The Caraleigh Poltergeist

From: NibbleKat (emilbasquiat@yahoo.com)
Story type: Ghost
Location: Raleigh, NC
Source: Form Submission

Born in 1935, my father grew up extremely poor in and around the city of Raleigh, NC with his mother, two sisters, and four brothers. Never really being able to afford a real house on their own, the family moved from apartment to apartment, rented house to rented house, and even at times took up residence in abandoned houses. Once, they shared a two-story house with a distant part of their family in a suburb of Raleigh, called Caraleigh, right around the time, (or shortly before, I'm uncertain) WWII. The house was by an old mill. It was there that a poltergeist decided to plague them for many months.

Often the disturbances would occur just as my father's cousin would go into a seizure, being an epilleptic. Thuds and pounding would resound throughout the entire house, and once right under my father's ear as he slept on the floor. My aunt claimed to see dark shadows moving across the walls, and as the days and weeks passed on, things continued to get stranger, as though the ghost... or whatever it was... grew stronger.

My father told me once that he was climbing the stairs to the second floor, which his family occupied. When he had just reached the point where his eyes were level with the landing, a strange noise started, as though someone on rollerskates were skating around and around in a circle. He turned and ran. Not long after, the ghost startled a strange, high whistling noise, and that quickly evolved into a voice.

At this time, my grandmother had married a big, brash man named Jay prone to reckless and daring behavior, unafraid of anything. So it was that on one rainy night after my father's cousin had experienced another seizure, Jay was standing by an open window, smoking. He tossed his cigarette outside, and the ghost, which had been knocking about, said, "Why are you throwing fire on my children?" Jay replied, calmly, "Why the hell you got your kids out in the rain?" The ghost proceded to tell him that in a short time, Jay would become sick. A little less than two weeks later, Jay's throat swelled so badly he could hardly breathe or swallow, and nearly died.

Eventually, my father's family left the house, but had a few experiences after that with what appeared to be the same ghost, before it grew weak again and finally disappeared.

My father is a skeptical man, to the core. He doesn't believe anyone when he hears their ghost stories. He's not a UFO chaser, he claims that angels are probably products of peoples' willpower, and I'm not sure he really even believes in God... Still, he speaks of this as though it were the truth, as though he believes in it. I've heard him speak on several occasions about what happened, and never once does his story falter, or change, and all of his brothers spoke of similar happenings before they died. Anyone who knows about this house or has similar experiences, please email me.