The House In The Woods

These experiences happened back when I was 10 (I'm 21 now) but I can recall them as if they had happened yesterday.

My mom became really good friends with a woman named Judy, whom she met through a mutual friend. She and my mom started spending a lot of time together because they were both divorced.

We started spending just about every weekend at Judy's house. Judy had two daughters, Kelly and Katie. Katie was only a year older than me, so we quickly became best friends. Everything was great. Everything except for their house.

First off, let me paint you a mental picture of the house and the surrounding area:

Turning off the main highway, you find yourself almost immediately bathed in darkness. The narrow, winding road is shadowed by tall, overhanging trees. You drive down about a mile and, to your left, is a gravel road surrounded on both sides by dense forest. Take the gravel road and at the very end you'll find amidst the trees an old, two-story, blue house. This is Katie's house.

Nobody is quite sure on exactly how old the house is. Before the house was purchased, slave quarters were located in the backyard, if that gives you any kind of idea of the age.

Well, as I said, we started spending just about every weekend there. Immediately I noticed that there was just something not quite right about this house. Many things have happened there that confirm my suspicions. Doors never staying closed, footsteps clomping up and down the stairs in the dead of night when we were all asleep in the living room (the only room with an air conditioner), things mysteriously disappearing and reappearing later on in the most obvious of places, and just an overall spooky feeling of having your every move watched by unseen eyes.

This feeling was the worst in the room under the stairs.

The room was very small, but we considered it "our room". We would play office in there, and I was always compelled to look towards the corner of the room (where the stairs met the floor). This would prove meaningful later.

I remember one instance in which we were on a hunt for Katie's grandmother's vacuum cleaner, which she informed us should be in the left attic (who's door was located in Katie's room). We searched every inch of the 2nd floor for that vacuum (including the attic) to no avail. Finally, we decided to check one more time, and when Katie opened the door to the attic, she stepped in and tripped over the vacuum cleaner attachments.

Things like that happened frequently in the house. Katie and I constantly prodded her grandmother about the history of the house, but she never would give us any information. So, we decided to take matters into our own hands.

Katie's dad allowed her to get a few items at a voodoo shop in New Orleans (in which he owned an apartment and went there frequently). So, one weekend, she brought out these black candles and announced that we would conduct a seance in the left attic.

We lit the candles and turned off the lights. We were just kind of messing around, and Katie brought out a piece of paper and a pen. She announced to the ghost that she would hold up the pen, and, if he wished to make his presence known, for him to write his name on the paper. We waited a couple of minutes for something to happen, and, just when we were about to give up, the pen slowly started to move. We watched in fascinated horror as the pen slowly but steadily spelled out James Broussard in small, neat script. And remember, Katie was only holding the very tip of the pen, so even though she could have written something holding it that way, it would have been messy and unreadable compared to what actually appeared on the page.

Two seconds later, we were sprinting through the hall towards the stairs, looking back along the way to assure ourselves that we weren't being chased. Katie and I decided to go back five minutes later to blow out the candles only to find them already blown out and the paper and pen missing.

We never did find them.

Nobody believed us. Nobody except her Grandmother that is.

A couple of years later, we found out why the room under the stairs seemed so creepy to us.

Apparently, Katie's aunt's first husband shot himself in the very corner of the room, right where the stairs meet the floor.

As for James, we never did find out anything about him. I think he was just a lonely old spirit looking for some sort of companionship.

Thanks for reading!