Tales of a Suburban Haunting – EVP’s

Audio studio digital voice recording voiceover sound wave on computer screen.

In honor of Halloween, please enjoy some EVP’s from a recent paranormal investigation done on my house. This was the first investigation ever done, and I’m intrigued to do more. Let me know which is your favorite, and what you think they are saying.

These EVP’s were recorded by the team in empty rooms, and in my opinion, many of the voices captured seem to indicate that the ghosts knew the investigation team was there.

In fact, I would go so far as to say the ghosts in the house were not only hiding, but warning each other of the investigators presence.

There are, of course, some random chilling moans and screams which are a little unnerving, because I like to believe the ghosts in my house are happy, on the whole. They might just be echos in time, sounds stuck in the web of the universe.

These recordings were done by professionals and are 100% untouched however a few had noise reduction done but no other sound altering. Be sure to turn your volume up. Enjoy!

EVP#1 was taken from my foyer. It seems to me like the ghost is warning the others “they’re coming.”

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EVP #2 and #3 are just random moans/shouts

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EVP #4 is one of my favorites. This was taken in the room where I told you the “brothers” stay. It sounds to me like one says “Wow” then proceeds to talk very quietly. The other brother must not like the noise level because he very clearly says “Ssshhhhhh” at the end. Decide for yourself.

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EVP #5 is very short. It is a noise reduced clip of what sounds like a child asking a question.

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EVP#6 occurred in response to a question. The historian discovered that the land my house was built on was a poor farm back in the 1800’s where lots of people lived and worked. The investigator asked out loud what happened to the owners of the farm. This was the response. Sounds to me like “they let it go.” Though I’m not sure what it means, it was a direct answer to a question which would lead you to believe this ghost was intelligent and interactive, and not just a loop or echo.

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EVP #7 was a voice in a room I didn’t know had “guests”. It sounds to me like “Help, …we’re here” or something similar. You decide.

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EVP #8 seems to be one ghost alerting the others of the investigators presence. It sounds to me like he’s saying “they’re coming closer.”

These are the best of what was captured, and while I wish I had a picture or video of Joe hanging out on the upper level in his blue flannel shirt and jeans, if it were that easy to get proof of life beyond, everyone would have it, right?

Believe it or don’t, but enjoy a goosebump or two. Happy Halloween!

Tales of a Suburban Haunted House- Peek-A-Boo

This story is perhaps the most memorable, freakiest, most hair raising story to date so far. This incident terrified me to the point I literally felt my blood run cold and my heart pound in my ears because it was so deliberate, the timing so uncanny.

Let’s jump right in. It’s the middle of the night, and I’m sleeping. Only partly unconscious, of course, because there isn’t anything in this world or the next that was gonna sneak up on me.

I startled awake, as I often did, thinking I heard a noise, then rolled over to look at the clock to check the time. If the red numbers on my clock said 1:10 a.m., I knew I was in for something unusual.

The spirits in the house always (and I mean 90%) of the time, woke me up at exactly 1:10 a.m.. Did I just trick my body into waking at that time? An internal alarm o’clock I didn’t mean to set? Perhaps, but after ten years of waking up at 1:10 a.m. to shadows, voices, footsteps and heaven only knows what else, you accept what seems unacceptable and stop fighting it.

So I roll over, chest tight, and look at the clock.

1:10 a.m.

Great. I look into the doorway of my bedroom and don’t see any shadow people or other ghostly folk that don’t belong lingering in the hallway. I don’t immediately hear anything out of the unusual. I try to roll over and close my eyes, covers all the way over my head, but my arms get prickly. Whatever is waking me isn’t taking no for an answer.

I have a need to roam the first floor to check the locks, reassure myself we’re locked in tight and all is well.

Why did I get out of bed? I have four kids in this house, and while most of them are in my bed snoring softly, all of them aren’t, and my Mom instincts kick in harder than my ghost instincts. So roam the first floor I go, ready to handle whatever is waiting for me.

Front door- locked. A quick peek out the windows show a quiet neighborhood nestled under a dark, starless sky. I walk through the dining room, into the living room, going out of my way to avoid the basement stairs as I make my way into the kitchen. Nothing but the sounds of my feet on the wood floor and the hiss of the heater.

Back door is locked, no people—dead or alive—standing on my patio. The soft spill of pillar lights bathes the kitchen in a warm glow. Ideallic quiet night it is not, however. Goose flesh prickles my neck. Something doesn’t feel right. Bad? No, just different. That’s the motto in my house.

Something is rooting me in place, not making me run. Perhaps it’s the feeling that I’m not alone, and I don’t know which way to move. I walk directly to the back door to give myself a good close look at the yard for danger because my Spidey senses tell me something is up.

As I stare out into the night, the baby’s playpen is immediately behind me in the kitchen against the halfway of the staircase. The pressure on the back of my neck grows to the point I can’t deny it. I turn around now, facing the playpen and a mix of toys sitting lifeless in a row propped up against the wall.

Yep, wait for it!

My chest gets heavy, and though I don’t see anyone, I know I’m not alone. I fully expect to see someone, hear voices, have something skid across the counter. The energy in the kitchen is that electric.

My choices for fleeing are to the left where I have to run past the open basement stairs, or to the right where I have to run past the stairs leading up that offer me a blind corner.

I look left, then right, my gaze finally falling on the talking light up toddler toy dog sitting in the middle of the toys in the playpen. As I turn to stare at the toy (why I don’t know) it lights up at that exact moment and says:

“Peek a Boo, I see you”

It then proceeds to giggle in the pre-recorded, computer generated child’s voice that will haunt my dreams until I die.

Go back and re-read it. I swear on everything I hold dear, I am telling you the truth.

In the silence of the night, the second I turned to it, the toy self activated and said Peek-A-Boo, I see you.

Okay, so the rational part of my brain kicks in, grabbing fear by the throat, and tells my feet to hold their ground. I know, right, how can one person be so stupid? Certainly this can’t be happening. This doll did not light up and talk on it’s own, choosing the most terrifying and appropriate phrase from it’s inventory of factory pre-recorded statements that include I love you and the A,B, Cs.

I have two choices, but my brain picks one. Walk forward and pick up the doll. If the switch is turned on, I can convince myself it’s a random malfunction, a firing of the switch. Some manufacturer glitch. If it’s off, we’re burning the damn house down.

The switch, in fact, is on, so I set the doll nicely and carefully back into the playpen, heart in my throat, and walk to the right (no chance am I risking the basement stairs right now) and head straight into my room and begin the series of prayers I know by heart on repeat in my head.

P.S. St. Michael has been my best friend since birth. If you know, you know.

No other dolls or toys talked that night. In fact, Im pretty sure I sat straight up in my bed in terrified stunned silence until the sun came up. Did the light up dog ever talk again you ask? Sorry folks, it never got the chance. It was “donated” the next morning.

And yes, I really mean donated. I treat the toy animals and dolls nice, and they don’t come back and kill me in the middle of the night like in the movies. It’s a deal we make. My girls got a life size Barbie doll once from a sadistic friend, don’t get me started on that. That doll was better taken care of than we were. She never had any reason to go Chucky on us.

That, my friends, was a true terror story from my real life haunted house, and one of the most specific experiences I had there.

Tales of a Suburban Haunting- Eyewitness Account- The Brothers

So I’ve talked about the spirits I saw when I lived there. Let me tell you about a story that comes from someone else, someone who didn’t know the house was haunted, not when they moved in anyway.

After we moved out, I couldn’t bear to sell the house. I still can’t. To this day I have an unnatural connection to it as if it’s my job to watch over them now. Weird, I know, add it to the list. But move out of the house for our peace of mind we did (that sounds a little Yoda-ish, sorry) and we decided rather than leave the house empty, we’d rent it out.

Our first renter was a friend of the family. Great couple with four kids. My husband was adamant that if we wanted to rent it out, we could NOT tell anyone it was haunted.

So we didn’t.

Until about two weeks into the rental when our friends stopped by and said “by the way, when were you going to tell us the house is haunted.” 👀

Aside from the in house music system turning on twice at 2 a.m. blaring the radio and scaring everyone, they had a very unique incident.

The husband and wife were in the master bedroom watching television when they heard extremely loud bumping and stomping from above them. Assuming their two teenage boys were rough housing or fighting, the father left the first floor master bedroom and went upstairs to the kids’ bedroom directly above them.

He stopped in the hall in front of the bedroom door and the two boys stopped wrestling and were each sitting on their twin beds staring at him. He proceeded to colorfully and loudly explain to them that it was bedtime and this horseplay was unacceptable for this time of night.

He insisted they turn out the lights and immediately go to bed.

Right about this point, the father heard his kids call his name from the first floor. He looked over Joe’s walkway railing (see earlier post for Joe reference) down into the family room to find his two sons sitting on the couch beneath blankets watching television.

They asked him why he was yelling. What was the problem? Most especially, what was he doing upstairs? He was too stunned to reply. He stepped to his left to peer back into his sons’ room, and the boys were gone.

The room was empty.

When we lived in the house, we encountered “the boys” under similar but different circumstances. For a year or two when my daughter was a young toddler, she would often put her hands over her ears in that room. If you asked her why she was doing that, she’d tell you the boys were fighting again and they say bad words.

At night the floor above my bed was always active with jumping and footsteps and pounding.

My gut tells me it isn’t actual fighting to harm, but more two teen boys working out an eternity of angst and boredom with each other. I think about them often, wondering if they prefer to be there or are stuck.

I had a women who said she was a medium walk through the house in the earlier years, and she felt the presence of two Native American boys. Could those be the boys in the room above my bedroom?

You decide.

Tales of a Suburban Haunting- Part 4- Seeing is NOT believing

So far we’ve talked about all the things I heard at my old house. Now it’s time to talk about the things we saw. Let me start by saying that seeing things was not a regular event. In fact, I will go on record as saying I personally only saw what I would call a spirit on five or six occasions, and it was always the same two spirits.

The first was a young girl who would hide in the corner outside my bedroom. She was in her mid to late teens and wore period dress clothes. She had a long pale blue and white gingham dress with a white apron and two long blonde braids.

She never said a word, never went anywhere else. I would catch her out of the corner of my eye at night outside my bedroom door or when I was coming down the hall to go in to my room. I don’t know what she wanted, or why she was there, but I never felt any danger or fear.

Joe was the other spirit I saw. I saw Joe for the first time a few years after living in the house. Why do I call him Joe? I have absolutely no idea. It was as good a name as any, and it stuck.

I was in my great room, a two story living room with two story windows. A large chandelier with ornate carved arms hung from the ceiling. I stood from the couch and looked out the window at headlights passing by when I caught sight of him in the reflection.

For a moment I assumed his image was just my eyes catching the reflection of the chandelier wrong, but my brain told me I was seeing something else. He was standing on the upper level walkway behind me both arms on the railing, casually leaning forward looking down at me.

Screaming would seem a natural response, calling a priest, circling the foundation in salt. I wasn’t afraid though, not of Joe. For all the things in that house that freaked me out, Joe was a calming spot, a friend. He was a tall man, slight of build, maybe in his fifties with dark hair. He was wearing worn blue jeans and a blue plaid shirt. He said nothing, but instead looked at home on my walkway.

I stood frozen that first night, my eyes separating the image of him from the chandelier to prove to myself that I really was seeing the man in the reflection behind. The whole encounter felt like minutes, but it was likely seconds instead. I turned around, expecting to see him standing there, but there was no one.

The walkway was empty.

When I turned back around to scan the reflection in the window, only the chandelier remained. I told some friends about Joe at a gathering not long after, and I was ridiculed so hard I never brought it up again.

I saw Joe once more in the reflection from the kitchen on the other side of the house. He was standing in the loft this time looking down at me again. This time there was no chandelier to confuse him with. No other object to trick my eyes.

There was just a man in a blue plaid shirt and jeans keeping watch on me and my house. And I liked to think of him that way, watching over us, not creepily watching us.

The thought of Joe as a protector, the ghostly caretaker, comforted me so much, that when we would leave on vacation I would always ask Joe to keep an eye on the house for us or watch my animals.

Have I finally lost my mind? Maybe.

Here’s the thing though, one day my mom was watching my kids, she pulled me aside after I got home. She knew of my experiences in the house, of the footsteps and electric issues, but I never told her about Joe, not after being made fun of.

With a pale face and fear in her voice, she told me she thinks she saw a ghost. I swallowed my water and waited for the description, fully expecting her to tell me someone new was manifesting from the ether.

Instead, she perfectly described Joe.

“Oh that’s just Joe, he watches over things for me,” I said with a sigh of relief.

She didn’t know quite how to respond.

I still say hi to my friend Joe the caretaker when I go over to the house, even now. With so many other spirits active there, some harmless, some who enjoyed making you afraid, I firmly believe Joe did what he could to keep trouble to a minimum.

I can’t tell you if any of that scenario is actually true. I certainly couldn’t prove it. The way I think about the spirits in the house is kind of like a knowing. I don’t have to think too hard about it, the thoughts are just there.

“You write crazy stories about way-out-there things, that’s probably just your imagination,” some would say.

Maybe. Maybe it is just the colorful tales of a creative mind. Then again, maybe after living there so long, their stories seeped into my brain. That I can never know for sure.

What I do know for sure, is Joe is my friend, and after being made fun of the last time I told his story, it’s quite a leap of faith for me to tell it again.

Come back soon for more stories, the scariest is yet to come.

Tales of a Suburban Haunting- Freaky Moment Number #3-Pop-A-Shot

The Pop-A-Shot: a staple at carnivals, great for oversized indoor recreation rooms, hours of fun at CostCo while you wait for your parents or significant other to finish shopping.

In my house it was something different. For the sake of the story, I’m going to stick to one specific event because it’s still so vivid in my mind, I could retell it for years to come.

In the interest of getting the full shock value, let me refresh your memory on how this particular game works. Two balls, two hoops. You can play alone or in pairs. The game is electronic (yes, I said electronic, so let your mind wander) and it operates on a plug.

When plugged in and turned on, the machine is silent, no lights showing until the first ball slips through the hoop. As soon as the first ball slips through the hoop, the buzzer sounds long and loud, signaling the game has begun, and the clock starts ticking as you shoot. For every basket, the scoreboard registers your score. When time is up, an ending buzzer sounds, and the one with the most points wins.

Sounds delightful, right? The kids love the game. The adults played it often. Only downfall, it was so big we had to keep it in the basement. To the outside world, our basement was an oasis. It was fully finished and furnished with a small movie room, wine room and in-law arrangement complete with microwave, fridge and sink. Storage, workout/office space and a pool table, what more could you want?

If you could get past the feeling of always being watched, chills that ran up your back and made your neck tight, hands touching your shoulder only to turn around and no one was there, and doors slamming on their own, you were good.

I earned an Academy Award in smiling while trying not to scream for ten years in a row pretending the basement didn’t bother me at all. I didn’t want my children to be afraid. It was the perfect space for the kids to play, watch TV, or adults to unwind at the bar with a drink. Hell, we even had a party or two down there.

My husband took many naps in the downstairs bedroom as it was very quiet and much cooler than it was in the rest of the house. He also would never readily admit the house was haunted, not to me anyway. Why? I don’t know, because he had experiences in that house since day one. None the less, we all had our roles to play, and our blinders positioned just so. The basement was his personal getaway space, until the fateful day.

Picture the scene: 11 p.m.-ish, my young teen son is up in his room with the door shut, and my three girls are sleeping in my bed because they always said their rooms were haunted.

“Ha,” I told them, “there’s no one here but us, but you can sleep in here with me for tonight if you like.” I pretty much said that every day for ten years. If if they didn’t know for a fact the energy in the house was different, they sure sensed it.

I’m in bed watching television, the toddler is asleep in her princess bed next to mine, and the two girls are out cold in the middle, arms and legs wrapped around each other.

My husband was finishing watching some crime show in the basement and dozing off. He must have been getting sufficiently sleepy, because around 11:15 or so I heard the television in the basement go off. I followed suit and my television went off too.

The house was silent save my four dogs at the bottom of the bed snoring gently. Okay, I had two bulldogs, so not so gently. (We’ll talk about the crowd in my bed some other time.)

Silence, my favorite time of the day when I could take a deep breath and be alone with my thoughts, nothing expected of me. A good book or a good movie, the choice was mine and I didn’t have to share it with anyone.

I was particularly tired this night, so I took a sip of my water, and snuggled under the covers shoving the dead weight of my children to the other side of the bed so I didn’t sweat to death during the night.

The pillow was cool against my skin, the chenille blanket soft on my cheeks. Peace.

Until…

The starting buzzer of the Pop-A-Shot echoes through the house causing me to sit straight up in my bed, eyes as wide as hard boiled eggs. TIC-TIC-TIC. The timer starts running down. I slip out of bed and peek my head into the hallway to find the faint red glow of the scoreboard staining the white walls of the hallway leading downstairs an eerie crimson.

A pounding on the floor makes my stomach pinch, but I soon learn the thunder isn’t otherworldly, it’s my six-foot four husband taking the basement stairs two at a time to get out of the basement.

“What are you doing?” I ask, still standing in my bedroom doorway a good distance away from the basement stairs.

“Nothing,” he says panting, doing his best to act casual.

“Were you playing basketball?” I ask.

He looks at me, his eyes opening a little wider, and he knows what I’m really asking.

“I was asleep,” he says laughing, the look on his pale face closer to hysteria than humor.

“And it just started playing by itself?” I ask

He pauses, not really sure of his answer, searching his brain for some logical explanation as to why, no how, the game turned on by itself.

The ticking stops, pause, and the final buzzer rings long and loud in the quiet of the house. My husband and I look at each other searching for words. The red on the walls goes dark.

“I wonder who won,” I say. We both laugh, but it’s the jittery nervous kind when you can feel your pulse on the back of your tongue.

My daughter hears the commotion and steps out into the hallway to ask what’s going on. We assure her it’s nothing, and she shuffles back into my bed. My husband stands taller, and suggests I go downstairs and unplug the game. My response is colorful, and I’m grateful my daughter walked away before I replied.

We unplug the machine together without incident, the scoreboard reading 2-0 before all the lights go dark.

The game sat dormant for a long time before anyone played it again. But sure as can be, from that moment forward, the bedtime question of “honey, did you lock up the house?” was always, and I mean always, followed by, “is the pop-a-shot unplugged?”

Stay tuned for more next time about seeing and hearing things I can’t explain.

Tales of A Suburban Haunting- Part 2- It’s Electric!

If you didn’t shout that line like the lyric of The Electric Slide song, did you even live in the 80’s? I guess most of you haven’t. I won’t hold it against you.

It’s not just a fun dance—yes, I know that’s debatable too—electric was the main/easiest thing for the spirits in my house to manipulate. In my last post you heard about the land line telephone, and how it rang endlessly at all hours of the night with no one on the other line.

Well that wasn’t the only system to go haywire at will.

My beautiful new house had all the bells and whistles, complete with a whole house intercom and radio system. You could listen to Top 40 while you vacuumed the kids’ rooms, or fill the air with the joyous sound of Christmas Carols during the holidays.

If you were locked outside you could press a button and the intercom would allow you to speak to members inside of the home to let you in. (How anyone thought this was a good idea in the first place, I don’t know.) Our friends would press the button just to harass us as a joke when they came over. The sound is still unsettling when live people do it.

But hey, it was a highlighted feature of the home. If you were lazy, you could press a button in your room and ask someone in the kitchen to bring you a bottle of water, so there’s that.

Yes, I know we have texting now. We had it then too, but this whole house communication unit was meant to be a luxury. You can guess where this is going.

One use of the intercom the spirits found particularly hilarious in the beginning, was to turn on the radio full blast, highest volume, throughout the whole house at 2 or 3 in the morning.

Good time, good times.

Don’t ever ask me why I don’t sleep well at night again. Being awoken to these things for the better part of ten years changes a person. Changes, yeah I guess that’s as good a word as any.

Another fun misuse of the system would happen at any time of day, but we mostly noticed it when the house was quiet, like as you’re watching television or doing laundry. You could occasionally hear the static hiss of the intercom button being pressed from outside (no it didn’t matter which unit) but no one ever said anything, and of course, no one was ever there.

Guess what I did? Yep, you got it right. Shut that mother off. Every individual intercom was switched off at the main unit and on the wall in each room. The same went for the volume.

OFF, OFF AND OFF.

You’re saying “wait a minute, that could be a short circuit, loose wire, surge, something easily explainable.” Well, not accordingly to any of the three electricians I had out to the house over the years. I asked them all, had the intercoms and phone line tested. All clear. You decide for yourself what you think. I did.

Wake up once or twice to hard rock screaming in your ears at 1:30 a.m. after you just put the baby to sleep, and I think you’ll understand the spirits have a dry sense of humor.

Is that it? Music and ghostly fingers pressing buttons outside the house to get in.

Oh, no. Wait, there’s more. This is where I give you my best game show hostess wave of my hand.

I spoke of the house alarm last post. As I’m sure you guessed, my alarm liked to go off for no reason too, albeit much less often than the other stuff. Apparently the ghosts are sympathetic to my false alarm charges. But when it did go off for no reason, it was ONLY in the middle of the night, and it was always the exact same window registering broken every time.

Eventually I had the alarm company come out and check the sensor. Looked fine. One or two more mis fires, and I called them out again a few months later, and had them replace the sensor altogether. Exact same alarm, still went off here and there.

Just so you understand the feel of this false alarm, it’s more than just a startle awake, choking on your heartbeat feeling. The window that would register broken is in the basement… in the farthest corner of the house…and I had to pass through the ultimate level 10 creepy part of the house in the pitch black by myself, in the middle of the night, to get to it.

For all the harmless stuff, there was a dark spot in the house, and cliche as it is, it was in the basement.

When I tell you I eventually felt like I was purposely being lured down there, I’m not lying.

So what did I do? Can’t turn the alarm off like everything else. You’re going to think I’m nuts, but I did it anyway.

I started making deals with the spirits in the house. Yes, you read that right. I—a grown ass woman— started to talk out loud to the otherworldly guests squatting in my house. You see the way I “saw” it (and I’ll explain my “feelings” and thoughts later) I had me a true war going on. The regulars that lived upstairs, and those that popped in downstairs to cause trouble.

Did I actually put that much thought into it? Upstairs, downstairs? Regulars and others? Walk down into the pitch black basement at 2 a.m. while your husband is out of town to verify the window isn’t really broken. You think of your children alone up in their beds above you, and creep slowly across the expanse of the cold, wood floor while the hair on the back of your neck and arms stands so tall your goose bumps hurt.

Damn right I put that much thought into it.

Is that really what was happening, a turf war? I have absolutely no idea, but that’s where my head was. Forgive me, I digress.

So I asked the regulars, the “good guys” to please try to control the riff-raff. I put my foot down and told them this was my house, I was the boss. I reminded them that they shouldn’t be there at all, and I could find people to make them all leave.

This tough chick stance actually became my platform when things got crazy, to remind them who was in charge. Did it work? The alarm still went off but not as much. Was that from my pep talk? Who knows, they had lots of other things to play with in the house.

The alarm was only a small drop of water in my haunted ocean, and the truth is, the spirits kept us hopping in a million other ways they probably give me a break on this one.

I still have so many stories to share, including apparitions, voices, footsteps, and my top 5 freakiest moments better than the movies that I haven’t even touched on yet.

Yes, I did see actual spirits in that house, and no, I’m not the only one.

Hit follow so you won’t miss any of the stories as I post them, and tune in next time for the Number 2 funniest/scariest thing that happened.

Welcome!

Hi everyone and welcome to my words! I’m glad you’re here.

I’ve revamped my page and started fresh, because…why not, so don’t be surprised if the old posts have disappeared. If you’re looking for something in particular that was on here, just message me and I’ll dig through the archives.

There has been so much interest surrounding my real life haunted house lately, that I decided what better way to kick off the new format than telling some of my favorite stories about the house and the ten years I lived there.

Even this first post below has started a lot of great, private conversations regarding other folks’ experiences with ghosts and spirits. I hope to generate a discussion on paranormal topics in general, and I hope to touch on all subjects in some way.

This house isn’t my first experience with the unexplained. Ever since I was very, very young, my brain was just more “open” to this sort of thing. I think that’s why I’ve had the experiences that I did. Dreams, feelings, sensing, and more. As an adult I have a healthy fascination/fear with the paranormal.

A bad Ouija experience in college taught me not to open doors you don’t know how to close. I’m still scarred by that to this day, and that game isn’t EVER allowed in my house again. That’s a whole different series of posts entirely, I guess.

I plan to post about once a week, but in the beginning I might post more often because I’m really excited to share some of what I went through. Hit the follow button so you won’t miss a post. Things might be a little irregular with the new content for a while since I’m distance learning kids, working a full time job and managing my home and hobbies.

I never imagined anyone would really be interested in the stories. To be honest, I was embarrassed to talk about them, so I’ve kept them to myself. People can be cruel, and cynics can be strong. We’ll call it a personal growth exploration that I’m sharing my thoughts like this.

So you know, I’m also an author—no I don’t have books published yet, but I’m working on it—so don’t be surprised if you see bookish/authorish posts in between the paranormal.

Enjoy, and I look forward to starting some cool discussions.

Tales of a Suburban Haunting – The Introduction

I’ve promised stories about the ten years I spent living in a real life haunted house. I hinted that some of our experiences were wilder than the movies,

and they are.

Well I’m here, and I’m glad you are too. I’m excited to share my ghost stories, tell you about my writing, and a discuss a lifetime of happenings that no one can quite explain. Unexplainable and thought provoking occurrences have followed me and several of my family members throughout our lives.

I look forward to sharing and talking and making new friends.

Everything I will tell you is factual. Believers will take interest in some goose bump raising encounters. Non-believers will think it’s lies or coincidence. Wherever you sit on the spectrum, I hope you’re entertained.

If you have questions or comments, post them. If you have something negative to say, I wish you peace and love across the miles. If you find yourself wanting to give me a science lesson or religious education on the great beyond, save yourself the trouble. We can all agree to disagree, and if anything I write offends you, see your way to another page more suited to your interests. I won’t be mad.

Before we jump into the good stuff, let me give you some history about the particular house in these stories. It is new. We were the first family to live in it, so the energy floating around had to come from the land. I was told the house was built on a Ley line. I was told the land itself was old and could be holding the energy. I don’t know exactly WHY or HOW the spirits were there, I can only tell you what happened to me when I took up residence.

For the record, I never asked my neighbors if they had any trouble, so I can’t say if it was isolated to my house only, or affected the neighborhood. I was very concerned about appearances back then (okay maybe I still worry a little too, I’m only human), and introducing myself with a Bundt cake and a good story about the guy in plaid hanging out in my loft didn’t seem like the right opener. With so many kids on the block, the truth is, I didn’t want to scare anyone either, my children included.

In fact, for over ten years I never talked about the occurrences with anyone in the house except my husband, my mom, and my oldest son who was thirteen when we moved in. The spirits like liked to mess with him.

My number one goal was that I never wanted anyone to be afraid in my home. I had the sleepovers and the big family dinners, holiday gatherings and game night. My home was the place where friends and family always gathered first, and you never knew who would still be there for breakfast by morning. If anyone knew what was happening, no one would have stuck around past dark.

So you’re ready for details, for spooky encounters. You’re here for the heart of it all, the actual ghost stories.

You want to hear all about the things that go bump in the night? Well you’re in luck, that’s exactly what I’m going to do, only I have a newsflash for you, the things in my house don’t go bump in they night,

they usually RING.

That’s right. One of the first pains in my ass about my haunted house was that the land line phone would ring at all hours of the night, only there wouldn’t ever be anyone on the other end.

At least I never stayed on the phone long enough to find out for sure.

There is something incredibly unnerving about making the groggy trek from my first floor master bedroom into the kitchen where the land line was at one or two or three in the morning. Even more hair raising is answering that phone, heart slamming against your ribs as your chest gets tight—actual family emergency or phone call from hell— only to hear open air silence with the slightest hint of static on the other end as if something just beyond the veil was indeed trying to muster enough energy to punch through and speak.

Hello? Why does anyone even have a landline anymore? Well, 15 years ago it wasn’t that uncommon. And besides, we needed a land line for the special alarm system we had for protection.

Back to the story, after many sleepless nights (no the phone wasn’t the only thing that woke me up or kept me awake there) this was one thing I could control. I disconnected the phone from the wall but left it there on the counter wrapped in the cord in case of emergency. If the phone rang now, we had bigger problems. Lucky for me it never did.

Yes I had a cell phone just in case I needed to make a call, but I’m that level of emergency prepared okay? A little phone on the counter in the event of an apocalypse never hurt anyone.

No phone, no ringing problem right? Well, where there’s electrical current, there’s a way, and the ensemble cast of spirits—yes I said spirits— in my home found a way.

Hint, they always found a way. Come back Monday and I’ll tell you more.