The House I Lived In

 Name:            kathy murphy
Email:           murph81250@aol.com
Location:        grand forks, nd
Type:            Ghost
Date:            Saturday, March 11, 2000
Time:            12:17 PM

As a child I lived in a haunted house. It was an old house, and spectacularly ugly. It didn't have even one redeeming feature to it. Across the street was a dike that held back the Red River. A big flood came in 1996 or 1997 and that house and the entire neighborhood have mostly been demolished. I say thank god that house is gone, it used to terrify me when I was a kid. My mother said on more than one occasion that she saw ghosts of the former tenants.

One time my brother was asleep and he heard someone whisper in his ear 'Be careful!'...and a few days later he was arrested for a crime he didn't commit (and later on was acquitted of). At the time of the arrest as the police were leading him out the door, my mother saw a woman wearing a black and white print dress follow them out of the house. Later, when Mom had a chance to speak to one of the former tenants (who's son now owned the house) she asked him what his wife was wearing when she was buried...the man described the exact same dress!

On another occasion, we kids were in school and Dad was at work when Mom saw a man sitting on my bed. This would have been frightening enough, except all she could make out about the man was that she could see were his legs up to his waist, above that there was nothing!

There were other occurrences too. One time my oldest sister was talking on the telephone, and 'felt' someone looking at her. She turned around and saw an elderly man staring in at her around the opened back door leading to the basement. This man had died about a year or two previously; he was the one who had told my mother what clothing his wife had been buried in.

The one that directly affected me is as follows. My sister and I were home alone, and were laughing and joking around about the 'ghost' we had. We decided to try an experiment: other family members said they could hear footsteps upstairs if they were home alone and down in the basement. So, she and I went down the basement steps to about the seventh step down. All of a sudden we heard about four footsteps in the living room upstairs! You cannot imagine how fast the two of us climbed those steps to get out of there. I somehow managed to tear the eyeglasses off her face in my mad dash to 'safety'.

In reflecting back there are few words to describe that house, but the closest I can come are these: bleak, sinister, and menacing. As I said previously, I am glad that that particular house was demolished. Thank you for reading about my experience with ghosts.

Kathy Murphy