This story happened to my brother and my mother when I was 8 years old, my brother was 9. I am now 28. Let me give you a little background. We lived in Decatur, IL on the newer north side of town, then moved to what they call the "west end". This area is filled with beautiful old houses -the key word being OLD. We loved the house and the neighborhood, but something about the house always creeped my brother and I out. There was 3 floors in the house (basement, ground level, upstairs). In the basement there was a room off the main area that was a playroom that had chalkboards and chalk, of course being a kid, I loved to write on the chalkboards, but it took all of my gumption to go down that basement. Let me add here that we had a basement in our old house and I had no qualms about being down there by myself. I was surprisingly a pretty fearless child. However, every time I would go our new basement, I would run down the steps and shut the door to this playroom quickly. But I never lasted for more than 15 minutes down there because I always had this weird, unnerving feeling that I was being watched. Although it was 20 years ago, I can still feel that sensation whenever I think about it, but have never experienced anything like it since. Anyway, on the ground level, when you come in the front door, the steps go up the wall directly in front of you. When you get to the top of the steps, you have to turn left and then directly in front of you, there is about 15 feet of hallway, then it T's off to the left and right. My parents' room was at the end of the right T and mine and my brother's room were at the end of the Left T. My brothers room was pretty spooky at night, we had a lot of trees in our huge side yard and a couple of them were right by his windows and the branches would tap on the windows at night and basically freak my brother out, so he almost always slept in my room with me. One night, my dad was out of town on business and my mom's friend was staying with us to help her watch us while my dad was gone. I was asleep (I could sleep through a tornado) but my brother was a light sleeper. My mom was up reading a book in her bed when the hall light came on and she heard footsteps. Unbeknownst to her, my brother heard them too, he also saw a shadow on the wall. He described it as a figure of a man but the outline was hazy, like the air above a fire is hazy and distorted. He was a little frightened, but just figured it was my mother. Meanwhile, the footsteps turned toward my mom's room. She whispered our names to see if it was one of us, but no one answered. Getting an uneasy feeling, she flipped off her lamp and laid down. She turned over and faced the wall, but the footsteps came around the bed and stood right next to her staring down at her. She looked up and saw the same hazy figure, of course she was scared stiff, so she closed her eyes tight and wished it away and the next thing she knew it was morning. In the morning, my mom asked me and my brother if one of us had gotten up to go to the bathroom. We both said no, but my brother said that he saw the hall light flip on and saw a shadow on the wall. So as not to freak us out, she told us that it was her. Not until years later did she tell us what really happened. She also told us that she had gone to see our Pastor about it because he had his own experiences with Ouija boards and spirits, so much so that he became a Pastor because of the scares he and his wife experienced. She thought he might be able to give her a little insight. She explained what happened, and he said that it was probably a poltergeist and that we'd probably experience it whenever someone new was in the house (i.e. my mom's friend that night). My brother experienced another incident which I will probably share later, but we ended up moving to a different town later that year b/c my dad got transferred. Last year, I came across a book called "Haunted Decatur" by a man named Troy Taylor. As it turns out, Decatur is extremely haunted. Before it was a town, the Indians buried their dead there. They wouldn't live there because they believed that the land had some kind of spiritual connection to the next world. Also, there was a cemetery dating back to the early 1800s on the "west end" that was called the common burial grounds because it was two old cemeteries that had basically "run" into each other. As they expanded the city west, they moved the bodies, but because of poor records, unmarked graves and the age of the cemetery, they missed many bodies. As they were digging up what is now West Main St. in 1895, they dug up coffins and bones. Still to this day they will find human bones and pieces of old coffins. This common cemetery was only about 6 or 7 blocks from where we lived. I'm sure there are other houses on that end of town that are haunted as well, I would love to hear from anyone who is from Decatur and would like to share a similar experience. You can email me. If you would like to double check my story about Decatur being haunted you can check out Troy Taylor's website at: www.prairieghosts.com/decatur.html It has a pretty detailed description of the goings on, plus some good ghost stories.

Submitted From: Illinois, USA

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