Supernatural Answering Machine
Laci, PA, USA
November 2006
I’m from a VERY small town in Pennsylvania, and I have lived there in the same house for over 10 years. When my family moved into this house, I was about 5 years old. I just recently turned 19 in October so most of my experiences growing up have taken place in that house.
I remember being scared about moving in because I overheard a lady from the neighborhood warning my mom about the house - she said something bad had just happened there. I was shocked to hear her tell my mother that she knew the people who lived there before us (or maybe she was related to them, I can’t remember now) and that they left very abruptly after what happened one night.
According the lady, the people were thrown against a wall by an unseen force. Being 5 years old, hearing this scared the daylights out of me. I later learned that these people were "bad". Lots of drinking, drugs, and abuse was going on when this event happened. At age 5, I was worried that something was going to attack me or family, but, being a really shy & quiet child, I couldn’t bring myself to say anything to my mother about what I had overheard.
We moved in, and almost immediately strange things started happening. The "clich?" cold winds, objects disappearing and reappearing in weird places, and things of that nature. I’m still not sure if the story I overheard when I was 5 is true or not, but I’ve come to doubt it less and less because I have had objects fly off of dressers, walls, etc. and land in front of me. I’m just glad that the ghost (or ghosts, it’s hard to be sure) likes my family and isn’t throwing US across the room.
Soon after we moved in, my mother said she was woken at night to see a swirling white fog above her head. She said she didn’t feel threatened by this and felt the ghost was telling her that it liked us and was watching over her children (I have three younger siblings).
So my family has lived with these spirits for over 10 years now. My parents went through a divorce and my mother moved out about 3 years ago. The supernatural things had quieted down for quite some time before that. It was almost as though the ghost and my family were getting used to each other. But, soon after my mother moved out my siblings and I would hear someone walking across the floor in my dad’s room when no one else was home. This would happen almost every morning after he’d leave for work. His bed would even creak as though something heavy sat on it. There are tons of other stories I could tell, but I want to focus on the last few months.
Near the end of August I was preparing to leave for college. About a week before I left, I was woken in the middle of the night. It was very strange, because one second I was in a deep sleep and the next second I was wide awake. The reason why I woke up was this: I felt a single finger tap on my head. Not only did I feel it, I HEARD it. Tap yourself on the head with one finger. Hear that noise? Surprisingly, this didn’t scare me at all. I like to think this was the ghost’s way of saying goodbye.
The next two encounters happened when I wasn’t even home. They occurred when I called home from my dorm room. The first phone call was in October - on my 19th birthday. This was the first time I had called the house phone in a long time (my family usually uses cell phones to keep in touch, but no one was picking up so I tried calling the house phone). Right away, I knew something was strange. As soon as the answering machine recording came on, the phone started making a crackling, static noise. It’s hard to describe this sound because it wasn’t the normal sound phones make when the connection breaks up. I started recording a message after the beep, but stopped when I thought I heard a voice. The crackling noise continued but I didn’t hear anything else. I continued talking, but stopped again when I heard a distant, male voice say my name in amongst the static. I knew what I had heard, but I thought that maybe my dad or one of my brothers had picked up the phone and I just hadn’t heard them because of the crackling noise. I said hello about 5 times, but when no one answered me back I realized that no one had picked up the phone and I was still talking to the answering machine. I quickly finished leaving my message and hung up.
Later, my dad called me back and told me that my family wasn’t home when I had called. He said the message I left was accompanied by a crackling sound and he swore he could hear a voice talking behind mine.
Just a few days ago, a similar thing happened. I was trying to get a hold of my dad, but his cell phone was getting bad reception. So I called the house phone to leave a message for him. There was no crackling sound this time, and I wasn’t even thinking about what happened the last time I called. However, after I started leaving my message I stopped because I again swore that someone had picked up the phone. It sounded as though my family was talking in the background. I thought that perhaps my dad’s fianc? had picked up the phone and hadn’t said hello yet, and the voices were the rest of my family talking behind her. After saying hello, and not getting a response, I realized that I was once again still talking to the answering machine. Curious, I hung up and called back, but nothing out of the ordinary happened this time.
Later I found out that once again, my family wasn’t home at the time. I don’t really know what to make of this, besides the fact that the ghost(s) maybe misses me? Or is trying to tell me something?