Haunted Rental House
I am currently living with my best friend, Rob, a mutual friend, Luke, and my girlfriend, Tennille. The four of us share a fairly large house that we will have been renting for a year on August 1, 1997, when we will move out. Downstairs, there is a master bedroom, a master bathroom, a laundry room, a front hall, a main hall, another bedroom, a living room, a game room, a kitchen, a sunroom, and another bathroom. Upstairs, there is one bedroom, a partially finished storage room, and a lot of crawlspace. The house is haunted.
The first sign of spiritual inhabitation we were aware of, and the most often recurring one, was the sound of footsteps upstairs. At first, we barely noticed it, assuming it was simply another roommate upstairs. Later, we realized that there were very often clear footsteps heard upstairs when everyone was present and accounted for downstairs. The footsteps would pace back and forth, and move from one end of the house to the other. Most of the time they seemed to come from the crawlspace, where there is no floor! When we first became aware of the inexplicable nature of the footsteps, they made me feel uneasy; now, I'm so used to hearing them that I hardly register them consciously.
The door separating the bedroom upstairs from the storage room is very small, and inset in the wall about two feet up. It is not a conventional door, obviously, and has a drawer-pull-type knob that one tugs to open it. It fits very snugly in its frame. The door separating the storage room from the crawlspace is similar in design, except that it is at floor level and the top is sharply angled. Both of these doors have been know to open by themselves.
The "haunting" stayed at that level for some time, causing slight unease but ultimately no big deal, until one evening when I was there alone. I was bored and lonely, sitting in the living room, watching "Fletch Lives" [I was beyond caring, obviously] and munching on pizza. Suddenly, a loud smashing sound came from upstairs. The hair on the back of my neck stood up immediately, and adrenaline coursed through my veins. The sound repeated itself, louder this time. I was seriously freaked out. The sound continued, very loud, vibrating the house with the force of it. I could see the cola in my glass ripple in response to the vibrations. It sounded like someone was upstairs with a huge sledgehammer, tearing the walls out. The sound was moving, too; it started on one end of the house [where the bedroom is upstairs] and progressed to the other end [where the crawlspace is]. I got up from the couch and went to my bedroom, picking up a large sheathed dagger and a mini-Maglite. Strange as it sounds now, I was rationalizing to myself that it was actually someone outside, smashing at the house with something. [In our neighborhood, that wouldn't be as surprising as you might think!] I went outside, using the mini-Maglite to survey the property, dagger in hand. There was nothing amiss outside, although I could still hear the smashing sounds coming from the house. I anxiously went back inside, sheathing the dagger on my belt. I ventured into the kitchen [where the door to the stairwell leading upstairs is] and wondered what I should do. I certainly had no intention of going upstairs alone! I started back into the living room when I thought I heard a sound directly behind me. I spun around and grabbed for the knife at my belt. To my horror, the door to the stairwell was now open and my knife was gone! I looked around frantically, thinking the sheath had come loose from my belt, but it was nowhere to be seen. I retreated from the kitchen to the living room as I had originally intended, and saw the dagger, sheathed, sitting neatly on the sofa. The smashing sounds subsided, having continued for 3-4 minutes in total. I called Tennille, who came over to keep me company. Soon, the other roommates returned, and I related the events of the evening to them. We agreed to venture upstairs together. Of course, nothing was disturbed upstairs, aside from the two doors, both of which were standing wide open.
Another time, Rob had been studying all day for his finals, and went to bed early so as to be rested. The next morning, I got up to go to work, and saw him staring blearily into the mirror. He looked as if he had been up all night. I asked him if he was alright, and he said he was kept up by the ghost. He said he was lying in bed, trying to go to sleep, which was difficult, as we all ordinarily stay up very late. He said he felt something poke him, and he rolled over in alarm to find nothing there. He got comfortable again and was once again prodded by something. This went on for a while, he said, before he finally sat up and stared around wildly. His room [the master bedroom] is separated from the master bathroom by a sliding glass door, which we hung curtains over to afford privacy for both rooms. On this evening, the glass door was open and the curtain half-pulled. As he was looking around, he saw the silhouette of someone peeking around the open door, lit by the streetlights outside the bathroom window! The head (which was all he could see) retreated into the bathroom in a moment. Then, he saw the silhouette begin pacing back and forth in the bathroom, in front of the open door, pausing to look at him every so often. He grabbed a shoe off of the floor and threw it at the thing, yelling for it to go away, and it instantly disappeared. He eventually laid back down and was again poked and prodded and not allowed to sleep. This continued for much of the night, he said.
I was hanging out with some friends on another evening, conversing. One of the friends had given me an intricate dollhouse kit, with lots of assembly required, with the idea that I would put it together for his daughter. I had intended to do so, but, after looking at the instructions, decided it would take an incredible investment of time, and I changed my mind. My friend mentioned the dollhouse, and I told him I would get it for him, it being in the bedroom upstairs. I ascended the dark staircase, which is not lit unless the bedroom light is on, and as I came level with the banister, I saw the light come on in the storage room, as evidenced by the thin sliver of light surrounding the door to the storage room. I froze in position, and the door began to swing open of its own accord, illuminating the room and the staircase. I realized that I was about to be able to see into the storage room, based on the position of the door, and that I did not want to see whatever might be there. So I descended the staircase very rapidly and rejoined my friends. I told them what had happened. They scoffed at me, and offered to come upstairs with me. I grabbed a nearby flashlight and we went upstairs. The staircase was again dark, and the door to the storage room was again closed. My friends were convinced that I was putting them on until I opened the door to the storage room. The pullcord for the overhead lamp was swinging, as if it had just been turned off.
One evening, I was in the master bathroom, brushing my teeth before bed. I was looking down into the sink when I felt the back of my shirt being tugged on. Rob and I often tug on each other's shirts, in a childlike, for amusement, and I assumed it was him. I glanced up at the mirror and saw that no one was behind me, yet I could see and feel my shirt jerking! I spun around to find nothing behind me, of course. About a week later, it happened to me again, in exactly the same manner.
A few nights ago, I was lying in bed, sleepless. I have a hard time going to bed at a reasonable hour, but since I am expected at work at 8:00AM, I try to force myself to sleep. It seldom works. As I laid in bed, I felt the distinct plop of our large housecat, Puck, landing on my waterbed. She walked around a bit, and stood on my foot for a while, then walked back to the edge of the bed and settled down. I wondered how she got in my room, as I do not allow the cat to sleep in there, and I lock my bedroom door out of habit. I supposed she must have been in my bedroom when I retired and I had simply failed to notice her. I resigned myself to letting her sleep there, and willed myself to go to sleep again. No such luck. Not only was I not remotely sleepy, but I also very definitely was going to have to get up and go to the bathroom. Cursing, I got out of bed and opened the bedroom door. I was shocked to see the housecat sleeping soundly across the hall, outside my best friend's bedroom door. I turned, looking back into my bedroom, now illuminated by the hall light, and saw the bed and floor was devoid of cats. Disturbed, I went to the bathroom as planned and retired again. I slept very poorly that night. The next day, I mentioned to Rob that I had slept very badly the night before. He looked at me oddly and asked me if I had been disturbed in some way. I said yes, why do you ask? He said that his sleep had been disrupted also. I demanded an explanation. He said that he, too, was unable to sleep, and was lying disconsolately in bed when he felt something crawling up his neck. He brushed at it, and it darted into his mouth. Disgusted, he grabbed it between his fingers and turned on the light on the ceiling fan above his bed. When he opened his fingers to look, there was nothing there. He turned the light off, confused, and laid back down. Shortly, he felt several things crawling up his neck. He quickly grabbed at them and thought he had a handfull. Reaching again for the light, he was amazed at the force exerted on his closed hand by whatever was trying to get away. He fumbled for the light cord, which he had found easily only a moment before, and wound up sticking his hand in the path of the moving fan blade. He grabbed his lighter from the bedside table and used its flame to find the light cord, which was exactly where it had always been, and turned on the lamp. He opened his hand suddenly, determined to see what he had caught. Again, his hand was empty! He turned off the light and laid back down. He said this went on for some time before he was finally frightened and angry enough to want to leave his bedroom. He got up and turned on the lights, and decided to surf the 'net for a while to soothe his nerves. I remembered then that when I had gotten up the night before, the lights had been on, allowing me to see the cat and my empty room, which was unusual at that hour.
As per the cliche, my girlfriend's cat has been behaving very oddly as of late. It will disappear for a day at a time, and seem frantically happy to see us when it does return. It seems to have forgotten its house training entirely, and urinates on beds, clothes, etc. A nasty wound has appeared on the nape of its neck, the fur removed and the skin severely abraded. The wound is about the size of a nickel. My girlfriend says she thinks the wound is from the other cat [which we have given away], but I am pretty sure that the other cat was already gone when the wound appeared.
[One interesting sidenote to this story: The house was located at one time on land where the local government wanted to put a road. So, they auctioned off the house, moved it, and put a road in its place. Through a string of "small world"-type coincidences, I met up with a girl who grew up in this house, back when it was in its original location. She said that she had always hated the house, and felt there was something wrong about it, but I could never persuade her to elaborate.]
