izzyc@webtv.net

We moved into our new home two days after our daugher's 16th birthday. We now had five children, the youngest was just nine months old. I fell in love with this beautiful Colonial house the minute I saw it. With it's high ceilings and large rooms, it reminded me of our house in England.

The strangest thing happened the first night we moved in, we all had the same dream. I can remember comparing our dreams over breakfast the next morning. We all dreamed that we were walking on the third floor when we came upon a room between the bathroom and the last room at the end of the hall. In this room was an old man with gray hair sitting in a chair. When he noticed us, he motioned for us to follow him. He led us to a fireplace where he stuck his hand inside and pulled out a box. As he opened it, we caught a glint of jewels shining from the light above hitting the surfaces.

The only problem with that dream was, there was no room between the bathroom and the last bedroom. We had two fireplaces in this house and we checked both of them just in case there was any merit to our dreams. As far as we could tell, nothing was in those fireplaces but a bunch of soot and ashes.

Our youngest son told us many times about the old man who was living in this house, but we thought he just had an active imagination.

This house had a history, it was the first mayor's house and was used as a speak-easy in the 20's. There was even an alarm switch in the living room to alert everyone in case of a raid. When we explored the basement, we discovered a wine cellar on one side and a half stone, half boarded room on the other, filled with sand.

We weren't going to take any chances with this home...Two weeks after moving in we had our Priest over for dinner and he blessed every inch of our house. He even blessed the room in the basement filled with sand.

It was about a year after moving in, on the anniversary of my father-in-law's death, when we heard the footsteps. Our kids were sleeping and my hubby and I were in our bedroom talking when we heard someone walk up the stairs and stop in the hallway outside of our door. We went to check who was walking around so late at night and found the kids sleeping and no one else in the house. My hubby just laughed and said it was probably his dad coming for a visit.

We would hear so many unexplained things, that my hubby started keeping a diary of the date and time of each occurrence.

The most memorable was when my youngest son was in the kitchen with his father. Brian was standing near the stove behind his father watching him cook his famous stew, when he noticed something moving near the doorway. As he turned his head, a man with grey hair and an old sweater with patches on the elbow, slowly walked in the door and headed toward him. Brian started pulling on his father's shirt to get his attention as the man continued in his direction. He tried to call out to warn his father but in his fear could only make noises that sounded like a squeak. By the time the ghost walked through the table, my son was pounding his father on his back making some sort of wheezing sound and shaking like a leaf. My hubby naturally turned in the wrong direction and missed the whole thing, but when he looked at Brian, he knew something had happened. Brian was chalk white, trembling with tears running down his face.

Whoever this man was, he didn't stay confined to one area. We would hear the front door open while we were having dinner, and footsteps down the hall toward the kitchen. Everyone would be watching the dooway to see who it was, and when no one would enter we would go to investigate. He would also walk up the stairs to the third floor and stand outside of my hubby's den. In the beginning, my hubby would race across the floor and throw open the door to catch whoever was there. After so many years of tripping over his own feet to find an empty hallway, he just ignored it.

My hubby loves to edit his own films and make movies out of his hunting trips. One evening while he was in his den playing with his films, he noticed two red lights on the wall above his radio. He thought they were being reflected from something in the room and curious to find the source, searched the room. It wasn't coming from the small wing-shaped window on the side of the room or the TV or VCR. He stood between the lights and everything that could have caused them with no success. He then called me up there to see if I could figure it out. We turned off everything that could be making the light and noticed these two red things on the wall glowing even brighter. When we turned off the lamp and the lights were still there, I went running back to my room. They were gone by the next day and we never discovered what they were, but from that time on, he had the responsibility of cleaning the den. I refused to go in that room again.

My daughters and I had been out shopping and returned one evening to an empty house. As we entered the front door, we heard a strange noise coming from somewhere on the upper floor. I thought one of the girls had left her radio or TV on but didn't remember hearing anything when we left the house earlier.

As we started up the stairs the noise became somewhat louder and sounded more like chanting than music. When we reached the second floor, we discovered the sound seemed to be coming from the floor above and since the girls' bedrooms were all on the second floor, I realized that it couldn't be the TV, we didn't have one up there at that time. My daughter Dawn grabbed my arm to stop me from ascending the stairs leading to the third floor, but I continued climbing. If someone was in my house, I wanted to know who they were and what they were doing.

By the time we were halfway up those steps we realized the noise sounded like some sort of ceremony, almost like the devil worship movies I'd seen on television. When we reached the door to my hubby's den, the chanting stopped. The sound had been coming from the den, the same room where the footsteps always stopped.

If I ever had any doubts about this house being haunted, I don't now. With the marriage of my oldest daughter and only having two of my five children living with us, we no longer needed this large house. We decided to move back to our original one and started gathering everything that wouldn't fit for a tag sale.

The day had been a good one with the sale of several large pieces of furniture and many odds and ends. I was relaxing in our TV room where I have my webtv and computer and just enjoying the quiet of the house. My hubby was driving the kids to their friend's house and after having strangers here all day, it was nice having the house to myself.

I was sitting in front of the TV all ready to chat with some friends on the web when I heard the crying. I thought at first I had imagined it, then it became louder and seemed to be much closer then it was before. It sounded like a woman sobbing and it was coming from my hallway, right outside this door. I didn't hear anyone enter the house and this sobbing sounded like it was coming from an echo chamber. I looked in the hall to find it empty and the sobs stopped the minute I walked through the door.

I walked through the house and after finding it as empty as it was supposed to be, went back to my web.

Between the tag sale and moving things over to our other house, the sobbing was forgotten. The only other thing I heard was a man coughing on one of the upper floors the last night I spent in that house.

My hubby and sons would go over there every day to finish packing and bring the things here so I could unpack and put them away. We left the cat and dog there until we could clear some space over here for them and since they were only alone at night, they could guard the house.

My hubby mentioned how strange the dog had been acting when he came here after the third day of packing. He said Teddy had been staring into the hallway growling and when he heard a noise that sounded like a woman sobbing, cowered in the corner under a chair. A woman sobbing? That's when I remembered hearing her myself and told him about it. I should have warned my daughter's boyfriend because the two of them went over to pick up Debi's bike the following evening.

Debi went in the kitchen to visit our dog while Peter rolled her bike to the hallway. She glanced over the sink where her father had some roses drying out from my daughter's wedding and called to Peter asking if they should take them as well. The dog started whining and hid behind her chair at the same time as Peter headed toward the kitchen. He asked her who she was talking to and she said him. Peter insisted he heard a woman crying and asking her for help. When Debi told him that we had heard it too, Peter dropped the bike and ran out of the house.

We don't know what went on there at night, but every morning when my hubby showed up he would find the dog hiding in the kitchen afraid to enter the hall.

Several days after Peter's mad dash out the front door, my hubby and two sons went over to pack up things from the basement. As they entered the house they noticed the intense cold. It was in the 60s outside but in the house they could see their breath in the air.

The electricity had been turned off so they used flashlights to see. They had been working in the area of the basement near the front of the house when they smelled the stench. It filled the room so fast, and was so putrid that they had trouble catching their breath. The three of them ran out of the basement and on the way to the front door noticed the rest of the house had the same stench. Well, they had to move those boxes and we were running out of time so my dear hubby decided to run to the store and get some air freshener to improve his working conditions in there. By the time they returned, the house was warm and the odor had gone.

My son and his friends decided they wanted to spend one more night in that old house, they had a lot of good memories, and some very good parties in that house and this was their last chance. They gathered some sleeping bags, pillows and snacks and settled down in my old bedroom.

They were listening to a radio one of the guys brought with him when the temperature dropped. Now they didn't even have to smoke a cigarette to see smoke in the air around them, they could just breathe and get the same effect. To make the situation worse, the dog started howling around the same time and the kids were starting to get apprehensive about staying there.

My son went downstairs to calm the dog and one of the boys decided to visit the bathroom. Even though he was using a flashlight to see where he was going, out of habit he reached for the light switch by the door and this was when the noticed the dampness on the wall. He aimed the light toward the wall to find out what it was and started screaming when he saw the blood. At the sound of his screams and sudden departure from the house, the others entered the bathroom to find out what had frightened him. My son Brian was heading up the stairs as the rest of his friends, with their sleeping bags, passed him on the way to the front door. He heard them say something about the bathroom and going home but couldn't make out exactly what it was they were trying to tell him, so being the brave one in the group, went upstairs to see what was wrong.

Brian had lived through our ghost walking through the table when he was younger and many other strange things in that house, but nothing in his past experiences prepared him for what he found in that bathroom. Everywhere he shined his flashlight was blood. It seemed to be seeping out of the walls and trickling down like tears. He could see where his friend had smeared it near the light switch and reached out to touch it himself. His breath caught in his throat as he examined his fingers and noticed the blood on the tips.

He could hear the cars starting in the driveway and if he didn't want to remain there by himself, he'd better let his friends know that he needed a ride home. Shining the light on the walls one more time sent chills down his spine and he, my brave hero, cleared the stairs and front door in record time.

The word about our old house being haunted seemed to spread like wildfire, and several of the boys decided to check into the records. Unknown to us when we bought the house, a young girl had been murdered there and her body had been left between our and the neighbor's yard. She had been brutally stabbed and her case had never been solved. Was she the one crying in our hallway?

My hubby went armed with a camera to check out Brian's story about the bathroom and after taking several pictures as proof, bolted the front door to keep everyone out. This unfortunately didn't hamper my older son who after relating the story to his friends, decided to visit and see it for himself.

John and four of his big, brave friends, went armed with a couple of baseball bats and flashlights that evening. Since they couldn't enter from the front, they pushed in the back door where we had a small refrigerator blocking the way. They managed to make enough room to squeeze in and headed to the second floor. John's friend Steve was the first to hear what sounded like something being dropped on one of the upper floors. These guys had their trusty weapons and felt confident that they could take care of anything. Maybe someone had entered through a window and they would be the ones to catch him. There it was again, this time it sounded like something being dragged across the floor!

With my son in the lead the intrepid five climbed to the third floor and and almost fell down the stairs backwards when they heard it again from my hubby's den. Two of the five decided to wait on the lower floor and quickly headed down in that direction. Unfortunately they took two of the three flashlights with them and the one my son had was already growing dim. There it was again! That same dragging sound and it was much louder now. John shined his fading light toward the dark abyss of the den and in the black of the room, an even darker shape passed the doorway.

The three frantically tried pulling the bolted front door off it's hinges and when they realized it wasn't going to work, pushed past the two standing in the hall and tried to fit three bodies through that narrow opening beside the refrigerator.

On the last load of boxes my hubby was bringing from that house, his truck exploded and everything it, except the passengers, burned to the ground. We never went back and now a new family is moving in there. I wonder if they'll be welcomed.

If you think the story ends here, you're wrong. We had a call from a store in our old neighborhood telling us our pictures were ready. Since we had moved out the last of October and hadn't been back, we were wondering what pictures they could possibly have and went to pick them up. To say we were surprised would be an understatement, the pictures were of my daughter's 16th birthday party. She's eighteen now, so they must have had them for two years and somehow managed to track us down. Imagine our amazement when we looked at those pictures and found proof of our gosts. I suppose they wanted us to have a remembrance of our time together.