My haunted house experiences over four years

Hi everybody. I'm pretty new here, and in my introduction post I mentioned that I had lived in a haunted house. So by popular demand (a couple of people asked for this) I'm going to relate some of my experiences over those years. I'll be happy to discuss or answer questions about any of these episodes.

Background: I rented a house from a nice couple with little kids when I transferred to Western Nebraska for work. It was a bungalow built, I would guess, in the twenties.

Here's the layout of the house so the reader will be able to place the activity in the house.

From the front door, you could look through the living room, dining room and kitchen and see out the window of the back door, which led to a small deck.

To the left of the front door was a bedroom, bath and second bedroom also all in a line parallel to the living, dining and kitchen. The bathroom was only accessible from one of the bedrooms.

Entering the dining room from the front door, there was a stairway to the basement.

At the bottom of the stairs entering the family room, you would be directly below the dining room. The main floor kitchen would be above to your right, and the living room to your left.

There was a basement bedroom directly below the first bedroom upstairs, and a small bath directly below the upstairs bath. The rest of the basement was unfinished storage except for a small finished laundry room in the furthest corner of the basement. Exiting the family room to the right, there was a small area with a desk on one side and a clothing rod on the right side.

So there's the layout. Some of that will be important later, so let me know if I need to clarify.

Next, When I first noticed something was amiss.

a reply to: bbarkow

Commenting to check back later. Interesting layout - creepiest place I ever lived, the bathroom could only be reached by going through a bedroom as well.

a reply to: bbarkow

Same as the other poster, I am intrigued to hear more about this house. Please continue.

I moved in during the summer of 2006. I had transferred my job and moved across the state for a girl. I lived there alone for a couple of weeks until she moved in.

I had only been there a couple of days when I had my first experience. It was mid-afternoon and I was in the basement at my desk when I heard someone walk across the hardwood floor. Thinking my girlfriend had come over, I went upstairs and couldn't find anyone. I thought it was weird, and I'm sure a spirit even crossed my mind - but I sort of shrugged it off and went back to what I was doing. I asked her later, and she hadn't come by.

I didn't hear any doors open or close, just five or six steps across the wood floor above my head.

Love these stories! Tell us more!!

I don't recall anything else happening until my girlfriend moved in with her daughter and our son. He was still tiny and she was 6. I remember lying in bed in those early days and hearing noises on the stairs going from the dining room to the basement. They didn't register as footsteps to me - just random clunks on the stair treads. I did hear steps going up and down the stairs eventually, but that was a couple of years in.

About this same time, I had some odd experiences in the basement. My step daughter slept in the downstairs bedroom, which she was fine with - surprise. I used the downstairs shower to get ready for work. I kept my clothes in the little area off the family room where my desk was, along with the hanger bar.

I would be getting dressed in the morning and see bright flashes of light. Like a camera flash combined with a horizontal lightning bolt is the best way I can describe it. They weren't bright enough to make me squint. I thought I was having some sort of vision problem or maybe a stroke. But that time of the morning was the only time it happened, and it only happened over a period of a couple of weeks.

More later as I get time.

a reply to: bbarkow

Nice to hear from another Nebraskan! I had an experience in my parents house ehen I was in highschool, but nothing sense. I was asleep in bed and my parents and brother were home. I heard pots and pans rattle and woke up, laying there for a few minutes I kept hearing tinkles of metal rattle from the kitchen, kind of hard to hear but when I focused on the sound i could keep hearing that rattle as if someone was going through our drawer of pots and pans. I figured it was my brother cooking something late night, but when I stepped out my door his door was shut and then so was my parents. I started to think and almost turned back to my room but then I heard it again so I went down to the dark downstairs. I turned on the light to the kitchen and there were several pots and pans laid out across the floor and the drawer was open. I walked around the house and no other light was on and saw nothing else out of the ordinary. It was obviously a weird experience, but I presumed that an angel was trying to cook me some mana or something and haven't experienced anything since. In that house at least.

a reply to: Sometimes

I wonder how much stuff happened that didn't wake you up...

originally posted by: bbarkow
a reply to: Sometimes

I wonder how much stuff happened that didn't wake you up...

I was always glad I didn't wake up, I always felt satisfied in the end

I think I'm just going to tell you all about individual experiences since there's no way I'll keep the timeline straight. I'm going to try to keep things in general order, since the activity would tend to escalate as time went on. There were also times when everything was quiet for weeks at a time.

So here we go...

It was probably several weeks before I couldn't deny any longer that we had a guest or guests in the house. I called up the lady I rented the house from and asked her about it. She said that her family hadn't noticed anything, but that people who had stayed with them had heard footsteps and etc... My landlords were a young couple with two little kids. They were also extremely committed Christians who attended church at least once a week. They had a TV but no cable. They only watched family-type VHS movies. As for myself, I was raised in that sort of household. I was (and am) the black sheep of the family. I'm not an atheist or an agnostic. I believe in a higher power but I'm not sure we can definitively say who or what "God" is. The universe is far too complex for us to say, but I believe that there will be a consciousness after this one.

Okay so here we go...lol

My GF was deaf, so once she took off her cochlear implant stuff she was gone for the night. I listened for the baby monitor (he was in the bedroom on the other side of the shared bathroom). Daughter was in basement bedroom.

The wall knocking would usually start around 11-11:30 pm. Every 10-30 seconds I would hear a single knock. It was just like a single door knock with the knuckles. From the sound, I could tell it was 6-7 feet up off the floor.

I'd hear a knock on our bedroom wall, then a knock in the living room - another part of the living room - a couple in the dining room - another one in a different spot in the bedroom. This usually lasted five or ten minutes. I did not hear any footsteps between the knocks. The only carpet in the house was in the baby's room.

It didn't happen every night, but sometimes it did happen two nights in a row. When the knocking spells occurred, they would last maybe a few weeks.

______________

OH! I just remembered the moment I realized there was something spooky going on.

I had moved my computer desk from the basement to the kitchen. The kitchen was the entire width of the house, with a galley kitchen at one end and a breakfast/sitting room at the other. The sitting area had a large picture window looking at the street running alongside the house. My computer desk was facing the same wall the back door was on, the picture window to my left. There was a loveseat under the picture window.

One morning I got up from my desk and turned toward the kitchen area. The picture window and loveseat were behind me. As I took a step away from the desk, I heard a very distinct, whispered "Hey!" behind me. Of course I turned around to see who was there, knowing I was alone. Nobody there.

It wasn't in my head. It was a short, sharp, understandable word spoken in a loud whisper.

I only heard a voice one other time. It was also in the same area. The whole family was in the sitting area of the kitchen. I was at the desk, swiveling back and forth to talk to everyone. My GF was at the far end of the loveseat from me. My stepdaughter was on the loveseat near me.

My SD had asked me about the difference between a Christian and a Jew. I was swiveled around talking to her about it when we BOTH heard someone whisper "Shhh!" between us. Our heads were about three feet apart.

More later!

originally posted by: bbarkow
I moved in during the summer of 2006. I had transferred my job and moved across the state for a girl. I lived there alone for a couple of weeks until she moved in.

I had only been there a couple of days when I had my first experience. It was mid-afternoon and I was in the basement at my desk when I heard someone walk across the hardwood floor. Thinking my girlfriend had come over, I went upstairs and couldn't find anyone. I thought it was weird, and I'm sure a spirit even crossed my mind - but I sort of shrugged it off and went back to what I was doing. I asked her later, and she hadn't come by.

I didn't hear any doors open or close, just five or six steps across the wood floor above my head.

That was a ghost..... no demon........a ghost. A dead person.

a reply to: bbarkow

still not demonic........ sounds like a poltergeist who like to make pranks. It does not like one of you or more than one and it is trying to communicate with you. NO SEANCE. Do this when alone in the house........ask it what it wants......long pause and listen while taping (digital recorder) do as often as needed once you get the answer post it so we can see what it wants.

Do EVP and ask it what it wants.......Find local paranormal investigative unit (they should not charge you anything) and let them do the EVP. Run (tape) a digital recorder next to your bed at night.....until you wake up.... rewind and listen.

Good luck.

originally posted by: DeathSlayer
a reply to: bbarkow

still not demonic........ sounds like a poltergeist who like to make pranks. It does not like one of you or more than one and it is trying to communicate with you. NO SEANCE. Do this when alone in the house........ask it what it wants......long pause and listen while taping (digital recorder) do as often as needed once you get the answer post it so we can see what it wants.

Do EVP and ask it what it wants.......Find local paranormal investigative unit (they should not charge you anything) and let them do the EVP. Run (tape) a digital recorder next to your bed at night.....until you wake up.... rewind and listen.

Good luck.

I haven't lived there since 2010. Just sharing my stories. It never bothered me much while I was there. Nothing scary - just creepy. Much more to come - and every word of it is true. There were some incidents that made me wonder whether it was demonic and hiding the fact, but I really don't think it was.

Here's a weird one...

In the unfinished part of the basement between the bathroom and laundry room, there was a box of old baby toys. A couple of them were pull toys that made noise. The one I'm talking about here is a pull-behind worm that made noises when moved.

I was walking through that area once when I heard that toy go off from inside the box. I just sort of froze and thought about what to do next. Here's what happened.

Me: Can you do that again?

Toy: (noise)

Me: Can you do that again?

Toy: (noise)

Me: Shook my head and went about my business.

Shadows, voices and touching:

I personally never saw a shadow. My GF saw one once moving through the baby's room into the bathroom. It was solid enough that she went into the bathroom to see who it was.

My stepdaughter, however, reported a lot of activity. I was sort of in denial at the time, so I sort of shrugged it off to shadows coming through the basement window. I feel bad about that now. Anyway, she said she saw shadows moving through her room. She also said she heard people talking, but she couldn't understand them. This happened off and on the entire time we lived there.

The following only happened once, but it was pretty spooky. As I mentioned earlier, my GF was deaf. Even though she was wearing her implant at the time, she didn't hear this. We were in bed late at night. The baby monitor was on my side of the bed. I could hear the baby turn over or vocalize, but I couldn't hear him breathe. My GF and I were fooling around as couples do. I said to her something like "That feels good" - a couple of seconds later I heard those same words whispered back through the baby monitor. My GF would also be touched in bed from time to time. Usually a stroke on the arm or leg.

The most disturbing incident for her happened in the bathroom. She was standing in front of the mirror doing her hair. There was an open door to the baby's room about six inches from her right shoulder. Our open bedroom door was several feet to her left. The tub/shower enclosure was directly behind her and the curtain was open. This was in the middle of the day, and natural light was pouring into both bedroom windows and the bathroom window. There was clearly nobody behind her. Then she felt someone gently squeeze the back of her arm.

I was touched a couple of times in bed. It felt like light spider webs across my face, but when I rubbed my face there was nothing on it.

Maybe some of you can help me with this next one. I was awakened a few times by the bed vibrating. It would vibrate very distinctly - like I had put a quarter in it - for a few minutes, then stop. I do not recall whether it ever stopped and then started again. Once or twice, I was awakened by what felt like a solid blow to the side of the head before the vibrating started. I'm not ready to say any of this was supernatural. It seems like it could also be neurological. I remember waking up from a blow to the head maybe half a dozen times in my life, and I always assumed it was part of a dream. I didn't associate it with anything particularly odd until the vibrating bed incidents in this house.

That's all for now. Next I'll talk about moving objects.

"Our Spirit" seemed to have a thing about pennies. Once I noticed it, I'd find pennies in odd places but I can only specifically remember one penny incident that I'll talk about later.

One of the things it did (and everything seemed to be designed to draw attention to itself) was to knock objects over. One would leave the kitchen area and hear, for instance, a salt shaker fall over. This happened numerous times.

The back door out onto the deck was in the kitchen area between the kitchen part and the sitting room/breakfast area part. The door was an old fashioned door, the top half being a glass window. We had curtains on that window, but they were always tied to the side.

I smoked outside, and was on the deck quite often. Two or three times, while in was outside looking in through the back door window, the knob jiggled like someone was trying to turn it.

More later

Ok, so this is going to be the last one unless anyone has questions or comments.

After about four years, my GF and I were having trouble and decided to split up. She took the kids and moved into an apartment. I stayed at the house by myself to button things up, as I was moving to another town.

If you look back at the description of the house, there was a wrought iron railing along the open stairwell to the basement. There was also a hinged wooden gate at the end of the railing at the top of the stairs. The purpose of all this was to keep the baby from falling.

Since he could squeeze between the spaces in the iron railing, I had gone and bought a long piece of nylon rope to weave through the railing to keep him from falling.

I had too much rope, but I didn't want to cut it. Good nylon rope has a million uses and I didn't want to ruin it. I ended up knotting a bunch of extra rope at one end of the railing.

I was getting things finished up my last night in the house. One of the last things I did was take the rope out of the railing, since I'd need it for moving. I worked on the knot for a few minutes till my back started to ache from bending over. So I stood up and walked about ten steps from where I was to get a chair from the kitchen - and about ten steps back. I went directly to the kitchen and back.

When I got back with the chair, there was a penny sitting on top of the knot I had just been working on.

That was the only time I was ever freaked out enough to have to go outside and settle down.

There's a lot more, but this thread has died. But I wanted to have something written down that I could go back to if I wanted to refresh my memory.

If you've gotten to this point, thanks for reading!

a reply to: bbarkow

I've been keeping up with this thread but have just not posted until now. That is a pretty freaky thing to find a penny on top of that knot. Just weird...

I've had some weird things happen to me too, in the house in which I was raised. I never found objects like that but I did see things move that weren't supposed to move on their own. And pictures falling down just when I would think to myself that if something were here the picture would fall off the wall, so in answer to my thoughts. Unsettling to say the least. I always had an awful feeling of being watched by something full of hate. I heard lots of footsteps too, both overhead coming from an upstairs bedroom when I was a teenager watching the tube downstairs and coming right up to me and stopping by my bedside when I was really really young. The last of it was about 40 years ago now but it still sends chills up my spine.

I had another thing similar to one of your experiences happen to me recently in my current house. This was in the last 5 or 10 years. I was working on plumbing in the basement and heard my wife come in and yell "hey honey, I'm home". The dogs barked and everything from what I remember and I was so sure she would be waiting upstairs for me that I took a break to go up to see her. When I got there it was deserted. Her car was not in the driveway and the doors were still locked. I scratched my head and went back to work in the basement. I was so sure I heard her that when she did come home I asked if she had stopped in but forgot something and went back out, but no, she was just getting home for the first time.

a reply to: wtbengineer

I remember some weird things happening as a kid too. But my bedroom was an attic room - and the door to the unfinished part of the attic was in my bedroom. So I don't know how much of it was my imagination.

a reply to: bbarkow

Ha, my bedroom as a kid was in a finished attic too! My brother and sister slept up there with me. The whole thing was finished in my house though. Many many times footsteps would come up the stairs and cross the room right up to my bed and I'd be there with the covers pulled up over my head. I guess I really believed that if I stayed under the covers nothing could get me.