The House Next Door

My Aunt (who wants to be anonymous) lived in a very old house in Northern California (Santa Clara County.) She absolutely loved that house. Before the huge silicon valley boom of the nineties, my aunts house was in the middle of a huge field along with another house that was never occupied when I was growing up (I am 23 years old) I never questioned why, but the house always gave me an eerie feeling (I think because the windows were all boarded up and the door as well, with red spray paint saying "NO Trespassing").

Everytime I spent the night at my aunts house, strange things would happen. For instance she had a swing door that led to the kitchen, and out of nowhere it would swing as though someone walked through it. I would dismiss it, and think it were a draft (the idea of it being a ghost gave me the willies, and that is not something that I wanted to think about while I was alone in the house.)

One time I looked at the door when it began to swing again and I saw a shadow of a person against the wall, I jumped up and ran out of the house, as I was going out I heard laughter of a woman. I told my aunt and she didn't know what I was talking about, so I thought that it was my mind playing tricks on me.

When the houses were scheduled to be torn down, my sister and I stayed at my aunt's house for the "last time" - that night I couldn't sleep. I finally fell asleep and had a dream. I dreamt that I was awake and walking around the house, when I heard a piercing scream coming from outside, I looked out the window and I saw the empty house well lit, and people living in it. Then a woman ran out of the house screaming hysterically saying "he is going to kill me!!" I stood still in fear, when I saw a huge man come out of the house with a shot gun. The woman proceeded to come across the gate between the houses (it was of wire) and ran to the window that I was looking at, she began pounding on it begging to let her in, when the shot ran out and killed her where she stood. The man then came and picked her up and took her back to the house, and it went dark. I woke up in a cold sweat and checked my surroundings to see if anything was abnormal. When I went to the kitchen I felt a strange presence in the room, when I looked in the window, I saw that there was a women behind me. I ran out of that kitchen and yelled for my aunt, when she came everything was normal (making me look crazy). My sister and I both stayed with her that night.

To make a long story short, the houses were torn down to make apartment duplexes. After I investigated it I found out that a couple lived there, the husband killed his wife in the early 1920's. The house was unable to sell because people felt that they were "unwelcome" there. When my aunt moved there it was already empty for 10 years - that was in the late 60's.

Whether that dream was a vision of what really happened or not, it stills shakes me up when I think of it. When I told my aunt, she finally remembered a woman always following her - she thought it was her grandmother, protecting her so she was never afraid of her.