My Childhood Home Was Haunted

The house I grew up in was haunted. Maybe not all day every day, but there was definitely something going on there on occasion.

It was an old farmhouse that came to be in town as the town grew over the decades. Situated on the corner of the main street and a side street that was named after a family member. It was around a 100 years old when we moved in in 1988. A story and a half high, the wall plaster had horse hair in it, the windows sashes were wooden instead of metal, and it was heated by a wood stove in the kitchen (later a furnace in the basement). This place was the furthest thing from open plan and the bedrooms had slanted walls because of the pitch of the roof. Now that I've set the scene, let's dive in to the weirdness.

Things started happening fairly early on. In 1991, my grandfather died in October. My mom says this incident happened after he died, my dad says before. Either way, it happened around that time. Mom had to get up late at night/early in the morning to add wood to the fire in the kitchen.

Here's the layout, the kitchen had a door that led to our back porch (we called it that but it was completely indoors, more like a mud room where you keep your shoes and junk), the porch door led outside. Also in the porch were the slightly treacherous stairs to the basement. Every single night we lived in that house, the kitchen and porch doors were locked and all the lights out.

Mom went downstairs to find the kitchen door wide open and the kitchen light on. Maybe they forgot? It was cold af, no way would they have forgotten to lock the door, it wouldn't have been open in the first place- all the heat from the fire would have gone straight out of it. Mom was creeped out, did what she had to and went back to bed. I was 6 and my sister a baby, we weren't told about this happening until we were much older. Whether it was my grandfather or not, we still don't know.

At least this event helped ensure my family believed me about the house. So, bright side?

There were two very different parts of the house that, for no apparent reason, terrified me the entire time we lived there.

The basement in our house was unfinished- old cracked concrete and very dark, occasionally it flooded. There were a number of lights and individual switches to turn them on as you went progressively deeper in the basement, along with pipes and beams even my short self had to duck, creepy. Beside the washer and dryer was a big dark cubby space that was under the porch. It was just storage, but it was the darkest spot down there. Most of my terror came from both the cubby near the stairs and having to go deep into the basement in the dark. The memories of turning on one light then running to the next switch or pull cord to get to the furnace while home alone still give me anxiety.

As adults, my sister and I realized that, independent of each other, we both ended up afraid of the basement for no logical reason.

Was there something lurking? I don't know. But the amount of fear I had down there- even as an adult, far outweighed the creep factor down there.

The other place that creeped me out was the bathroom on the main floor. It had been the formal dining room until my parents remodeled it early on in our time in the house. It was just a normal bathroom- sink, shower, and toilet. The main storage area was the old built in china cabinet with the doors taken off. It was not creepy like the basement, but alone in there at night getting ready for bed was stressful. It was like something was always standing behind me, I swear I could feel it. It was to the point that, even in my twenties, I could barely look in the mirror just in case…

I know what you're thinking: "She just watched too many scary movies and let her imagination get the better of her." Nope, scary movies (actually anything over PG 13) were banned in our house and I had no where else I could have watched them. I still don't watch them, to be honest.

While I never saw anything in the bathroom, I did have a weird experience.

By this time, we’ve lived in that house for nearly twenty years. I know every pop and creak it makes and I know what my family’s footsteps sound like- I could literally tell who it was on the stairs or walking down the hall.

It wasn’t uncommon for me to be the last one up at night. It was also not uncommon for my mom to come back down to either tell me to get to bed or come down because she forgot to take a pill and needed to get into the bathroom to get one. Or both.

It was Christmas break and I was home from university. I was the last one up and in the bathroom washing my makeup off and trying not to look in the mirror as usual when I heard footsteps on the stairs in the hallway. I know they were footsteps.

I paused what I was doing long enough for mom, I presumed, to walk from the foot of the stairs to the bathroom door (not far) and waited for her to knock on the door. It didn’t happen. Okay, that’s weird, I thought, and brushed my teeth in record time.

When I got to the foot of the stairs, I looked up to find that my parent’s bedroom light was still on and their door cracked open. Did they hear the footsteps? Did they see something?

I figured I had two choices- ask then and there and not sleep all night or ask in the morning as I had a feeling something was off. It never occurred to me to never ask and live in blissful ignorance.

I asked in the morning. No one had gone downstairs and they hadn’t heard anything. Great. They didn't call me crazy, though, so there's that.

A few years later, I had a summer job that meant I could sleep a bit later than everyone else and was bad about turning my alarm off and falling asleep again. Actually, I still am bad for doing that...

I turn my alarm off and start to fall asleep when I head fingernails scratch down my bedroom door- a sound I know because my dad woke me up for Christmas that way once. Yeah, I don’t know why he did that either. Our bedroom doors were those hollow, kind of dark honey coloured, panel ones so it was a pretty distinct sound. Anyway, I thought maybe it was my mom making sure I was up, though she'd usually just yell through my door to get a response. I asked her later that day. Nope. She had no idea what I was talking about and dad hadn’t been upstairs. Cool cool cool. Thanks, I'm up.

the second time that summer I turned my alarm off and fell asleep it got a bit bolder. The blankets on my feet were grabbed and twitched enough that I was AWAKE- not pulled off the whole bed, thank the lord. I said thanks to whoever it was and didn’t oversleep again that summer.

This story took place in the house and involves my grandfather, I’ve left it for last since he wasn’t a frequent visitor to the house. I was home alone one evening standing in my room with our cat, both of us just minding our own business when the cat freaked and raced out the door and down the stairs. That was weird by itself because that wasn’t her usual behavior. Cookie was a chonk, running? We don't know her.

While still wondering what the hell that was about, I heard my grandfather’s disembodied voice say my name twice just behind my left ear. I joined the cat downstairs pretty quickly and didn't go upstairs until the rest of the family was home.

I've seen my grandfather in a few different places over the years, actually, but that was the only time I'm sure he was in the house.

My parents’ moved out when I was in my mid-twenties, we’d moved there when I was two. I have more love than fear for the house. Nothing ever seemed angry or malicious, though it was scary to experience at times.

I did some research into the house, going to the office where property records are held and looked into its past owners out of sheer curiosity. A few owners back from my parents was someone with my mom’s maiden name.

This woman wasn’t a direct relative but an extended cousin a generation or two, so far as I can tell. We had no idea in all the time we lived there that it had been owned by a relative. Was she the one who opened the doors if it wasn’t my grandfather? Were they her footsteps? Did she make sure I wasn’t late for work?

I’ll never know, but I like to think it was her.

I hope the family that lives there now is cool with the ghost(s) if they still haunt the house and wonder what stories they have to tell.