ECHOES OF THE PAST

The following is a true account of my experiences living in a house which was already inhabited by ghosts.

We moved into the house when I was twelve years old, and it seemed as though we were going to be pretty happy there. The only strange thing we noticed in the beginning was that the previous owners sold us the house at a really low price, and then proceeded to move into a house just a few streets down. We thought that was odd, but didn't give it too much thought.

Everything was great for the first few days, until we started noticing something else that was rather strange. All of our animals (consisting of three cats) wouldn't go down the hall. They absolutely refused. If we picked them up and took them to one of our rooms down there, they would freak out and run back with their tails all fluffed up. Once again, we chose to ignore it. It wasn't long, though, before my little sister, age four at the time, woke up in the middle of the night crying. She was really hysterical, and within a few minutes, myself, my parents, and my older sisters were all in the room to see what was the matter.

Andrea, my little sister, pointed up to the wall by her bed, which sported about four or five little holes. She insisted that there was something in them; she said that there were horrible human heads that poked out of the holes and made scary faces at her. My older sisters and I were a little unnerved, but my parents passed it off as a child's overactive imagination. Andrea wouldn't sleep in her room, though, until one of my older sisters, Michelle, put tape over the holes. I didn't think much about it myself, until a few nights later when I had an experience of my own.

I was lying in bed, reading, as I like to do on occasion. It was getting pretty late, and the house was quiet. I heard footsteps, though, in the hallway. I wasn't unnerved, because it could have been my parents, or any one of my three sisters, so I continued reading. A few moments later, though, a man walked into my room. He didn't look gross or anything; he just looked like a normal man. He didn't belong, though, and that's what scared me. He looked around the room for a moment, and then his eyes locked on me, and he looked confused. He said these words to me, "You're not Beth", and then left. He looked really confused, and even upset, about my being there. After he left, I was scared stiff in my bed, and didn't sleep much that night.

After a while, we all started to feel odd about the house. My mother was filming home videos one evening, and filmed a great part of it down the hall and in the bedrooms. When we watched the video, none of that came out. It just wasn't there on tape; it cut straight from the living room to the backyard, even though my mother never turned the camera off during her filming.

Another night, my Aunt Eileen was over; she and my mom are pretty close, and that night they got kind of drunk. My mom was telling Aunt Eileen about the strange things going on, and since they were drunk, they decided to yell at whatever it was in the house.

They yelled something to the extent of "Come out and show yourself!" The front door slammed open by itself, and then slammed shut. They didn't say anything else after that.

I remember one evening I was taking a bath. It was really relaxing, so I shut my eyes and kind of half-dozed for a while. When I opened my eyes, the bath water was red, and there was blood all over the walls. I sat up, and when I looked down at my stomach, it looked as if I had been gutted. I don't know how to describe it, but my stomach looked cut open, and my insides were falling out. I shut my eyes again and screamed bloody murder, and of course my parents were there in a second. When I opened my eyes again, it was all gone. The blood, the bloody water, what I had seen on my own body. I was still screaming, though, and crying, and wouldn't -- couldn't -- stop long enough to tell my parents what happened, and they wound up taking me to the hospital. The doctors finally told my parents that I had fallen asleep and had an awful nightmare. I know, though, that it was no nightmare. I never told anyone exactly what I had seen -- I just didn't want to think or talk about it -- and not too long afterward, my sister Elizabeth was in that bathroom, and told me later that she had seen blood in the bathtub, running down towards the drain. I hadn't told her about my experience in that bathtub, so she couldn't have known. From then on, I always took my baths and showers in my parents' bathroom.

That wasn't the end of my experiences with that bathroom, though. I woke up in the middle of the night, having to go to the bathroom. More annoyed than anything, I got out of bed and began stomping down the hall. I stopped in my tracks, though, when I saw what was hovering outside the bathroom door. It was a woman, somewhat transparent, dressed in white. She didn't look nice, either, like the man had. She was covered in blood, her skin was a grossly blue, and she had her head cocked to one side, staring at me with vacant eyes. Even her hair was wet with blood. She was dripping it on the carpet, too. I don't know why, but I didn't scream that time. I just ran back to my room, terrified, shut the door quickly, and jumped under the covers. I left the light on and listened to my headphones all night, afraid to close my eyes.

I wanted to move out of the house by this time, and so did my sisters. None of us could sleep at night, and every creak we heard sent our hearts racing. We finally decided to all bunk in one room, so we'd be together. On that night, all with pillows and blankets in my sister Michelle's room, we talked about all of our experiences. I learned then about many things I hadn't known before, including a maggot infestation when Elizabeth was home alone, which disappeared as quickly as it had come. She also told us about a knife she found in the house, which she threw away. A few days later, she found the same, rusty knife in the garden out back. And Andrea talked of a woman who would sing things in her bedroom at nighttime. We finally decided to go to sleep, and I got up and turned out the lamp. No sooner was I cuddled up under my blanket, though, did it come back on. I got up again and turned it off, but once again it came back on. I told someone else to turn it off this time, and so Michelle got up and unplugged it. It stayed off for a few minutes, but all four of us were scared out of our minds when it turned on again.

The four of us soon decided to try to do our own "cleansing" of the house. We tried to do a sort of seance, but the other way around, telling the ghosts to go away. (Don't ever try this, by the way; seances are never a good idea, even in this form). We were happy, and a bit surprised, when things stopped happening. We actually thought we had gotten rid of the ghosts. One afternoon, though, I had a friend over, and was telling her about the "former" ghost problem. I said that the house used to be haunted, but we got rid of the ghosts. No sooner were the words out of my mouth than my photo album, sitting on my desk, flew up by itself and slammed into the wall above my head, breaking. My album is still broken today because of that.

We moved out of the house a few months later. We try not to think about what happened there, but Michelle constantly has dreams to this day about a young woman, who is pregnant, being brutally murdered in a bathtub....we don't know if this has anything to do with the house, but my personal opinion is that it makes sense that it does. We sold the house, but a not too long ago I drove by to see what it looked like now, and it looked deserted. The grass was overgrown outside, and there was no furniture inside. I know it's not completely deserted, though. There just aren't any living people there....I think, though, that maybe the house wants it that way.

Submitted From: Kally Parker, Ontario, Canada

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