John and I bought our first home and spent countless hours cleaning and decorating our new home for our arrival. Once we were married, we moved in right away. All seemed to be so perfect, for the first week or so, until things began to start happening. Our first experience came one evening while after dinner we sat and watched TV. There was a knock at our front door; it was our neighbor whom was a military police at a nearby air force base. She and her husband lived right across the street from us. She had come home for lunch that afternoon and said she couldn't help but notice our front door was wide open. She found it odd, because there were no cars in the driveway, so she knew we weren't home. She came to the door and called out, hoping one of us would reply, but heard nothing. She took a quick look around. It didn't appear that anything had been disturbed by an intruder, so she figured we must have just forgotten to lock the door and the wind blew it open. After that first event, John and I would often come home to our front door open. We couldn't understand it, because we always key locked the door before we left each morning. After a few times of coming home to the door being open, we began double checking the door before leaving to make sure it was in a hard lock position. But, still we would come home to find the door open. So we decided to get dead bolts for all three exterior doors. We thought this would solve the problem, but as you can guess....it didn't. We'd come home from work to find the door open and the dead bolt sticking out from the door as if it magically passed through the door frame. One evening my brother Tim came to visit and decided to spend the night. He said he woke up in the middle of the night to use the restroom. He was walking down the back hallway to the bathroom, when he noticed the back door was flung open. He said he found this strange because when he went to close the door, he saw the dead bolt sticking out of the door. He immediately woke us up; worried someone had broken into the house. Needless to say we found no one. The exterior doors were not the only doors to magically open by themselves. Our bedroom door also began to mysteriously open on its own accord in the middle of the night.Strange occurrences brought us to the point of having to put a door alarm on our bedroom door at night. We figured if someone was going to break in and open our doors (for what ever little bizarre reason they had to do this) an alarm would go off and wake us up so we could catch them red handed at their little game. But we would wake up to find the door wide open and the alarm had not gone off. When we would move the door ourselves the alarm would blast loud enough to wake the whole city! We didn't know what to think. We decided to put a dead bolt on our bedroom door, this surely would prevent anything from opening the door. (Like this was going to help? It didn't do anything for our exterior doors remember? What were we thinking in our little heads?) What we thought would be a solution, turned out to be nothing more than a joke on us. Regardless of the alarm and deadbolt, the door would still continue to open by itself, without any reasons known to ourselves. We were baffled, so we entertained the ludicrous idea that our doors like to be open! Wrong again. I think we're on the same wave link now, so it's safe to say that "our ghost" grew tired of just playing with our doors, so it became braver and began to start other activities to amuse itself. I began waking up at night from very violent and morbid nightmares. They were so horrific in nature that I would literally wake up in a cold sweat. This continued for some time.Two of the dreams I recall vividly was one about my brother Timmy and the other about my cousin Frankie. The first dream I had was about my brother Timmy. I dreamed that he had gone to work and didn't return home. I was notified of his mysterious disappearance. I met with the search team at his last known location. It was a heavily wooded area with a deep river running through it. I walked along the bank of this river wondering what could have happened to him. After no success of finding him, the search team began to clear out. I decided to stay behind and continue to search the woods. As I walked through the woods, it began to grow dark outside, making it more difficult for me to see. I made my way through an area where the moon was shining through the trees, giving me a lighted area to rest. As I approached this area, I discovered an old abandoned car. All the doors were missing from the car, leaving only the interior and external metal frame. I walked over to the car and as I got closer, I could see something large in the back seat. I ran towards the car and found my brother slumped over….with both legs cut off at the knees. I screamed as loud as I could, hoping some of the search team had lingered behind as I did…and would hear my screams. I heard no reply. I climbed into the back of the car where he were at and found dried blood everywhere. It was a funny rusty looking color. I reached over to him to put him in my arms, but he was so cold and stiff by now. I didn't want to leave him there alone to run for help so I began thinking to myself that if I could only telepathically contact someone to let them know that I had found him….dead. I sat there, grasping on to him as if to cradle him in my arms, rocking back and forth and repeating over and over again "Dear God, please let someone hear my cries". I must have been talking or screaming in my sleep, because when I woke up, John was apparently shaken by what he'd been hearing me cry out. We got out of bed and sat in the dining room, talking about my realistic dream that had me so shaken. He urged me to call my brother to put my mind at ease he were actually ok, but I couldn't get myself to do it. I feared that had I made that call and he not answered, I would be worried sick. I never did go back to sleep that night, I stayed up watching the clock for an appropriate time to call my brother and make sure he were safely at home. He was.The second nightmare I had, this one about my cousin Frankie was very much like the one I had about my brother Timmy. I dreamed that Frankie went missing. I remember driving in a car, looking down streets…hoping to see his car parked somewhere on the side of the road. The dream seemed to last forever, driving in the dark….looking down dark, abandoned streets for any sighting of him. The search turned up nothing, so we returned back home. I changed my clothes and climbed into bed, waiting for John to get out of the bathroom. As I lay on the bed, I began feeling as if something wet were dropping on my forehead. When I looked up, I discovered blood seeping from the cabinet doors in our headboard. I jumped up and swung the door open. I found Frankie curled up into a ball and stuffed into our headboard. I jumped off the bed screaming. Again, I woke John up screaming and crying out loud. These morbid types of dreams continued, night after night….but they began having to do with people I didn't even know or recognize.The dreams not only troubled me in an emotional way, but also began affecting me physically as well. One night I woke up and felt very sick to my stomach, I thought perhaps I'd gotten a virus or something, so I went to the bathroom. I was standing at the sink rinsing my face, when the door knob began to slowly turn as if someone were trying to open the door. I assumed it were John checking to make sure I was alright. I called out to him "John is that you?" working my way towards the door. Things quickly escalated, now it was as if someone was trying to force their way in. The door knob began twisting violently and something began banging on the door. It got more and more intense. The hangers started to fly off the door, dropping at my feet. I started screaming for John, for what felt like forever. Then it just came to an abrupt stop. I then heard a light tap on the door...It was Johnny asking me if I was o.k. I stood with my head against the door, crying and whimpering….barely able to speak. John stood there, trying to coheres me to open the door immediately, he could tell by the tone of my voice and my crying that I was obviously shaken. I then swung the door open and shouted "There's someone in the house!" He ran and grabbed his gun and searched the house. He found all the windows and doors were locked from the inside. No one was there! We had three cats and we suspect they must have also sensed something in the house as well. We would often hear them hissing and growling. One evening, John told me to look at my cat Sabastian. I walked over to him to find his hair on his spine all cringed and standing up. I couldn't see anything, but he definitely saw or felt something. All three cats would at different times act oddly as if they were fleeing from something.One day, when my husband and I got home from work, immediately we noticed something unusual in the living room on the coffee table. There was an old rotten piece of material just laying there as pretty as you please. Johnny picked it up to examine it and then handed it to me. It had a very old musky, burnt smell to it. We didn't know where it came from or how it got there. We looked all over the house, figuring the cats must of drug it out from somewhere, but couldn't find anywhere it could have come from. Johnny even checked the attic. It didn't come from our furniture, because that was all purchased brand new. We never found where this piece of material came from.The back bedroom or spare room was not ever occupied, it stayed very, very cold, so cold that you couldn't go in that room without wearing a sweater or something warm. The carpet was stained with the same funny rusty color I had seen in a nightmare of my brother being murdered. We had a professional cleaner come in to clean it, but he was baffled by the stains. He told us that he would clean them and they would just reappear seconds later. He didn't know what they were, only that they wouldn't go away. I mention this, because I always got a very eerie feeling in that room, it gave me chills, so we basically kept the door closed and didn't put anything in there except junk.Soon, we had new neighbors move in next door, a pastor at a local church, his wife and their children. One day when we got home from being out all day. They rushed over to let us know something really strange had happened while we were out. They said they began hearing violent screaming and profanity coming from our home. They went to check to see if we were all right, because they'd never heard us fighting before. When they went to check on us…they soon realized we weren't home.I was home early from work one day and decided to cook a nice dinner for John and me. My sister Toni and brother-in-law gave us a glass pot for Christmas, exactly like the one they'd used for years and loved. I was unloading the dish strainer to make room in the sink to rinse vegetables. All I remember is while holding the pot mid-air to lift it up to put it in a cabinet, was an ear deafening explosion. I looked own and realized the pot had just exploded in my hands. There was glass everywhere….all in my arms…all over the floor. I was bare foot, so when I tried to go get the broom to sweep it up; I cut my feet to the point that I had to call for emergency assistance. There was blood everywhere. There was no logical explanation for this pot exploding in my hands, because I called the company and they said the only way it could have done this was if the pot were hot and immediately placed in cold water and then perhaps hit or tapped on something.One night, I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep. I hadn't fallen asleep yet when I began feeling someone caressing my body. I thought it was Johnny, so I turned to him, to playfully slap his hand away from me. When I reached to swat his hand away, there was no hand there to slap. I turned over to touch him, but found him lying with his back facing me. I began shaking him and screaming like a maniac. He jumped up and turned on the light. I was hysterical with fear….screaming something about someone touching me while I was trying to fall asleep. Again a search of the house uncovered nothing. Ironically the bedroom door was wide open and the dead bolt was sticking out of the door in the locked position. The alarm had not gone off either. This was the first and only time that I had actually felt physically violated by what ever was plaguing my life with the paranormal. It was this breaking moment that both John and I realized we could no longer live in this home comfortably. Be at peace with our new lives we had started together.Our last experience in this house came on Valentine's Day. I was waiting for my husband to get home from work to go out for dinner. I was in the back bathroom getting ready, when I began to hear what sounded like a child crying or whimpering. I just stood there for a few minutes, to make sure I was hearing what I thought I was hearing. I left the bathroom to look around and it appeared the sound was not coming from one central area, but emanating through the whole entire house. I called my sister; Toni, because I wanted her to hear it, but as soon as she picked up her end of the phone, the sound stopped immediately.We made the final decision that we could no longer endure the events occurring in this home and had to decide what we were going to do about it. We didn't have many choices because this home had drained us financially. We had nothing left on our credit cards, no savings and no money in our checking account left to pick up the pieces and move on. One weekend while visiting the construction site where my sisters Rita and Regina were having a new home built, they brought to our attention that the home directly across the street from theirs was up for sale. They said every so often they would see the man who owned the home drop by and work around the abandoned house and when they saw him next, they would speak to him about the home. Within a week, they called with the news that the man was asking a mere $77,500 for the home and would be willing to carry the mortgage himself. We later made an appointment to walk through the home to see the interior and discuss the details of possibly purchasing the home.We walked through this incredible one story ranch style home, with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room and dining room. Most homes in this area were only one a quarter acre to half acre and our gold mine was sitting right dab in the middle of one acre of land. It was a dream come true….actually….too good to be true. You know the old saying "If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is"? This was our case. After speaking to the owners of the property, we decided the deal was too great to pass up. So we came to an agreement that we would be allowed to move in to the home until the final closing and in the meantime pay rent to live in the home.We ended up calling the man we bought the house from to tell him that strange things were happening in the house and we just couldn't live there anymore. He didn't seem a bit surprised by the news and gladly agreed to buy the home back from us for what remaining balance we owed. He came by for us to sign the deed back over to him and by that weekend we were moving out of house of hell.I had a very close friend and co-worker who lived right down the street. She would come in to work and tell me about people moving in and out of that house within a week to a month after moving in. She said the longest period of time in which anyone lived in the home was almost a month. Rumor had it that the house was haunted. Every once in a while, if I'm in the area, I'll pass by the house, just to see if it's still standing!
We quickly made friends with all of our neighbors. There was the elderly woman, who lived to our right, a couple who lived across the street from us and a pastor and his family who lived to our left.The couple, who lived across the street from us, was either military police or security officers at the nearby air force base. How we came to know this couple is very strange. One night after eating dinner and relaxing in the living room, watching TV.....we heard a knock at the door. It was the woman, who was a military police...but we didn't know it at the time, she wasn't in uniform. She told us that she had come home for lunch earlier that day and discovered our front door wide open. She thought it was kind of strange, being our car wasn't home...but figured may be one of us were home. We told her "No, no one was home; we were both at work all day". She said she knew...because she stuck her head in the door, called out...but no one answered, so she politely closed the door and went on her way. (This happened prior our putting dead bolts on the doors). We were already aware our doors were opening on their own while we were at work, but not knowing what she'd think...what we suspected was causing the doors to open (ghost); we didn't mention it to her. We just thanked her and remarked how odd it was and left it at that. Then it happened again. We had just arrived home from work and she and her husband called us over to their home. She said she again, found the front door wide open...but this time...she went inside the house to make sure no one had broken in....found no one around, except our cats...and closed the door behind her. They both seemed very concerned that this was happening....and suggested we change the locks on our house...which, we'd already done. We then broke down and asked if they believed in ghost....because that's the only logical explanation we had for this phenomenon with the doors occurring. Soon after, they called John and me over to their home to discuss with us, information they had discovered in researching our property's history. What they uncovered was that years prior to our buying the home....rumor had it that the house had been occupied by a man who was arrested in connection to crimes involving missing women. They did not elaborate on the details or whether anyone had been actually murdered inside the home...but they said that there was supposedly a hidden area in our house, where the authorities had uncovered evidence to arrest and convict the man. They believed the location of this hidden area in our home, was somewhere in the kitchen. We all returned to our home and looked all through the kitchen and various parts of the house, hoping to find this hidden compartment or room. But I guess the area had since been covered up when the home was partially remodeled before we purchased it. I asked the man we purchased the home from about this, but he steadily denied it.A few months prior to our moving out of this house...a pastor, his wife and their children moved in to the house to our left, which was owned by their church. They were very friendly people...and most of our interaction we had with each other was just waves back and forth as we saw each other outside. Then one night...we shared more than just a smile and a friendly wave. John and I had been out all day, visiting with both our mothers. When we returned home later that night and were greeted by the pastor and his wife...actually it were more like they rushed up to us, apparently concerned with something they witnessed. The pastor asked if there was anyone, anyone at all in our home, while we were out. We told him, no that we were the only one's living in the house...and had no guests staying with us...we asked why. He said he and his wife were in their home and began hearing loud screaming and shouting coming from our home. When they looked through the window, they witnessed lights flickering on and off and started to hear foul, obscene language coming from the home. They feared that John and I may be having trouble....so he thought perhaps he could intervene somehow and settle things down. As he walked outside, it was then that he noticed our car wasn't in the driveway as it usually was when we were home. As he began to walk towards our home to see if there was anything he could do to help or calm things down...everything went dead quiet. The lights stopped flickering and the obscenities stopped. He said he returned home and immediately told his wife, something wasn't right. When we returned home...he just had to come over to find out if everything were ok. He said flat out, he had a sinking feeling that something was seriously wrong with the home...he felt there was something very negative in our home. I can't recall what was said next...but I remember I felt as though someone had punched me in the gut. I was overwhelmed by the recent news of what the couple had uncovered and by what the pastor and his wife said they witnessed and was at a total loss of what to do.It was only a day or two later, that things went from bad to worse. I was outside and saw the elderly woman outside picking oranges up from the ground. I walked over and began assisting in tossing out the oranges that were rotten or half eaten by squirrels. She said if I wanted to take what was left in the trees before the squirrels got to them...to run home and grab a grocery bag. I did...and when I returned, while we were picking the oranges...I don't know how the conversation started, whether I brought it up or she brought it up....but she too said she had witnessed an awful lot of strange things happening in our home. She said it was abandoned for a while, no one ever stayed in it as long as John and I had, and people would come and go...and was happy to see that she would finally have some permanent neighbors next door. That's when she began telling me of the bizarre goings on she witnessed with the house and came right out and said she thought the house was haunted. I agreed and shared with her all that John and I had experienced...along with what the pastor witnessed and what the couple said they uncovered about the home. She said she knew nothing about a man being arrested, but knew for a fact, there was a good reason; no one lived in the house for very long.
