Haunted Farmhouse

The story I have covers from about 1985 to 1998. I'm sure that the happenings that I saw and experienced still happen, but when I return I don't stick around long enough to find out.

The House that involves the Ghostly activity is a old farm house in south west Virginia. The house sits about 1000 ft from the place where I wrote about in "Sacred Ground". Both involved hauntings, but both were totally different. "Sacred Ground" was about living on an Indian Burial Ground, this one is about my step-Aunt's (we will call he Susan) house.

She is in her early 80's. Both of here parents died in that house. She swears that she has never seen anything and that she does not believe in ghosts. Well, I am a firm believer in the paranormal and here is what happened to me:

It all started when I moved the area with my mom after she remarried. One night I decided to stay with my step-Aunt. I knew that both her parents had died in the house but at seven years old, one does not really grasp the concept of ghosts easily. She let me sleep in the bed that her father died in. One the he was confined to for a year or so before his death. It made me feel proud, like an honor. Well, a couple hours after I fell asleep I heard what sounded like a rocking chair rocking. I looked at the foot of the bed and what I heard was correct. There, the "favorite" chair of Susan's dads was rocking steadily back and forth, with nobody it, at least anyone visible. I stared in amazement for a couple minutes and then I started getting scared because I started realizing what was happening. I pulled the blanket over my head and went back to sleep. I didn't give it much thought, I mentioned it to my mom and she said that it was just Susan's dad repaying a visit. I was like "COOL! I want to do that when I'm dead" like any naive child would. After encountering a few experiences in my own house I began to realize that Ghosts weren't the coolest thing. I started to hate them!

My bedroom window faced Susan's house. So at night when she was gone on a trip to one of the many 50 states, I would lay in my bed and watch every light turn on at once. Sometimes they would be intermitting. For hours! She always complained about her light bill being so high, because she was hardly ever home. I never told her the real reason. After a couple years I started noticing a dark "vapor" constantly be emitted from the chimney of her room. Sure, during the winter you would think, "why not?". This happened all year round. The problem was the wood stove in the basement was Never used! The vapor trail would wind its way into the sky for about 50 feet and then quit. The next experience let me know that there really was something in the house that was not supposed to be there.

It was July 4th weekend. My parents were having our house exterminated for spiders and we could not stay in the house that night. I told Susan that I would sleep anywhere but her dads room. She said fine, you can sleep upstairs. That suited me just great. Unknowing to me it was the room right above her dad's and it was the room her Mother died in. Anyway, it was really hot that night. I only had a sheet with me. I was just laying there on my side trying to sleep when the room turned so cold I could see my breath! I thought, "problem, see breath in July, BAD!" I knew that I was not alone because that is a tell- tell sign of a ghost. I knew it was a ghost because Sarah's house did not have Air Conditioning! I heard footsteps on the hardwood floor beside me. First I thought it was my mom coming up to check on me. (She knew I was having a hard time coping with the extreme paranormal experiences in our own house) My mom was quickly ruled out when I rolled over and saw nobody there. The problem was the footsteps continued. "It" walked back and forth around the bed. I laid there trying to logic it out, hoping that I could rationalize the ghost away. The footsteps continued. Then the temperature started fluctuating. Hot to Cold, it would stay cold for a minute or so and then return to the normal blistering hot temperature, again and again for about 10 minutes. Finally, it turned could and stayed cold. Meanwhile the footsteps continued, back and forth, back and forth...After a long time of the this I think "IT" got tired, so it SAT down on the foot of the bed. I swear, about 3 inches from my right foot there was an indention in the bed of somebody's butt! That freaked me out. I pulled the sheet over my head, not more than a couple seconds later "It" ripped it out of my hands and threw the sheet towards the bottom of the bed. I jumped up grabbed the sheet, laid back down and covered my head. I was determined not to get scared out of the room. Again, it ripped the sheet off of my face and just threw it. I'd had enough, the extreme cold in July, the footsteps, the sheet being forced from my hands. I jumped up to run out, "IT" stood up, I ran downstairs to the kitchen to where my mom and Sarah were talking. My mom knew by the expression on my face that something had happened. We couldn't tell Sarah that though. She would get aggravated and laugh in your face. Needless to say I slept downstairs on the couch that night. I didn't stay there very often after that. The living room seemed the like the only safe place in the house. Also, after that night "It" would play tricks on me. I don't think it got a good impression of me after the sheet ripping encounter. The feeling was mutual. Every time I went to Sarah's I got this panic feeling. If I was up there alone, doors would slam, lights would turn on and off, the entire house would turn cold. After a while I quit visiting as often.

We have a very long driveway, sometimes Sarah would pickup our mail so we didn't have to. I avoided going up there to get the mail as long as my parents would let me. The last experience I had was the summer of 1998. Sarah had already been home and left. My parents were working in the yard and they asked me if I would get the mail. I said "sure", I was 18 at the time, I figured that I could handle it. I walked in the house, that panic feeling struck me. Imagine an 18 year old guy, 6'3" tall, 190 lb fitness freak, scared to go into a house by himself in broad daylight. Hey, if you had only heard a quarter of what I have experienced, you would have a totally different idea of me. (A quick humorous fact: I married a woman that is scared of the dark, if either of us have to use the bathroom in the middle of the night we are S.O.L.) Anyway, I walked quickly into the house. Turned around to walk back out and something told me stop. I stopped and turned around, when I entered the house it was empty and all lights were turned off. When I turned back around the light in her father's room was on. I mustered up some courage to walk into his room and turn the light off. As I walked out of the room I said "leave me alone, old man!". I walked out of the house, walked through the front yard, which passes right by his window, and as soon as I walked right in front of the window the light Turned ON! That was the last straw, I ran down to my parents house. I gave them their mail and I told them that if Sarah wanted the light to go off in her dads room they would have to turn it off themselves.

I moved a few weeks later. I have not had anymore experiences with that house since then. Apparently when I asked the old man to leave me alone "It" didn't like that or it wasn't her fathers ghost. I don't know if the experiences I had in that house were Sarah's father,mother, or somebody else that had lived and died on the farm.