The Permanent Resident
Steph, VT, USA
October 2001
As a child I had always felt strange feelings at my grandmothers home. Sometimes I would freeze with terror, other times I would sense a presence but have no fear.
When I returned from college, I stayed with my grandmother. My bedroom was upstairs, my grandmothers was down. One night I awoke with a feeling of being watched, under the door I saw a bright light. There was no light in the hall, and no windows. The door to the other bedroom was closed. I stayed in bed and eventually fell back to sleep.
A few years later after my grandmother had died, I had moved to a downstairs bedroom. One night as I was sleeping I heard a voice saying "look at the light" over and over. I thought I was dreaming and didn't want to wake up. The voice was persistent, though, and finally I opened my eyes. I saw my floor lamp knocked over and burning into a stuffed animal. Apparently I had fallen asleep with the light on. How it fell over I don't know, but thankfully "someone" woke me up.
During this same time I was dating. One night when my boyfriend and I were in a heated argument the lights began flickering and eventually went out. We left for the night.
Recently the strangest part of the story unfolded. Two years ago my boyfriend moved in with me. One of the first nights he spent there he had a dream about the attic and an old man about 6' tall, bald on top and gray hair around the ears. The man was unwrapping a brown package. The man called out my boyfriends name, my boyfriend ran downstairs and then woke up from his dream. The next morning he asked me if there was an attic in the house, I told him there was. He wanted to try a Ouija board, I was a little skeptical. Anyway he borrowed one and the only thing he got out of it was "F, E, and estate and papers." The next day we cleared a path to the attic hatch (the upstairs had been used as storage since my grandmother had passed) In the attic we found a brown paper package (like the one in the dream) addressed to an F.E. Kipp. and an old newspaper clipping dated June 8, 1908. The day we found it was June 8, 1999!!
We tried to find more information on the house at the library, but had no luck. We went on-line to genealogy.com and placed an ad for info on a F.E. Kipp. We soon got an email from a man saying he was F.E. Kipps great-grandson, that his great- grandfather had passed away in VT and was buried on Town Hill. He said his grandfather was a tall man about 6' and was bald with hair around the edges!! We found Kipps grave. We still do not know what "estate", or "papers" meant. Mr kipp is a quiet ghost, but every now and then I still get a feeling of being watched, and once in a while footsteps are heard upstairs.