Brother-In-Law's House

I always thought there was something about my brother-in-law's house, ever since I knew him. The following events happened to him and his family, as well as to me.

His house was a smaller starter home. It had two stories. The main floor was where they spent most of their time. The top floor was the kids playroom for a long time. It had a steep pitched roof which made it very difficult to stand up straight in. My brother-in-law and his wife never went up in there at first.

The time that they noticed something was weird about the upstairs was when his kids were little. They would play up in the room night and day. The first time it happened, his oldest came running down the stairs and was crying that an old man was upstairs. My brother-in-law went upstairs to see if there was anyone there. After looking upstairs and downstairs, he figured that his daughter had quite the imagination.

He continued to allow them to play upstairs after the first experience. His kids would always come down after they were done and mention that they would talk to someone. Of course, my brother-in-law doesn't really believe in ghosts, so again he passed it off as their imaginations. It wasn't till he talked to an older neighbor he had never really talked to before. The neighbor told him that there was an old man who fell victim to a burglar. The burglar shot the old man many times. The old man died in the same room the my brother-in-laws kids had their playroom in.

There was a bloodstain that was left behind when the police cleaned up the body. From then on, the kids played downstairs. My brother in law and his wife moved their bedroom upstairs thinking it was safer for his kids.

His wife worked graveyard shift as a CNA (Certified Nurses Assistant). My brother-in-law worked during the day always. This is significant because my brother-in-law's wife had an experience during the day while my brother-in-law was at work.

She had just got done with the graveyard shift and came home in time to see her husband off to work as well as the kids off to day care. She went to sleep upstairs (in the old toy room) at 8:00 am. She couldn't fall asleep right away, but she didn't want to stay awake. She fought hard with herself to fall asleep when all of the sudden out of nowhere she could hear footsteps. Thinking it was my brother-in-law coming back from work because he forgot something, she relaxed. A few minutes later, the footsteps seemed to die down. She was almost asleep when all of the sudden she felt a weight at the foot of her bed. She woke up and didn't see anyone. She told my brother-in-law and they passed it off as the old man.

I didn't ever bother to ever listen to them and they weren't always open with me about the house being haunted until one cold November night.

They had a Christmas party to go to and needed a baby sitter. I got chosen out of default. I don't scare easy and I am a big guy (6'5", 250lbs). I didn't think much of the ghost or anything else since I never experienced anything at their house before myself.

I put the kids to bed at 9:30 in their room. There was not much on for the cable service since it was around thanksgiving so I flipped channels for a half hour before finding a movie I wanted to watch. It was relaxing and all I can remember was thinking that I was going to be asleep on the couch when my brother-in-law got home. All of the sudden there was a crash in the basement. It sounded if someone had broken in. I immediately ran downstairs and switched the lights on. There was nothing that seemed broken or out of place. Of course, walking up the steps upstairs was a different though. It was almost as if someone was walking behind me, but I surely would have seen someone when I walked down there.

The rest of the night was pretty much me standing guard by the kids room with a broomstick (that is all I could find).

Nothing ever happened and I mentioned it once my brother-in-law and his wife came home. He just told me that it happens pretty often to him (the crashing noise in the basement). I figured after hearing it happened various times that it was probably tied into the old man and his murder...

I have since divorced and had other experiences in the same town that they lived in.