Haunted House, Haunted Cemetery

From: 
Story type: Ghost
Location: Niles, MI
Source: Form Submission

Location: Niles, Michigan
Type Series of Encounters: Ghost
Subject: Haunted House; Haunted Cemetery
Account: First Hand

There are some weird things that used to happen when I lived in my grandparents house. I should mention that it's not an "old" house, and hadn't had anyone die in it. At the time of the occurances the house was only in it's early to mid-twenties. It was not built on an old cemetery, was not on a cul-de-sac or any of the other requisite 'haunted house' items. The house is a CapeCod style without dormers, and had a reclaimed brick front. The only 'old' part of the house. I have no idea where the brick came from.

The land had been in my family for roughly one hundred years or so, it was farmland. Sold to my ancestors by Father Sorin (who founded the University of Notre Dame). Prior to that I don't know what had taken place on that spot.

I do know that the house was haunted, or something. The only two people who experienced any thing out of the ordinary was my grandmother and me.

My grandmother had seen the shadow of a man many times, sometimes upstairs in the bedroom (the one I had for 20 years), or in the kitchen. She would see him out of the corner of her eye, or as a shadow. Once she'd put her necklace down on the desk, took a nap and awoke to find it laying in a perfect circle, the chain was slashed in many places (I never saw this, it happened before I was born). Other jewelry would come up missing, only to be found in bizarre spots, or to be found broken.

I would hear noises, knocking to be specific. It sounded like someone was downstairs with a broomhandle hitting the ceiling, which would have been the floor to my bedroom. At the time the room below mine was the dining room, I went downstairs, the noise stopped. No one was in that room. I'd lay back down, and the noise would start back up. Finally, I asked that whoever was making the noise would please stop. The knocking stopped. That scared me more than anything. It started again the next night, an again, if I asked it to stop, it would.

I never tried anything (i.e. ouija boards) to make contact. Other strange things would happen too. One night a walkman that was in my closet started playing on it's own. It took me an hour to find it to switch it off it was buried under that much junk. I hadn't used it in over a year, and last I could remember, the batteries were dead. I had a mug setting on my dresser that broke. It just broke while I was sitting there. It didn't have anything in it, it had set there long enough to collect dust. It wasn't that it broke, it was how it broke. It broke like someone had grabbed the mug by the handle and slammed it down on my dresser. what was left standing on my dresser was the handle, still connected to the bottom of the mug with most of the rest of the mug lying on the floor below.

I saw a figure once. I was walking through the livingroom and I saw someone standing at the bottom of the stairs looking out the front door. There were five people in the house, and not one of them were at the door. I asked where everyone was, one was upstairs, one in the bathroom, one in the garage and one in the kitchen. no one near that door. There wasn't anything special about it, white hair, shortish, blue-jeans, sweatshirt. Definately not an old-fashioned ghost. There were more occurences than that, those are just the ones that stood out in my mind.

Other people in the house have weird things happen, buty they just blame it on the cats. A few weeks ago the TV came on at 3:00 AM, they blamed that on the cat sitting on the remote. I've since gotten married, and moved out of the house. Nothing strange has happened since, so I didn't take them with me. My mother is in my old room and she insists that she has noticed nothing out of the ordinary.

Down the road a way there was haunted cemetery. When you walk around you hear footsteps following you . My cousin lived in front of the cemetery and we all went into this cemetery. My cousins had an axe, the other one had a machete. I had nothing. I came out of there just fine. They did not. One narrowly escaped being squished by a very large tree branch (from a 100+ year old oak tree). I heard it crack and yelled for her to move. She dove out of the way. The other, ended up with 32 stitches in his knee after being thrown from his bike. Jokingly I said that they were being repaid for their disrepectful attitudes. Now that I think about it however, I think that was actually the case. I kept telling each of them not to do the things they were doing, and they just laughed at me, until right after the tree branch fell.

I visit the cemetery often. It's been abandoned since about 1928, and most of the stones are missing.. It's a very nice place on a chilly fall day, there is an awesome view of the river from there. I have never been frightened there...well, I was scared by a person who lived nearby who liked to fire his shot gun for no reason (a one-legged Vietnam vet). What I meant to say was that I'd never felt threatened by any supernatural force. There's some crazy stories that go around about vengeful ghosts who inhabit the cemetery, but I have never run across one. The only encounter I've had is hearing the footsteps whenever I visit. I am followed every time. I have a feeling it's one of the many children who are buried there that follows me, because the steps are quick like little feet.