To begin my story, I live in a small college town in
Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. It can be classified as a
sleepy town. But apparently, not all of it's residents are
willing to go to sleep. Before I begin my story, I'd like
to explain a little about the setting. After my parents
divorced, my mum took my sister and I and we lived in a
small townhouse. A year or two later, she purchased a house
for our family. It was a 'half-a-house', that is there is
one building but two homes inside of it with only a wall
separating them. There is a plaque at the front of the
house on the second floor saying that the house was built
in 1910.
All of the bedrooms were on the second floor. The house was
very narrow, but quite long. The steps ended at about the
halfway point (lengthwise) of the second floor and right up
against the wall which separated our home from our
neighbors. If you would go straight from the top of the
steps, there would be a walk-in closet on your right and
the bathroom right ahead of you. If you had turned left at
the steps, my room would be the first on the right,
followed by my sister's. There was a door in between our
rooms which we left closed. After my sisters room was my
mom's room and the attic door.
On to the story. I was quite excited about moving into our
new house and was transitioning well to it. I didn't have
any problems until perhaps a year after we had moved in. I
was attempting to fall asleep one night. My bed was right
up against one wall. Since I was still young, I had a night-
light on as well. This was on the wall at the head of my
bed. One night, I thought I saw the shadow of a stout man
wearing a top hat on the wall right by my head. I was quite
scared by this. I told my mom about it and was quite shook
up by it. I was so scared by this that for a time my family
was even talking about switching my room and my sister's
room. I was in counseling at the time due to my parent's
divorce, and the therapist said that this was just my
imagination and that it was all because of the stress I was
going through. However, thinking back on the incident now,
I realize something was wrong with it. To have a shadow,
you must have a source of light and something blocking it.
The only source of light in that room that night was the
night light which was NEXT TO the shadow. It could not have
created that shadow. After this incident, I didn't have any
problems with this shadow man.
However, my sister was having some problems. She repeatedly
reported seeing "shadow people" walk past her room in the
hallway. She even said that they came into her room and
watched her as she was trying to sleep. At the time I
dismissed it as her imagination.
I had something else happen to me before we moved out of
that house. I was home alone, and was in the bathroom
upstairs. The window was open, and the wind was blowing.
The door was closed. The doors were still original, with
heavy metal knobs. The bathroom door was quite difficult to
open. The door was too low and the carpet was too high and
it required a good effort to open it. When I was using the
bathroom, I glanced over at the door and watched as the
handle turned and the door opened by itself! After
recovering from the shock this put me through, I searched
the house to make sure that my mom and sister weren't home.
The house was empty and my mom and sister didn't return
until several hours later.
I became convinced that this house was haunted this summer
however. My family and I were visiting Kingston, Ontario
and were taking a "Ghost Tour" of Fort Henry there. We were
talking about our old house (we had moved out of it about a
year or two previously) and our experiences in it. My mum
was talking about the shadow people (black shadowy shapes
that were three dimensional) that my sister claimed to have
seen. I asked her what she was talking about,and she
elaborated a bit. I then asked her "Oh, like that guy I
thought I saw with the top hat?"
My mom literally stopped in her tracks and her mouth was
open. She told me that one of the people my sister had said
that she saw was wearing an "Abraham Lincoln hat" - a top
hat! My sister and I never spoke about this man or his top
hat to each other but we had both seen the same thing!
Although this may not have been an especially scary story,
it was quite spooky enough when it happened to my family.
Feel free to e-mail me if you have had a similar experience
or if you have questions or comments.
Contact me here: tyovan4@hotmail.com
Submitted From: