Scott Valley Haunted House

This time would be different, I thought. But here I was, broke, with no job, in the middle of nowhere and living in a really scary, old haunted house, the last thing in the world I ever wanted to do.

It all started when I decided to make another attempt at leaving the big city for good. I disliked big cities, but back then I somehow always wound up in one, in order to survive financially. This is a detailed, honest true story about the haunted house I found myself living in, 2 miles from the nearest neighbor.

It was early summer and I was getting anxious about leaving the L.A. area... again. Finally after searching high and low, I landed a job as an engineer at the local, yokel daytime only radio station. It was located near the sparsely populated Mount Shasta area, only 30 miles from and bordering the valley I hoped to live in, again. I arrived on the scene as soon as I could at the radio station. After a brief introduction to the ins and outs expected of me and a full day of work, I proceeded off to my favorite valley.

Everything was looking rosy, at least it was at the beginning. I had friends in this valley from when I lived here before, so I figured I could stay with them; look around for a place to rent nearby and make the 30 mile trek every day to work. After all it was quite common around these here parts to do this for employment, as well as for big city groceries.

Within a short 2 weeks, things weren't going as expected at the radio station. They had changed their mind about being able to afford a full time engineer. However, this didn't deter me in my hopes of securing employment elsewhere and staying in the area, so I stuck it out.

I had already looked at several prospective rentals, but none were too impressive. Finally one day, I saw an old friend (Brian) and his newly wedded wife. He had also been looking for a home to rent and had discovered several possibilities I hadn't even heard of. One place sounded really nice from Brians description.

It was an older 2 story 6 bedroom farm house complete with out buildings and all. It was located 10 miles from the nearest town (by road) on the lightly traveled east side road. It was renting for $75 per month. The owner had agreed to cut this way down in lue of work done on the house, Brian told me.

I was starting to get excited, until his wife added, its haunted. This having been my first time meeting Brians wife, I didn't know what to think. Brian was a very non-superstitious person. Judging from what I had previously heard about his new wife, she was too. Nevertheless, I decided to check the house out. Maybe she didn't like old fashioned houses that needed work, I didn't know.

I found the house (2 miles from the nearest occupied house) early in the afternoon. It was a warm summer day and the fresh air and rising mountains behind it, gave it a wonderful atmosphere. I could see the barns and other barn-like buildings stretching out beyond the main house. As I approached the front door, I noticed that most of the wooden porch had rotted and collapsed with the years, making it impassable. Then I remembered that Brian had told me to enter the house through the rear side entrance. I walked over to the rear kitchen entrance thinking about how nice it would be to live in this old farm house.

When I entered the kitchen, I was greeted with the sound of a running faucet. I went over to the sink and tried, in vain, to turn the water off. These attempts only made matters worse and the water came out more and louder. So, I decided to go on and enjoy my visit. The kitchen was huge (already the size of most living rooms) with high ceilings and all, which included the standard old fashioned, floor to ceiling, glass doored cabinets for dishes, etc. After exploring this and the cold storage room located through another door outside the kitchen, I proceeded on into the adjoining living room, towards the front of the house.

The living room must have been twice the size of the kitchen, with high ceilings as well. I was getting more and more excited. Walking through the living room to another doorway, I entered a hallway which connected to the front part of the house. Off to the left side of the hall was the lone bathroom for this place. Continuing on through the hall were 4 bedrooms, 3 of which looked out onto the front of the house. 2 of them had outside doors opening out onto the decaying front porch I had seen when I arrived.

Boy, was I getting quite excited about the prospect of living in this house the more I looked at it or what? In fact so much so, that I had completely forgotten about the comment from Brians wife.

After making the grand tour of this downstairs area, I proceeded on back towards and through the living room to another doorway. On entering this, I discovered a stairway going upstairs (the house had originally been built as a single story house (with an attic) consisting of only 4 front rooms and a bathroom; the living room, huge kitchen and upstairs bedrooms to the rear had been added years later). At the top of this stairway was a long narrow hallway going along one side of the house. The rear part ran straight into a linen closet. This linen closet to the rear of the hallway was stuffed full of disorderly construction materials and pieces of junk wood. To its right was a door going into a nice old fashioned room complete with old fashioned, hand carved trim molding. I explored this rear cozy classy room and took a liking to it. I was thinking what a neat house.

Now, I walked back down this hall towards the front upstairs room, which had its door shut. When I first opened the door and entered, it appeared to have been recently remodeled with newly taped dry wall (sheet rock) and modern height ceilings.

Now for the exciting part: Almost immediately upon entering this room, I felt uncomfortable. Nothing could have been further from my mind. Just moments before while touring this house, I had been experiencing a dream come true. However, as soon as I entered this room, I had the strong sensation that someone was staring at me to my right, which was towards the front of this house. I turned in that direction and noticed a square cut out in the dry wall that had a plastic sheet thumb tacked over it. This was evidently an entrance into the attic over the front part of the original house.

I stepped over to this opening and removed the two top tacks that held the plastic in place. I folded the plastic away so I could look in. Maybe it was because my eyes weren't adjusted to the darkness, but I thought I distinctly saw two hideous looking eyes staring at me out of the darkness. Then the noises started: the creaking, as if someone was slowly walking towards me on the attic rafters.

I felt very uncomfortable, but nothing seemed to be moving in there, except that now the eyes seemed to be missing. I stared to the right and left inside the opening, but only saw dark shadows from the rafters from whatever else was in there. I decided that it was probably my own imagination, so I tacked the plastic back up and turned around to leave. However, I couldn't shake the strong feeling that I was being watched behind me as I slowly walked away towards the doorway.

I opened the door, walked out, and closed the door behind me. When I got downstairs I purposely put the impression upstairs out of my mind. Again I felt enchanted with this place. I went through the kitchen and walking outside a good 30 feet away from the side of the house, I scanned the place, thinking how nice it would be to live in such a place. All of the sudden I had an undeniable impression that I was being watched again. I looked in the direction of this impression to find my eyes fastened onto the air vent venting the attic over the original front part of the house. I couldn't shake the strong feeling of being watched, no matter how hard I tried.

After I got back to town, I was able to forget about this experience and only remember how much I liked the place. However, I never felt comfortable about moving in there alone, so I put it off indefinitely.

A few days later I received a phone message that my younger brother and his friend were due in town to visit me. I knew my brother wanted out of the city as well as I. He had always threatened to come up north and stay with me.When he arrived he told me that he and his friend wanted to stay with me the whole summer. At last! Now was my chance to move into that old farm house. My brother agreed to share the rent after I told him about the house. We made arrangements with the landlord and moved my furniture (saved in storage from my earlier stay in this valley) into this house. I picked one of the downstairs rooms by the bathroom to be my bedroom. The first night was uneventful. By the third day, after not finding any work, my brother and his friend informed me that they were moving out and leaving the area. So, here I was all moved into this potentially haunted house and all alone.

The noises usually started around 11 P.M. at night. At first all I heard was some scratching and scraping noises in the walls. They could have been mice, I figured. Days later the noise of strong, dominant footsteps started upstairs. It sounded as if someone was sometimes dragging something across the floor as they walked around that notorious upstairs bedroom. I remember putting my ear to the wall to listen whether it was indeed coming from the house. Indeed it was. Since I had a stereo, I simply turned the volume up loud enough to mask out the unpleasant thumpings coming from the upstairs. I usually stayed p until I could stay awake no longer (around 1 or 2 A.M.). This was standard procedure every night.

After several weeks of living like this, I ran into an old friend (Dean) from L.A. Dean too had been trying to escape the big city. Since he was looking for lodging, I offered him a room at my place. Dean accepted. Having the pick of 5 other bedrooms, he picked one next to me down stairs in the front of the house.

The next morning, Dean asked me a very interesting question, What were you doing walking around upstairs last night? I told him that I hadn't been upstairs at all that night. He wouldn't believe me, but insisted that I had been walking around upstairs above his head, because he heard me above his ceiling. I told him that there is no room above him, only an attic. After showing him the upstairs layout of the house, I finally convinced him. Now he understood the same as I did: theres a ghost up there. Then in his strange way of trying to comfort me, I guess, he told me of an experience he had while living in Oklahoma.

The ghost of the insane woman:

He told me that he and his friend had decided to visit another buddy late one night. However, this meant walking along the river and on past, what the locals called, haunted property. This haunted property was an area where, many years before, an abandoned wife and her teenage son (Johnny) had lived. Evidently the woman was paranoid about Johnny leaving her too. Whenever he went to town alone, she would work herself into a tizzy, thinking that he had left her.

One evening Johnny was later than usual coming home. She just knew he had left her. When Johnny did finally arrive, she was so insane with jealousy, that she killed him. After seeing what she had done, she killed herself as well.

Ever since this time, her ghost can be seen, floating above the ground along the river banks and various trails nearby, calling out in a very forlorn voice, "Johnnnnnnny, Johnnnnnnny...", in search of her son (all the while Dean was speaking, I kept wondering why is he telling me this? This story is certainly far from comforting). So, Dean and his friend, not to be easily frightened with old wives tales, took the short cut which cuts right across this haunted property.

Evidently, the moon was bright that night. When they neared the said property, both Dean and his friend heard someone calling out to them. In the distance they saw someone coming their way. When they got close enough, they saw a scary looking, whitish woman floating above the ground coming towards them with her arms outstretched, calling, "Johnnnnnnny, Johnnnnnnny...". They came close to beating all track records running back into town.

Dean stayed around my haunted farm house for a couple of weeks, then took off, leaving me alone to be eaten by whatever lurked above my room.

One day soon after, I ran into a friends wife in town. She asked me how I was and where I had been living. When I told her, her comment was, "oh, that house is haunted". She then filled me in on the gory details concerning how a former tenants son had occupied the upstairs front room. He had started using a Ouija board there. So many strange disasters started happening to that family, soon after that, that that family (Douglas) had to move away in a very dejected state.

When I returned home, I wasn't sure if this extra imparted knowledge was worth it.

A few nights later there was such a ruckus upstairs that it sounded as if they were coming down the stairway. I actually started making plans as to what window to jump through and what clothes to take. Even the stereo couldn't mask the noise. However, nothing ever materialized that night.

All the events of what happened during my stay there would take up too much space. However, one night is especially memorable.

The only phone jack the house had was located in the living room underneath that room. As it was, I was expecting a telephone call from some arriving friends. I waited every evening for their call. One night, after 11 P.M., the noises started as usual. I had settled into bed, prepared to ride out the evening as usual, when the phone began to ring. The sound of the ringing startled me, to say the least. Its ring was almost drowned out by the noises upstairs. I got up, ventured out into the dark hallway, and switched on the light. When I got into the living room (which had a night light), I answered the phone. It was indeed my visitors calling. I tried to act calmly, but all the while I was talking, I could hear footsteps moving across the floor above my head. Every minute I anticipated the staircase door to come flying open, but it didn't. Even my caller sensed that something was wrong.

As it turned out, I never found steady employment so I was forced to move (guess where?), yes, back to L.A. I moved all my furniture into one of the front rooms, with the landlords permission and headed-on-out. When I returned to pick up my stuff several months later, I asked the current renter how he liked the house. He was a former policeman from the Bay area. He told me he liked the house alright. It took a little getting to know him before he opened up to me. He eventually told me that one night someone had evidently (somehow) broken into the front upstairs bedroom and was tearing it up; how someone could climb straight up a shear wall and break into the upstairs is virtually impossible. He told me that he took his flashlight and loaded gun and went upstairs to see. As soon as he opened that upstairs bedroom door, the noises stopped; after looking around he figured it out.

He then told me that one day later, while watching TV in the living room, he and his wife saw a ghostly apparition come floating out of the stairway and on past them towards the front of the house, disappearing around the corner into one of the front rooms.

I've only gone back there to visit once since: 2 years later. After relating this story to my riders in my car, we first stopped in town; got some food or something and then left to see the house. It had just gotten dark. When we went to the back kitchen door, we found no one home. When one of my riders put their hands on the door to pray, we all could hear the dishes, pans and table in the kitchen start vibrating and shake. We quickly went back to the car and found a strange sticky substance on the car door handle that hadn't been there in town moments before.