17 July 2020 | Haunted houses, Your Stories, Your True Encounters
Myself, my 2 sisters (1-5 yrs. older & the other 2 yrs.younger) & our mother grew up in a house with a spirit that never harmed us, only scared us. Our mother told us “it just wants you to know it is there, it hasnt harmed any of you“. My sisters both have their own unique experiences of which I can only advise second hand info. I can provide details of my own experiences. I had 4 experiences.
The first experience I was around 7 yrs old & was sitting on my older sisters bed (which is the primarily location of the haunting) I felt hands grab me by my ankles & pull me. I jumped off the bed to look underneath & saw nothing. She had 2 cats, but they were both laying on the bed at the time.
The 2nd experience I was a teenager & was living in that bedroom at the time. I had been out very late & was undressing for bed when I heard a beeping like a pager or an alarm coming from the closet (there were 2 large walk in closets on both sides of this Old Victorian home’s master bedroom on the top floor). I followed the noise into the closet & into a chest full of blankets in the closet. As soon as I had located the area & began fishing around with my hands to find the object making the noise I felt a tug on my belt. I turned around quickly & no one was there. I was shocked then continued to look for the object which I never did locate. I slept in the room that night.
The 3rd experience is more terrifying & I cant recall which came first the 3rd or 4th experience, but they were close in time frame & I was around the same age, 18 or 19 when these 3 all occurred living in the same bedroom. This time I had come home late, around 2 to 3 AM & I heard loud pounding footsteps come from one end of the roof of the house to the front of the house, where I was standing & stopped above me. That scared me enough that I left the room for the night or possibly even a few nights.
The 4th experience I was asleep on a warm night with my head at the end of the bed. I woke to a loud bang. A large heavy mirror, which was leaned back on my dresser, unattached had come off the wall & landed a foot from my head. If it had simply fallen (which it had never done before) it wouldn’t have made it to the foot of the bed which was @ least four feet away. I was puzzled & tired but went back to sleep. In the morning, I checked the windows to see if a gust of wind had possibly been strong enough to knock it over, the windows were closed. When I picked up the mirror I noticed it was sticky on the top, there were no left over drinks on the dresser to explain what made it sticky. And when I tried to clean the the mirror regular cleaning products would not work, I had to scrape it off. This lead me to believe it was ectoplasm & that with the pounding footstep incident & the mirror being flown across the room at my head there was perhaps a battle of good & evil going on. This still did not keep me from sleeping in the bedroom. Although these were scary, my mother assured us that it was not a bad spirit living in our home with us.
Also, our basement was very eerie, you always felt like someone was bearing down/staring at you. And when I lived in the basement (which was refinished & a small apartment & bathroom were built down there) It was terrifying to have to use the bathroom at night & it always sounded like you could hear people talking when standing in the bathroom down there. I have lived in other homes & never felt the same “fear” in the basement of any other home.
I will continue w/my sisters experiences. We never did have a paranormal investigator out nor did we ever look into the history of the “man” that we always believed had died in the home.
I am posting the experiences of just my older sister to begin with. And it is to the best of my knowledge after many discussions we’ve shared about this haunting over the years. My older sister we have come to find is “sensitive” to spirits (they are attracted to her). When she was under 10 yrs old she had been sitting outside of her bedroom windows, which she had done many times before, on a slanted shingled roof, very dangerous. This time she lost her footing & fell forward, something grabbed her by the back of her nightgown & pulled her back to the window to safety, she was alone when this occurred.
Another experience, she had a friend from down the street spend the night. In the middle of the night this girl was terrified by my sister & went home & never spoke to my sister again. But told my sister why before she left. The friend claims she woke up to my sister standing in front of the bay windows, staring out, but the curtains were closed. She called out to my sister many times but my sister did not respond to her. As the friend got more unnerved her voice got louder & louder as she called out to my sister. When my sister finally turned around she just stared blankly at her friend with a look that terrified her friend so much that she began screaming which snapped my sister back from “wherever” she had been. My sister then panicked & ran to her but the friend was too scared to stay the rest of the night.
The walk in closet on the South end of the bedroom was the closet with the most “activity”. One night while my sister slept she heard the North closet open, which woke her. When she opened her eyes, she saw a tall dark shadow of a man pass right by her bed, it got cold as it passed her, the South closet opened for this spirit & it closed behind it. She was scared but kept her eyes closed & went right back to sleep.
Because she was scared of this South closet she put a chest in front of the door filled with books. The first thing the “spirit” did to express it’s unhappiness about her blocking the closet was this: She had a small keepsake dresser in that closet with a collection of Dawn Dolls & clothing for these tiny dolls, as well as papers, magazines, etc. During the night she heard noise from that closet that sounded like papers rustling & things being tossed around. She looked with me into that closet in the morning & it looked like something had tossed everything around from one end of the closet to the other, like a tornado had hit it. When we began to pick this stuff up, puzzled, we noticed the Dawn Dolls had what we later believed to be ectoplasm on them.
Soon after my sister was sitting in her room during the day when the “heavy” chest went flying across the room as the door to the South closet flew open. My sister, terrified, went down stairs & made my mother come up with her to show her. I went upstairs with them & witnessed the chest, full of books on the other side of the room, the closet door standing wide open & both of my sisters cats sitting in front of the closet staring in & they would not respond to my sister as she called them. My mother was unable to explain this & was shocked herself.
My final recollection was an experience she & one of her young children had while she lived in the basement apartment of this Old Chicago Victorian home.
One night she was awoken by something, got up to check it & as she returned to bed she saw what appeared to be a large ball of mist or “something” hovering over her husband, she slowly reached out for it, but as she got her hand to the object it disappeared.
Another night she heard her 4 yr. old outside the apartment in the basement talking to someone, as though he were having a conversation. She called him back in & asked him who he was talking to & he said, “the man”. When she said, what man, he said, “the man in the basement”.
I also want to point out that my parents were married when we moved into this home & they occupied “this” master bedroom. Within 1 year they separated & began a painful divorce after having been married apx. 15 years.
3) This is my second hand tale of my younger sister’s only experience with the “spirit” that I can recall. Our father who lived in the in-law apartment across from the “haunted master bedroom” of this Old Victorian home spent many weekends away (@ his girlfriend’s place) leaving this small 3 room apartment available for this teenage girls to hang out in. My younger sister, apx. 18 yrs. old @ the time spent many evenings in that apartment alone, hearing noises & being afraid, but would just turn the music up to drown out the sounds & to calm her fears. One evening she was standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom which was right in between the master bedroom & the in-law apartment. While looking in the mirror, she caught in her peripheral vision & focused on, a dark figure walk through the hallway & into the master bedroom. She ran into the master bedroom & of course @ that point saw nothing. She then decided she did not want to be scared anymore & did not want her family to be scared anymore. And whether or not that spirit was good as our mother claimed, she felt strong enough to use Gods prayer to make it go away.
She had recently become a Born Again Christian, feeling very close to God. She took her bible & began pacing the entire length of the top floor quoting verses from the bible & praying. She prayed for the spirit to go away & not scare her family anymore, in the name of God. This to her was a powerful experience & she believes as do I that the “dark figured male spirit” on the top floor of the home was removed from the house that night.
Our older sister, the sensitive one, does not believe the spirit was ever exorcised from the top floor of our childhood home by our younger sister. And the spirit or spirits in the basement unfortunately remained.
We havent lived in this home since 1999, but there have been a few purchases & renovations of this home since then.
4) These are the experiences JoAnn’s daughter had while she lived in this Old Victorian home in Chicago as a child under 7. In no particular order there were 5 experiences. In the “master bedroom”, in the “basement” & her grandmother’s bedroom.
In the middle of the night she went to use the bathroom, while looking in the mirror & washing her hands she caught a glimpse of dark figured man that turned & looked @ her & then kept walking. She got scared & ran back to the apartment & got into my bed. She never told me about this back then. As like most nights, she would get out of bed around4 AM to go upstairs to sleep with her grandma. Grandma had her door closed which made her turn around & head back down to the basement. As she went down the stairs which had a turn, she saw what she believes is the same black figured man standing at the bottom of the stairs. Again scared, she decided to open grandma’s closed door anyway & get in bed with her & not have to go back down stairs where I was sleeping.
She only has this one experience in the master bedroom, which is occupied by her aunt, who is my oldest sister.
She was spending the night upstairs with her aunt in the master bedroom. While she laid there awake, she saw a black figure jump on & off the dresser 2 times, she was scared but just closed her eyes & went to sleep.
These occurrences were in her grandmother’s room. The experiences in this area of the home were unique to my daughter. 1st was the middle of the night, she went to the bathroom, just off of her grandmother (my mother’s bedroom). As she looked in the mirror, washing her hands, she saw a black figure pass directly behind her through the mirror. She got scared & ran back to grandma’s bed & went back to sleep.
Also in grandma’s room, in the middle of the night, as she lay there awake. There was light coming in from the windows & she saw an image of a dog, that looked like a dog we owned that was alive, growling angrily at her. She turned her head & closed her eyes, shaking. When she finally got the courage to reopen her eyes. The image was thankfully gone.
She never shared these experiences as I have noted with us while she was a youngster. These experiences were only shared with family members as she heard us as adults discussing our experiences in our Mother/Grandmother’s home.
We’ve all talked for many years about our experiences, sharing them with anyone interested, writing our story down, telling someone that can publish or show it, investigating it, etc…
Submitted by JoAnn Slaughter
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