiful ladies like this are being torn down all the time.

I remember hearing about it from my boyfriend's (at the time) parents friend. She talked about loving it and wanting to buy it to renovate it but never did. So I looked into it and found out who owned it. I had to bug and ultimately beg the farmers who owned it to rent it out to me. It had sat empty for years. We got it for a song (rent wise). I think it was something crazy like $135 a month.

I was so excited when I finally broke them down and they agreed to rent it to me and I wanted to show my mom. I took her out there and as we were driving up to house, she started shaking her head. She never liked it from the beginning. Said it didn't sit well with her. I didn't care, I loved it. We went up to the windows to look in and see if we could get in, since I didn't have a key yet.

As we looked in the windows, we saw a black cat inside on the stairs that were positioned in the middle of the room in with the door in the kitchen. It just stared at us. My mom was very uneasy and said it didn't feel right and she wished I wouldn't move in and wanted to leave right away.

side view of the old farmhouse

Fast forward to moving day and my boyfriend, whom I was going to share the house, and I were cleaning it out. Strangely, we never saw that cat again not even in the barn or old garage on the property. Another weird thing was that there wasn't any animal droppings inside. Not any bugs or evidence of mice. Nothing in the window sills, no spiders. I noticed it and thought it was odd.

an almost 21 year old me in the doorway of my bedroom in my old haunted farmhouse taken from kitchen

The great old house had I guess a typical floor plan for that era. Four rooms on the bottom including a formal living room, two parlors and a kitchen. A bathroom had been added on to the kitchen later. Upstairs, there were four bedrooms. A staircase went straight up through the center of the home. The formal living room had that octagon shaped room with tall windows at angles and red stain glass as the transoms. There were red curtains and when the sun shined, it was very red inside. I called it the red room from then on. It had a gorgeous old fireplace with beautiful tile and mirror at the top. It hadn't even been painted. I loved it. I did notice that room was exceptionally colder than any other room.

beautiful unpainted woodwork, beautiful tiles in earth tones, beautiful old wallpaper

We were young and loved to entertain our friends with our new house. Many get togethers were happening, mostly outside surrounding their 4 wheel drive trucks since they were all a bunch of rednecks. One particular party, I was inside watching TV and one of our friends came in the kitchen door and hollered at me that he was going to use the bathroom. Next thing I know he comes running out of the kitchen and asked me if I was jiggling the door handle. No. That was the first of many people claiming that someone tried to enter the bathroom with them in it. It happened to me while I was in the shower.

My boyfriend and I had taken one of the parlor rooms as our bedroom and had our huge waterbed set up and everything in it's place. Being so young we didn't have a lot of furniture, but more than most since my grandmother had died and left me all her furniture. I had her bed and boxed up things upstairs which we didn't use. We hadn't planned on using the upstairs, so we didn't sweep or clean upstairs.

During this time I had a young kitty named Whiskey. (partyers, remember haha) She was about a year old when we lived here. I woke up one night and she was going nuts clawing at the wall from our dresser, meowing and looking up at the ceiling. I could hear something upstairs just thrashing my boxed stuff all around. I woke up my boyfriend and he could here it too. We were both scared. We didn't know what was up there. We figured it was some sort of animal and we would find out good enough the next day. He was too scared to go up there, hee hee.

The next morning, he took a baseball bat upstairs to find out what had all gotten tore up. We kept the door to the upstairs closed so we hadn't worried about it coming in on us. I stayed downstairs! When he got up there he yelled at me to come up. I couldn't believe it, nothing had been touched. Not even the dust was disturbed. In fact, you could see our foot prints as we walked. There were the boxes with lots of sheets and fabric remnants in them. Nothing had been disturbed. We just looked at each other in disbelief.

The next night the very same thing happened. This time he went upstairs in the night with a gun. I really don't know why, but he did. When he got up there, the noise stopped and there was nothing. The next day he decided to put up a big clamp type trap up there to try to catch whatever was up there making this noise. Nothing ever set it off. I even put a chicken leg up there in the center of it and nothing ate it. We had mouse traps up there and they were never tripped. We finally just gave up and ignored it. It went away.

My cat became what I call neurotic in that house. She acted very erratic and wanted to be outside most of the time.

Once we had an inside party and everyone wanted a tour of the haunted house. So I took a bunch of about 4 upstairs and I took them into the room over the kitchen that had caught on fire at one time. You could see the walls were singed. It must not have been a bad fire, thankfully since the house was still very much intact. I had found lots of old stuff in that room from a very long time ago. A wooden ironing board, old papers, magazines and a set of very old clothing one looked like an old drummer boy outfit in dark green velvet and an old long black skirt and blouse. As we entered the room and were looking around, a very strong scent of candles burning became present. I wasn't even the one who brought it up, but there was no doubt that's what it was. Some didn't want to mess around with that and left. I found this all very intriguing and wanted to have more encounters. I welcomed it. I didn't feel anything negative.

Even back then I had a dedicated art studio in one of the parlors and had it set up perfectly. My boyfriend was working 2nd shift and I was alone at night until after midnight. I remember one night a couple of his friends came over to wait for him to get off and I was working in my studio. We were talking and I had my back to the red room and I tend to talk with my hands so they were bent at the elbow and the red room was dark behind me. As I was talking, I had the 2 guys in front of me and I just stopped and froze. They looked at me like I was nuts and I spun around and then asked them did one of you just touch me? They told me with wide opened eyes that I was white as a sheet. I had just been touched. The back of my arm had been gently squeezed.

On another occasion, my best friend Kelly had come over and was visiting me. We sat in the kitchen at the table. We had decided to read her cards. Now, I have no claim to being psychic but I do trust my gut and intuition. I had to read the instructions with the cards as I was new to tarot. What I read in her cards were a baby. She scoffed and that was that. It turns out she actually was pregnant. Crazy. We still talk about that.

So, we ended up moving out of that old house and I thought that would be the end of that, but the story doesn't end there. I'll continue with my haunting stories another time. It has occurred to me recently that it's not the houses that I live in that are necessarily the only thing haunted.

Spooky Stuff Update

So, do any of you remember my post that was back in April of this year about gettin' spooked? I talked about the show "My Ghost Story" on the Bio Channel and told you I would keep looking for the video of the story that really freaked me out. I found it! I watched it again and it still gives me chills. If this happened to me, I'm not sure I could ever sleep alone again! The episode was called "Creepy Sleep", it's the first part of this video and here it is...

 Let me know what you think!

Gettin' Spooked!

Yikes! What was that?!

Alright, so I know I'm not the only scary movie lover here and some of you may know this about me, that I love all things scary... but... I have managed to spook myself lately. I'm talking about the look in the closets with a flashlight if you could but you can't cause you're too scared spooked. The kinda spooked where you hurry up and get in bed and cover up even your head kinda spooked! It started with last weekend on date night with the hubby and we went to see my pick.. Insidious. Great movie by the way... a real jumper. If you don't jump throughout the whole thing then go straight to the hospital because you may not have a pulse. 

I thought of it to be a different take on Poltergeist, which is one of my all time favorites. I love paranormal scary, not chop em up gory movies. So anyway, fast forward to the other night and I'm watching some of my fun stuff that I have to wait til after Asher's in bed for. I record anything scary that I know of. It just so happened that a couple of the shows I like are airing new episodes so I was excited. Now normally, My Ghost Story on the Bio channel may give you a shiver or two, but this last episode freaked me out and I cannot get it out of my mind. The link takes you to where you can watch full episodes, but they are from last season I think. The episode I'm talking about isn't on there.

So this episode starts with a woman living alone and I can't remember the reason why she starts recording herself sleeping, but she does and what she finds on her recording blows my mind. Something shows up on camera that looks like a cross between a cat and a monkey only very blurry jumping up on her bed near her head and disappearing under her covers! It also shows something walking across her bed, just the footsteps, not anything making the footsteps! I cannot believe I haven't seen this covered more somewhere else or someone trying to de-bunk it. You guys have got to see this clip, I'll keep looking for it.

UPDATE: I found the clip, go here: Creepy Sleep

It scared the bejezzus outta me. Of course, I go to sleep by myself since my husband is at work when I finally crash. I won't say what shift he's working so hopefully as to not be killed. I've even thought of sleeping with Asher! haha now that is bad. So now, I'm hearing things I've never noticed before and seeing things out of the corner of my eyes and general spooky stuff. I've always had a feeling of being watched as I sit on my couch from the stairs. I don't know what it is but very often I am looking that way. I sometimes try to ignore something that I think is trying to get my attention. You all will think I'm crazy, but I think my house is haunted at times. After watching that episode, I went into my bedroom to go to sleep and a light on our digital thermostat came on by itself as I walked by it! Just so you know, this is not normal and it does not do that even when it is kicking on.  I used to use my cat as a gauge but now she is so old and deaf she can't hear me call her name! Poor Glove. So I am left to my own devices. And hey, I just thought of something, Glove used to always sleep with me up until about 2 weeks ago and now she won't come in my room... hmmmm. As you can tell, I get a little carried away.

Speaking of devices, my girlfriend and I were talking about buying a digital recorder because we are going to do a tour of the Waverly Hills Sanitorium in July! We tried to get a 4 hour tour on Good Friday but they are all booked up. So we have to do a 8 hour tour in July! 8 hours! I'm not so sure about 8 hours, but it's better than waiting til next year. I will keep you all updated with that... ooooooooo! haha  I'm excited! and a little spooked ;)

Tell me your spooky stories!! Or blog about one and let me know so I can go read it! Or if you know of a Bed and Breakfast that offers haunted stays, I'd love to know of them. More on spooky stuff that's happened to me later. (There's actually quite a bit!)

Have a spooky night!