Haunted House

My parents owned that house for 30 years. Three hundred and sixty months. Three hundred and sixty mortgage payments. All three of their children were raised in that house, from birth through college. And once it was paid for in full, my parents could officially call that house their own.

Had I been alive when they made the decision to purchase it, however, I would have told them, “This is not the house for you!” Full stop.

I knew from the age of four that house was haunted. But whenever I mentioned how creepy and scary the basement was, my parents simply brushed me off.

“You’re just afraid of the dark,” they’d respond flippantly with a snort, followed by, “Just turn on the lights.”

“No, listen to me!” I said all the time. But I made similar declarations at my grandmother’s house too. It was also creepy as hell. My parents just laughed.

“She’s afraid of everything,” they’d exclaim, trying to hide their embarrassment about their strange little girl.

But I have an example. A very specific example.

I was playing with toys with my brother on a bedroom floor at my grandmother’s house when he left for a couple of minutes to go to the bathroom. The second he left a feeling of sheer terror came over me. I knew I was in the presence of an evil spirit. I was only six years old. I didn’t bother mentioning it to anyone. No one would believe me.

Thirty years later, I learned why my grandmother had sold that house years ago. My dad finally told me that my grandmother had believed an evil spirit, that just so happened to be attempting to possess her, resided in that house alongside her. Obviously without her permission. When I pressed my dad for more details, I learned that another relative had once lived in that house – an abusive mother whose child had died, at her hands, in that very house.

Knew it.

Through all of this, I was the only person in my immediate family who ever sensed anything from the spiritual world. It was a little shocking to me that, despite all the energy I could feel, they felt absolutely nothing. It couldn’t have been more obvious to me that a spirit lived, not only in my grandmother’s house, but also in our basement.

When I was very young, I simply would not go down to that basement alone. No way. No, sir.

But then a fateful day arrived when I was ten-years old and flat-out sick and tired of sharing a bedroom with my sister. She was a slob. She was mean. And she was annoying.

There was a bed my parents had placed at one end of the wide-open basement level of our house for whenever guests came to visit.

Given the choice between my sister, who I was no longer willing to tolerate, and a potentially evil spirit roaming our basement, I chose the spirit and commandeered that end of the basement to make it my bedroom.

The first night, I pulled the comforter over my head, switched on my flashlight, and read a book to distract myself until I simply could no longer keep my eyes open any longer.

It worked. Fear squelched.

What didn’t work was having to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. The basement was completely unfinished, and the “bathroom” was just a spooky, dark room without any lights, walls, or even a door. It was nothing more than exposed wood framing with tools and junk piled everywhere, a toilet at one end, and a drain for a shower that was supposed to be installed someday at the other end.

So, I always ran as fast as I could, peed as fast as I could, and then ran back to pull that comforter over my head.

It was terrifying. But again, it was better than my pain-in-the-ass sister. By a long shot.

Eventually, the basement was built out, complete with walls and doors. Finally, I had a real bedroom and a real bathroom. The basement became ever-so-slightly less spooky, and I got through many years without anything particularly horrifying happening down there. Well, except for that ever-present, icky feeling late at night every time I ventured out of the sanctity of my bedroom to go to the bathroom.

But then more spiritual visitations started coming to me when I ventured out to other places as well.

My sister invited me and my fiancé to visit with her and her boyfriend at his new townhouse, and she proceeded to give us the grand tour. We got down to the basement and when I glanced into a mirrored closet door, I immediately got the feeling.

“Oh no, something bad is here. Something very bad,” I told my sister.

“Oh, that. Yeah, some guy committed suicide down here,” she said nonchalantly, shrugging.

“What?!?” I shrieked. “And that doesn’t bother either one of you?”

“Not really,” she replied.

I could not get out of there fast enough.

By that point, I thought the spiritual world could no longer surprise me with the crazy things it did and the ways it made me feel.

Not so fast.

One Saturday afternoon, my mother was out running errands, but the rest of us were home. We were all on the main level of the house, spread out between the kitchen, dining room, and living room.

Suddenly, I heard my mother – who, as I mentioned, WAS NOT THERE – yell up from the basement to my brother.

“Bill! Can you come down here???”

We all stood up and looked at one another.

“Did you hear that?” we asked in unison.

We nodded, our confused expressions saying everything we needed to say. We all knew she wasn’t there.

FINALLY.

It wasn’t just me.

“How many times have I told you this house is haunted? How many???” I bellowed.

My father responded, “Well, this entire neighborhood was built on top of what was believed to have been a Civil War battlefield back in the 1860s.”

“You’re telling me this NOW? After the literally hundreds of times I’ve told you this house is haunted???”

“Well, I had to see or hear it for myself,” he replied with a wan smile.

“And now you have,” I sighed.

They sold that house shortly afterward and never looked back.

Unfortunately, they didn’t take me with them when they went house hunting and purchased their next house.

It’s also haunted…