STEPHENS HOUSE
Location: The Stephens house is a private residence on twelve acres of posted property in New Oxford, New Hampshire, a community on the Merrimack River six miles north of Concord.
Description of Place: The house is a two-story Dutch Colonial decorated in antiques, including a seven-foot tall stuffed bear. The property is a historic landmark including an old mill on the hill behind the house.
Ghostly Manifestations: In 1962, twins Renee and Rebecca were eleven years old and quite precocious, often exploring and playing in the rolling hills and woods around the family's Vermont home. According to modern memories, Becky was the leader, the trouble-maker, who dragged Renee along with her. One day, Becky wanted to explore the old 19th Century mill on the property and dragged Renee along as an accomplice to share in the trouble they would get. However, there was an incident that would shatter the family. One of the girls crashed through a rotted platform and drowned; leaving the other frozen in fear at the other's death. One twin would not be returning home...
Or so it seemed...
For years after the incident, Renee screamed that Becky's ghost was haunting her , screaming at her to join her in the waters at the mill. No one ever saw the ghost, but Renee was seeing her everywhere. Objects started breaking, doors were slamming around Renee and a wet doll started appearing in the house. Renee was losing it, and by the age of fifteen, she was institutionalized.
When she finally inherited the house in 1979, Renee was an attractive twenty-eight year old artist. She had lived in hospitals and boarding schools her whole life, and joined by her Cousin Bernard and close friend, David Barrett, she thought she had the strength to endure Becky's ghost. Almost immediately after moving in, she saw the brief image of a young girl racing through the house. It was a disconcerting image, but she tried to bare with it, but David started hearing the distant sounds of a child haunting the house as well.
In time, the two of them started experiencing things together. They would hear doors opening and closing and Renee would call David to witness the basement trashed and ripped apart. Neither of them had heard a thing, but the poltergeist activity had ripped down the gate to a storeroom and turned over a large oak table. Upstairs, they found more damage. A piano was rammed into the wall with such force it almost entered the next room and another door was ripped off its hinges. Renee's cousin, Bernard, who had taken care of the house in her absence came rushing over to tell Renee that he had seen a huge green presence moving through the house through the windows, but he couldn't tell what it was.
Laying in an undisturbed chair, David found a wet, dripping doll. Renee identified it as the same doll Becky had tossed into the mill almost twenty years before.
History: The Stephens are an affluent New England family with homes in New York, Colorado, Florida, Vermont and California. Built around 1877, the Vermont residence was inherited by Renee Stephens in the fall of 1979.
Identity of Ghosts: It is believed the ghost is that of Rebecca "Becky" Stephens, Renee's sister who had drowned in the mill when she was eleven-years-old.
Investigations: Dr. David Bruce Banner (1957-1990) was a renowned physician with eleven degrees including biochemistry, radiology, surgery, medicine and psychology. Endowed with a 178 I.Q., he was also a tormented man of great compassion haunted by memories of his dead wife, Laura, but after the death of his best friend and colleague, Dr. Elaina Marks, in 1979, he retreated into a solitary existence traveling incognito in order to find his peace with the world. In doing so, he became close friends with several people who didn't know his true past, and in doing so found his peace with the world. It is believed that as David Barrett he learned that Renee Stephens was not suffering from a heart murmur she had been diagnosed with as a child and deduced that she was really Rebecca, not Renee, who is now believed to have been the one who died in the mill in 1955. This is supported by the fact that as children both Rebecca and Renee often took each other identities. It is now believed that Renee (aka Becky) was actually experiencing hallucinations brought about the guilt of her sister's accidental death and the stress of continuing the facade for several years afterward. The realization has greatly stabilized Becky's life as Renee and she is no longer having visions or believes she is being haunted. She today lives a very happy life with her husband and twin sons in the Vermont home.
However, as one is quick to point out, this does not explain the damage by the poltergeist in the house.
Source/Comments: The Incredible Hulk (Episode: "Haunted") Based almost entirely on the episode.