Haunted Too. Dorah L. Williams

few weeks ago I got home from work about an hour before my wife did and went into our bedroom to grab a shower and change my clothes because we were going out later that night. My wife and I had left the house together that morning. The door to our room is always kept closed to keep the pets out when we aren’t there, and it was that day too. So I know they hadn’t been in there. When I opened the door I saw a huge imprint on our bed where it looked like a large person had been lying on it.

      We’ve stopped trying to make ourselves believe this is a normal household. We know it’s haunted; we don’t know why, though. It’s not really that old. As far as we know nothing terrible ever happened here, and the original owner didn’t die in the house; she just got too old to live alone and lives with her daughter now.

      I don’t think we’ll be here long enough to solve the mystery of this haunting, if it even could be solved. We planned to stay for a few years when we bought it, but we hope to move a lot sooner than that now.

      House-sitting

      Our neighbours were going on a holiday and asked me to house-sit for them while they were gone. This wasn’t a problem, as I lived on the same street so could keep an eye on their property for them, water their plants, take in the mail, etc.

      They had a beautiful old home, the nicest in the neighbourhood, if not the whole town. And I had never heard or seen anything unusual while visiting there before, and my friends certainly never mentioned anything to me about thinking their house was haunted. But the first time I was alone in the house, to water the plants while they were away, I started to get an uneasy feeling I never expected to have. When I came in I noticed the radio was on in the kitchen, which I thought was unusual since the house was empty, but I didn’t think that much about it until I turned it off and then heard it playing again as I was looking for the watering can for the plants in another room.

      And it felt like I was being watched, but I knew I was the only one in the house. I tried to ignore that uneasy feeling and went into the next room to water the plant in there. As I walked toward the large plant in the corner of the room, the chair beside it slid right across the floor about three feet toward me. I never watered the plant that day. I rushed out of there instead.

      But they were gone for a month, and I had already promised to take care of the plants for them, so knew I would have to go back eventually. So I made my husband go with me the next time. He is the most skeptical person around, and didn’t believe for a minute that a ghost had pushed that chair across the floor the last time I had been there. He had a few other explanations (my imagination, the house’s old foundation made the floors uneven, a dog or cat could have pushed it — even though they didn’t have any pets).

      He went into the house first and had a quick look around and then motioned to me to come in. His back was to the staircase, and as he made smartass remarks about getting our friends a “Ghostbusters” gift certificate for Christmas that year something started to form behind him, over the stairs.

      He saw my expression, and turned to see what I was looking at. And we both saw a vortex-like “thing” (I don’t know what else to call it) suspended in mid-air. It just suddenly materialized, and then evaporated into nothing again within a few seconds. I was so glad he was witnessing this too.

      I better not quote what he said when he saw it, but let’s just say he isn’t quite as skeptical about other people’s paranormal sightings anymore.

      A few days later I was unlocking their front door to place the mail on the pile on the front stand. Something caught my eye, and I thought I saw someone walking in the living room. I nervously peeked around the corner and screamed when I saw a woman standing there. It was my friend, home sooner than expected, and my reaction scared her too and she also screamed. She thought I had mistaken her for an intruder, but I actually screamed because I had thought she was a ghost. After we both stopped laughing I decided it might be best not to mention what we had seen. I had already scared her enough.

      Central Canada

      Haunted Childhood

      This took place in my childhood home, where I lived with my sister, mother, and father. The house was a typical 1960s-era side-split design, in a new neighbourhood that had previously just been farmland. It was nothing like the Victorian gothic mansions that are usually associated with restless spirits and hauntings.

      We had never experienced any paranormal activity in our previous house, and certainly didn’t expect it in our brand new one. And we never could understand why that particular house was so haunted.

      After we moved in to the new house it was at least three or four years before anything unusual occurred. It all started on Remembrance Day one year when my sister and I were home, as it was a school holiday at that time, and our parents were both at work. We were sitting on the couch in the living room, arguing about something trivial. Suddenly, across the room, the television turned on all by itself, and the volume kept increasing until it was as loud as it could go. My sister and I looked at each other in shock and forgot about whatever had caused our squabble.

      One afternoon soon after that, I returned home for lunch. I had been the last one to leave the house that morning, and knew everything had been quiet when I had closed and locked the door on my way to school. But now, when I stood on our front porch unlocking the door a few hours later, I could hear music blaring from inside the house. It was so loud the windows were actually shaking and our dog was frantically running around, trying to escape the noise.

      When I got the door opened I ran into the dining room and saw that a Christmas album was playing on the record player in there, with the volume turned up to maximum. I knew the house had been silent when I left for school that morning, and no one had been using the record player for several days prior to that. But now, when the house had been unoccupied since I had left after breakfast, the record player had somehow been turned on, with the volume fully cranked. Our dog was relieved when I turned off the music, but it took a while before she stopped shaking.

      It then became a fairly common occurrence to hear music playing within the house. Sometimes it would be audible but faint, and walking around the house would not help in determining where the noise was originating.

      Conversations between at least two people, and sometimes what sounded like several, could be heard as faint murmuring too; and this, even more than the music, confused and frightened us. The voices would continue until we entered the room where they seemed to be, and then they would abruptly stop until we left the room again.

      My sister and I seemed to observe the most activity, although on one occasion our mother nervously admitted she had seen a young man with a guitar slung over his shoulder walk down the hallway and stop at her bedroom door. He looked in the room to where she was lying in bed, reading a book. They stared at one another for several seconds and then he just simply vanished.

      We were surprised to hear our mother share this experience, and to see how frightened she was, because she had not seemed to believe our own claims up until that point. After that, though, she did not so easily shrug off our constant stories of doors opening by themselves and appliances (the television, and radio, etc.) being turned on and off by unseen hands.

      Although the haunting was really frightening at times, nothing harmful ever happened. The ghosts definitely made their presence known, but not in aggressive ways.

      One day, though, my sister and I were sitting on the bed talking in her bedroom when, from several feet away, a small rubber Super Ball suddenly shot up off of the dresser (neither of us had been near it or touched it). With incredible force it bounced itself off of every wall in the room and whizzed by our heads. We ran screaming from the bedroom. And as soon as we left the room, the ball stopped, and it was sitting still, on the dresser again, when we felt brave enough to return. That incident definitely scared us the most.

      Ten years after our family moved into that house, my mother died suddenly after a brief illness. The paranormal