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Ghosts In Suburbia

Based on Actual Events

By J. Delaney-HowePublished 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 8 min read
16
Ghosts In Suburbia
Photo by Stefano Pollio on Unsplash

We were both just twenty-one years old when we purchased the house. It was a time when families could still make it on one paycheck, and you could land a good job right out of high school. Times certainly have changed.

The neighborhood was a picturesque piece of Americana in suburbia. Quaint cape cod houses were built in the 1950s, all meticulously maintained. Street lights light up Tree-lined streets at night. American flags flying proudly. A large park and elementary school made it the perfect neighborhood for a young family. Within five years, every family living on my block had school-aged children. We were the only family with a child on the block where our house was. That would change over the next few years as many of the original owners of the homes passed away or moved to Florida.

We learned that the property where my neighborhood was built used to be a large farm. A barn used to stand where my house was constructed. The original farmhouse still stood on the corner of my block, and the elderly woman who lived there grew up in the house while it was still a farm.

Welcome to the Neighborhood

It was fall when we moved in, and incidents happened right from the start. One day, I was unloading the car after grocery shopping, and one of my new neighbors stopped. We exchanged introductions, and she welcomed us to the neighborhood. She also let me know that she saw a little girl, about 5, banging on the front door from her window. She asked if that was my daughter, and I responded that we only had our son. She said she had never seen the girl in the neighborhood before, and we both agreed no one would let their five year old wander the neighborhood. By the time she came out of her house, the little girl was gone. The conversation ended, and she went back to her home. I didn't really put much stock in what she told me, but it was unsettling nonetheless. And it was even more unsettling when I looked at the glass front door and saw child's handprints.

Something is Off

As soon as we got moved in and settled, there was a general unease in the house. Sometimes things just seemed off. There were times when the place just felt so dark. Through talking to neighbors, we learned that the last few owners of the house all got divorced after moving in. The previous owners' divorce was a disaster, ending in broken windows, vandalized cars, and selling the house. Neither one of them were at the closing. We had our lawyer, the bank's lawyer, and two other lawyers representing the owners.

Whispers Around the House

Soon another baby was on the way. We had just finished decorating our oldest son's room with a Scooby-Doo theme and moved on to the new nursery. My mother-in-law and I were painting in the nursery and heard whispers coming from the hallway. We were the only two people in the house at that time, and we both heard it. We dismissed it as coming from our neighbors being outside. Only they weren't outside. They sometimes seemed to come from the attic crawl space and a storage room in the basement. And the whispers continued throughout the time we lived in the home.

By Diego González on Unsplash

Movie Night

One evening my ex-wife and I were cuddled up on the sectional in the living room. We could see the hallway to the kitchen and bathroom off to our side from where we were. The kids were at their grandparent's house, and we were enjoying a night alone.

Out of nowhere, she jumps up off the sectional and heads toward the kitchen. I asked what was going on, and she said she just saw a child walking down the hallway past the living room. She was in hysterics. She was sure she saw what she saw, yet the kitchen and hallway were empty. This incident rattled her to her core. Here is something you need to understand about my ex-wife. She is a logical person. Good with numbers, very intelligent, and not emotional. Up until this incident, she didn't believe in the supernatural.

Night Terrors

Anytime one of our children was born (three boys and one girl), they were in the nursery until they outgrew the crib (or learned how to get out of it). One night while my second son was sleeping in the nursery and my oldest son was sleeping in his bedroom, we were awoken by him bursting through our door, screaming, "the man is in my room!" I pulled him in our bedroom door, shut it behind me, and ran down the hall with a baseball bat. His fear was so real, and I instantly had an adrenaline rush. Based on his reaction, I truly thought someone was in the house. I ran down the hall into his room with a baseball bat, and there was nothing. No one was in the house.

These night terrors were experienced by all three of my boys, even when they all shared the room. Most always, it was about a man in their room. My daughter never experienced night terrors because she had her own room.

By Susan Holt Simpson on Unsplash

Playtime at Night

When my second son was a toddler but still in a crib, we no longer used his changing table for changing. It became storage. We stored stacks of wooden blocks on the bottom shelf. One night, I heard a noise through the baby monitor—the unmistakable clacking sound of the wooden blocks being stacked and tumbled. I assumed either one of my sons was out of bed playing. As I walked down the hallway, I checked on my oldest son. He was sound asleep. I got into the nursery expecting my middle son to be out of the crib on the floor playing with the blocks. He was sound asleep as well. And the wooden blocks were scattered on the floor.

Storage 5

The basement was finished and divided into four rooms. A game room, a laundry room, a converted bedroom, and the storage 5 room. This room was storage and where the furnace and water heater were. It had an old window paned door with a tarnished brass plate that said "Storage 5". When my oldest son became a teenager, we moved him into the converted bedroom to have his own space. His room shared a wall with the Storage 5 room.

My son reported many times that he heard voices and movements coming from that room at night. It wasn't just him that had experiences in the basement. One day, my father was working on our furnace and reported he had heard whispers behind him and that the room creeped him out. He was a stoic man and didn't spook easily.

Blessing the House

After years of being in the house, we finally started talking about some of the things occurring. We opened up to the elders at our church, and they suggested having the elders come to the house and bless it. When they got to the house, they immediately stated that they picked up on a feeling of darkness and dread within the home. They recited a standard blessing and anointed the house's doorways with anointing oil, in the shape of a small cross on each doorway and window frame. The small crosses they made on the doorframes and window frames had turned rust-colored by the following day. We had to scrub them off.

Leaving the House

Nothing that had occurred in the house made us think of moving out. We just accepted the things that happened. It never seemed threatening or unsafe, just off. After seventeen years of marriage and being in the house for fifteen years, my wife and I decided to divorce. Our marriage had fallen apart after losing two daughters during pregnancy and a severe medical condition resulting in my brain surgery. We just never recovered after we both retreated into ourselves.

Neither one of us kept the house. It was signed over to the bank as a deed in lieu of foreclosure.

Epilogue

The house sat vacant for over a year after we moved out. I would drive by it now and then and wonder if there were still strange occurrences now that the house was empty. It was eventually purchased and completely gutted and remodeled.

None of the activity followed us-it seemed to be only in that house.

I am not saying I believe the house was haunted. Taken at face value, they were just strange, unexplainable occurrences. But they were many. Enough to make me question whether or not there are ghosts in suburbia.

Thank you so much for reading my work! I appreciate all reads and hearts. If you liked this story, and would like to read more of my work, click below.

This story is also published by the author on Medium.

supernatural
16

About the Creator

J. Delaney-Howe

Bipolar poet. Father. Grandfather. Husband. Gay man. I write poetry, prose, some fiction and a good bit about family. Thank you for stopping by.

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Reader insights

Nice work

Very well written. Keep up the good work!

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  1. Excellent storytelling

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Comments (7)

Sign in to comment
  • River Joy2 months ago

    This was super interesting. A haunted house is always a fascinating character. Nice!

  • Mother Combs5 months ago

    Very intriguing.

  • J. S. Wadeabout a year ago

    Intriguing story. Well written 😎

  • Dawn Salois2 years ago

    This is very well-written and interesting.

  • Very well written and interesting story.

  • Read and hearted and have a few in the same ballpark.

  • James Golden2 years ago

    It's the true stories that trip me out the most.

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