beths old house
my cousin beth grew up in that neat old house you see above. it is very near and dear to us both, because we have many happy memories of our childhood from it. whether it was playing dress-up in the playroom or having sleepovers in the living room, the house has become something of a legend to us. moving day was a sad chapter in our lives. while that was nearly 7 years ago, it still brings back warm memories..and fascinates us when we think about the strange things that happened there. you see, we are convinced that her old house is haunted. heres a little history:
the house was in beths family for many generations. it was passed down in the family until they decided to sell it in 1994. in the many years her extended family occupied it, several members died within the house (a great uncle and great grandparents of beth). if it IS haunted, it is likely that it could be any of these three relatives. one area of particular happenings was the bedroom at the top of the stairs. several members of beths immediate family reported abnormal things while in that room, and perhaps it is more than a coincidence that this bedroom is one of the areas that someone died in. the entire upstairs hallway always scared me and my cousins as kids. i remember running from one end to the other just to get to the door. maybe it was because there were no windows in the hall and it was always dark. or maybe there was something IN the dark that we just couldnt see. so is the old house truly haunted? decide for yourself.
"When i was about 13, i had this recurring dream in which i was lying in my bed...the room was dim and there were several people sitting or standing around the bed looking at me...one woman was sitting down and crying...she had on a long dress and apron, and a man was standing behind her with his hand on her shoulder...i couldn't move at all, it was like they were watching me on my deathbed or something...and then at the end of the dream i'd always look toward this door that led out onto the roof and i'd see a red glow just outside the window in the door, and then i'd wake up..."
she later found out that her great-uncle paul had died in that room at the age of 14 from rheumatic fever...
when beth and i began digging deeper into the house's history, we asked her mom if she ever encountered anything strange in the house when she was younger. she admitted that at one point when she had a bedrooms all the way at the end of the upstairs hallway, she looked up from her bed to see a figure standing in the doorway. it appeared to be that of white transparent lady. she described it as "kinda swirly." within a few seconds it went back down the hall and faded away.
my aunt also told us about the time her and her family went on vacation. the only ones that stayed back were her brother and his wife, who were living in the basement at the time. although they were alone in the house, at nite they repeatedly heard noises coming from the room above them that sounded like a rocking chair. directly above where they were staying was the playroom, where my aunts grandparents spent the last of their days and eventually died in the room. and yes, they used to love rocking in their rocking chair...
beth and her siblings frequently switched bedrooms around, so eventually they all had their turn in the bedroom at the top of the stairs. while beth occupied it, she had a reoccuring nightmare that she never understood. only now when we put all the details together do we begin to wonder if maybe it was more than just a dream...here is how beth describes the nightmare:
beth's sister amy recently told us about her experience in the room at the top of the stairs, and to me it is the most interesting part of this whole story. amy never told anyone about this while in the house, because she was afraid they wouldnt believe her. but as we swapped stories of the house a few months ago, she told us how she used to hear voices in her room at nite. they were whispering and you couldnt understand what they were saying, but it was enough to freak amy out. she said she would leave her room and go sit on the landing until the voices were gone and she could go to bed. i couldnt believe that amy had never told us this before!
another story i never knew about until this year happened with beths brothers, kenny and joey. and like the previous stories, it also dealt with the room at the top of the stairs. for whatever reason, joey and kenny always had trouble sleeping in that room. at the time it was credited to them just being little kids...but what exactly caused all those problems in that room? amy eventually moved into the room with the boys, sleeping on a mattress on the floor. if they were in there alone, the boys could not go to sleep. because they were too young at the time, neither one is able to remember many details about their time in that room. but as soon as they were moved to a different room, they had no problem sleeping without someone else in there with them.
this next story freaks me out. before amy moved in with the boys, kenny acquired some strange nightly habits. during the middle of the nite, he would run up and down the hallway crying and pounding on all the doors. it would wake everyone in the house up..but kenny had no idea what was going on! it was almost as if he was sleepwalking, but they could not shake him out of it once he was in this trance-like state. his parents took him to doctors and they diagnosed it as "night terrors." how appropriate is that?! whatever was causing the nite terrors only affected him while he stayed in that room...there was never another episode before or after he changed rooms. today kenny does not remember any of this.
this next bit is only a suspicion, i have no facts to support it. i remember the first time i ever slept over beth's house, and i must have been about 5 years old. i distinctly remember my uncle having to take me home because i woke up in the middle of the nite crying. now it makes sense that i would want to go home on my first nite away from home. but it is also a coincidence that at the time, the room at the top of the stairs belonged to beth, and that is where we were sleeping! just maybe something happened to scare me, but i was too young at the time to remember now.
so maybe there is nothing supernatural at beths old house..but maybe there is. we both joke (rather seriously) that we'll buy the house back someday. and if that ever happens, we'll let you know if we're the only ones occupying it...
if you would like to drop beth a line about her experiences in the house, go ahead and email her .
