Ghost Stories

It was about the first or second week in January, 1998. I was on my computer searching on the web. My sister Julie and her friend Jamie were upstairs. They were talking about the supernatural. All around them was a circle of candles. My mom had just gone upstairs to sleep, and my dad was already up there. It was almost 2:00am. I was busy on the net when I heard pacing upstairs. It sounded like two sets of feet. I figured it was just Julie and Jamie walking around. After a few minutes I grew curious. The footsteps were going in a circle. It was an off beat pattern and I wondered what in the heck they were doing?. The footsteps grew ever more rapid until it was just less then a jog. I quickly went up the stairs (we have four rooms upstairs, mine, my sister's my parent's, and a closet) and I walked to their door. I knocked once and opened the door. They were both sitting down on the floor! I asked them what they were doing, and they said they were sitting there the whole time. I told them that I heard footsteps. They said that they had a circle of candles around them. I quickly stepped inside the circle. My cats refused to enter the room, and we all felt like we were being watched. And the fact that our house is well over 100 years old did not help. We each grabbed a cross necklace from a nearby jewelry box in my sister's room and went down to the kitchen. We felt pretty safe there. My sister was telling Jamie about this silo that was about 10 miles away from us on back roads. It was the only thing standing at the old farm, and it was said to be haunted. We went there one night in a van, and took several photos. None of them turned out. When we looked at the negatives, it didn't even show up. It was like the pictures had never been taken! Lennon Michigan has a lot of haunted sites. After looking at the pictures, we got really scared and ran up to my room because it seemed pretty neutral. We all sat on my bed and eventually fell asleep, with the light on. Every time Jamie comes over, we talk about this kind of stuff and freak out.

Another story is that my brother has encounters. It seems really ridiculous, but he says that when you pass this house that sits on Durand Road, which is only about 3 farm fields away from me, a demon that haunts the place will climb on top of your car and follow you for a long time. He says he can see the demon and that it is about 1.5 ft tall. He doesn't like being able to see it, and that it often looks him dead in the eye (Chris thinks it's because the demon knows he can see him.).

At Higgin's Lake, in the northern part of the lower peninsula, there is a stable. I don't remember the name, but it is an old one, still in use, and in bad shape. There was a black horse in there before named Pebbles. An Ouija board was nailed on the front of his stall. He was said to be the meanest horse there. Nobody rode him and they said he was a nuisance. He was loud, annoying, and acted scared. The next year when we came back, the Ouija board was gone and Pebbles was actually being used for riding. He was so much more calmer, and one of the nicest horses in the barn. Julie and I think he was plagued by evil spirits from the Ouija board.

Whenever I go outside, I always get this eerie feeling that someone is watching me. I always look out at the barn, and at the two sheds neighboring it. It is looking pretty ready to fall down, as are the sheds. I was riding my bike one time along my driveway, because our road is pretty busy, and we are on a hill, so we could easily get hit (not a fun idea). I ride up and down the driveway frequently because it is about 1/8 of a mile long. I ride to the turnaround out by the barn and back to the end by the road. When I was on my way back to the road, I had this feeling that I should look back to the barn, but I passed it off. It was about midday and I don't usually put daytime and spirits together. It had just rained, and it was really muggy out, since it was midsummer, June two years ago to be exact. About 1:30pm. When I turned to go back to the barn, I saw this shadow that I didn't recognize. I always have to know what things are or else I freak. I looked at a passing truck, and then back at the barn. The shadow was gone. I freaked. I went inside. I didn't ride my bike around the driveway again until late August.

Another story similar too is that my pool coming off the deck off the sun room off the kitchen was set up about 3 or 4 years ago. It was early July and we we out there swimming. All of us. I looked at the barn. Everything seemed normal. It was, again, really hot out (this story was last year). The noon sun was high and we were all playing Marco Polo (a pool game of search and find with the person who is "it" has their eyes closed.). I looked at the barn again and saw a white figure about the size of a grapefruit by a whole in the wood (note that the wholes in our barn are about 3 feet tall by 1 foot wide.). I don't have 20/20 vision, so I squinted to get a better look. It was a skull! I could have sworn that this skull was moving it's jaw and talking to me, although I couldn't hear it. I looked back to the game of Marco Polo and then looked back. It was still there. I screamed out for Julie and Dad and Mom to look, but when we all did, it was just the top of the Weed Whacker! They looked at me like I was nuts. I never did find out how I got a skull out of that, but I know I saw it.

There is a cemetery near here, I don't know what it's called, but my brother says this story is true. If you go back to this cemetery at night (midnight to be exact) there is a section of graves near the back that you must see. They are graves of old people who died in the late 1890's. If you stand there, then you can hear the laugh of children, a faint one, but it is audible. It comes from a far, dark corner of the cemetery. Many people have gone there and witnessed it, never gone back, and swore that they never will. My brother is one of those people.

My dad worked at GM for 31 years. He retired last year at the age of 50. As some of you might have heard, a man was killed by a compacting sort of machine. My dad worked close to the accident site, but he never heard any of it. He said that all of the workers have radios that they use on batteries. They turn them up loud so they can hear them over the noise of the machines. When the man got killed in the machine, my dad's radio started to fuzz out, as did many of the other radios near him. All of the workers got frustrated with their radios and tried to tune them into their station, but no stations would come in. The volume on all of the radios grew louder and my dad just turned his off. He walked over to get new batteries from the office when he saw one of friends run from his station pale faced. A few minutes later, several more people followed. My dad went over to see what they were running from. He saw the mauled body and almost threw up. It was a guy with the nickname "The Energizer Bunny". The machine he ran never worked right for a while. My dad got a key chain flashlight off the Energizer Bunny and hung it on his machine. They fired it up and it ran perfectly. It still is running, and it still has the key chain on it. At least that's what I am told.

My brother Chris had another encounter August of last year. It was late at night and they were out visiting haunted places. Treshia (Chris's wife) and Skip (Treshia's brother) were in the cab, and Chris, Kaylene, and two of their friends were in the bed of the truck. They went by a house where a ghost named "J.P." lives. It was about 1:00am. The people in the back of the truck said that the ghost followed them home and taunted them the whole night. All of my family has avoided going within a mile of J.P.'s house.

My brother used to have Julie's old bedroom. Julie and I shared what is now my bedroom. My mom would always go to the door of Chris's room and tell him things, but she never entered. The one time she did, she felt like she was being pushed away, and that she was not wanted inside the room by a presence of another. To this day she still hates to enter the room, but every one else is fine with it.

A few years ago, I am not sure when exactly, my mom had a series of nightmares. The first one was that a snake was crawling up under the sheets beside her. She swore she was awake and that she was watching the snake slither under the sheet and that it was coming toward her. She jumped out of bed and tore the blankets and sheets off of it. There was nothing there. No trace of anything but where she had been sleeping. There were others, but another one was when she was sleeping in bed, a mirror hung on the wall far from her. She was looking at it, and then she swore she saw a glowing skull fall from it. This mirror was hanging above where my dad's computer was. She went downstairs and went to my dad's computer. She logged on and went to his e-mail. She read messages from a woman that he was talking to online. He had not read this particular message though. She wanted to be more than friends when he had not. She was crying all night and I was asleep until Julie woke me up. We listened for a few minutes and my dad was home. We then went back to our rooms and slept. The next morning my mom tried to explain it to us the best she could. She doesn't know why the dreams happened and she doesn't know why she went straight to the message, but ever since, my mom and dad have been closer, perhaps if it hadn't happened, my dad would have left my mom. Who knows?