This Old (Haunted) House

From: Rochelle Townsend (sbean17@hotmail.com)
Story type: Ghost
Location: Rio Dell, CA
Source: Form Submission

When I was 3, my family moved to a large and beautiful Victorian home on a hill. The house was built in 1889, and the owners prior to my family were able to give us a quite thorough history of the house. It had been torn down to just the foundation and built up again about 80 years prior, and had been the location of a birth, in the room that my parents were to occupy, and a death, unbeknownst to me until years later, in the room that I lived in for 10 years.

The house was naturally noisy. The all-wooden floors creaked, and the cold Humboldt County air seeped through the floorboards, walls and windows, which were all so old that it was expected.

What wasn't expected happened almost as frequently. It began in my room. My closet housed the attic door. At night after being tucked in, the closet door would sometimes creak open slightly, and an icy rush of wind from behind it would chill my skin. I could thumps that resembled footsteps above my head, and they became louder as they grew closer, perhaps as the creator of the noise descended from the attic and into my closet. I don't recall ever seeing any more than unexplainable shadows that moved when I made eye-contact with them, but more than a few times, I would wake up in a panic, barely able to breath, let alone scream, because I was wrapped several times over in my sheet at the bottom of the bed. Luckily my mother learned that this happened often, and she began sleeping without her earplugs so that she could hear me from downstairs, and come to my rescue.

Other strange things that happened here include my brother being poked in the ribs when he walked down the downstairs hallway to the bathroom, and he was home alone. Toilets flushed when no one was in the bathrooms, lights were turned back on with no explanation, appliances had minds of their own.

He also had an experience in his bedroom, which was across the hall from mine. He was awakened in the early morning, and opened his eyes to find the source of his disturbance. In the window straight in front of him, he saw what looked to be two women, dressed in old Victorian Period clothing, and sitting at a table drinking tea and talking. When he moved his head, he couldn't see them anymore, which meant that the women weren't outside on the roof, but actually IN BETWEEN the panes of glass. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, sure that it was a dream, but the women were still there. He got out of bed and tiptoed toward the window, when one of the women looked straight at him and pointed, and the other woman then looked at him too. They were both staring at him, and he quickly clambered back into his bed and hid. When he told my mother and I this story, we had been picturing the women sitting off in the distance, but he told us that they were no more than 4 feet away.

One last thing I remember is that when I was sleeping in my parents room to avoid being wrapped in the sheet, I was awakened (alone, because my parents had not yet come to bed) by the song "Music Box Dancer", which is the song my clown piggy bank played when you put a penny in it. That is the only way, other than flipping the switch on the bottom of the bank, that the song would play. And yet the room was empty, and the bank was high up on the shelf where it had always been. I shudder when I remember how terrified I was to get out of bed and turn it off.