Who or What is Here?

We moved to this house in 1989. It's an older Cape Cod style home with three bedrooms and a basement. I liked it because of the big yard and, being on a dead-end street, considered it a safe place for my six kids to grow up. As I have three girls and three boys, the boys were in one of the rooms upstairs and the girls shared the other. My husband and I took the smaller bedroom downstairs.

I didn't really notice anything strange right away, but upon making trips to the basement while emptying boxes, the left side of my jaw would go numb as soon as I stepped on the first stair and would stay that way until I went back up the stairs and as soon as I stepped back on the top step, my jaw would be normal again. I always got the impression that someone was standing in the corner of the basement watching me whenever I went down the stairs. This strange phenomenon would happen every time I went up and down the basement stairs, but after about three or four years, it finally quit.

My youngest son, who was two when we moved here, would frequently wake up screaming in the middle of the night saying that there was an old witch at the end of his bed. He would also say that someone grabbed his foot, or that someone pulled his blanket off or his pillow out from under his bed. A lot of times, he would come downstairs crying and ask to sleep with us because he was scared. He would also ask the girls if he could sleep in their room and quite often we would find him asleep in the upstairs hall or on the couch in the living room. We thought he was having nightmares or night terrors, but now I'm not so sure that was what was wrong. This happened from the time we moved in until he was about ten or eleven years old. No one else seemed to be awakened like this.

One night my nephew spent the night with my youngest son. My son was about eight, so my nephew was probably around six. I woke up around three in the morning and it sounded like the boys were up and rolling trucks across the floor above my head. Naturally, I assumed that the boys got up and decided to play. I got out of bed, heading for the stairs expecting to raise some Cain with some little boys for waking me up. As soon as my foot touched the first step, the noise stopped. I went upstairs and both boys (and everyone else) were fast asleep, drool, snoring and all! Needless to say, I flew downstairs pretty quick and jumped back in bed under the covers. I don't think I went back to sleep until daylight.

A few years ago, I woke in the middle of the night and had the worst feeling of dread and bone-chilling fear that something awful was just outside my door. I tried to wake my husband but I couldn't move or speak. I kept trying to scream and finally got a sound out of my paralyzed throat enough to wake my husband. Immediately, whatever was out there, was gone.

We've heard noises many times over the years. Things also have a way of disappearing. We recently got a new printer. I took everything out of the box, including the two ink cartridges. I plugged in the new printer, turned around to install the cartridges and only one was still sitting there. No one else was in the room and they were sitting side by side on the table. It's still missing. Last summer, as I was sitting in the dining room at the computer (I was reading stories on Castle of Spirits, believe it or not), my youngest son calmly came down the stairs and said he just saw a man sitting on his sister's bed as he walked past her door. He wanted me to go up and look. I decided that if I don't bother it, maybe it won't bother me and I stayed right where I was. He described a man wearing a fedora-type hat and a jacket just sitting there and that he was kind of bluish looking. I have seen things moving out of the corner of my eye and sometimes have seen moving shadows, but this was the first time that someone saw a man. This is the same son who said that he saw an old woman at the end of his bed when he was little. He's 14 now and although I think it freaked him out a little, he was handling it much better than me.

I don't know who lived in our house previously. This house was built in the early '40s'. When we bought it, an older woman lived here and she moved to Florida after the sale was final. I think that her husband was dead, but I also heard that they were divorced way before he passed away, so he wasn't even living here when he passed. I also don't know how long she lived here. One day I'd like to find out about all of the previous owners.

One other weird thing happened recently. My middle son, who is 16, was in the dining room early in the morning ironing his clothes to get ready for school and I was in the bedroom getting ready for work, when I heard the stereo go on and the computer boot up. I walked out to the dining room and my son said "The strangest thing just happened. The computer and the stereo both went on at the same time." Neither are plugged into the same outlet and both have to be physically turned on by pushing a button. There is no good explanation how this could happen. I think that there is definitely someone still making their presence known here. I just don't know who.