The house I grew up in was haunted. Oh, it wasn’t the Addam’s Family type of home, big and scary. No, it was your typical three story home built after WWII and a duplicate of the house across the street from us. My parents were the second homeowners and my dad used to farm the land before that area got developed. Still, it was haunted and I always wondered what terrible tragedy happened on that plot of ground to infect the house as it did.
I’m not sure of my age when I started noticing the oddities, but there were parts of the house I hated, absolutely HATED going to alone. One was a small little room in the basement that my dad had set up as a pistol range. There were some really creepy vibes there. The second was the attic. Yeah, we’ll get to that one later.
The house was originally set up as a two-bedroom home. My parents had the smallest one and us four kids shared the largest. We slept in a bunkbed and a double wide boxed mattress that set on the floor. That one was right next to the closest. Yeah, the dreaded closet.
My dad very seldom let us sleep over at our friend’s homes, but they could spend the night with us. One day, our neighbor spent the night. She was sharing the mattress with one of my sisters. That night, Rex, our beagle that liked sleeping in our room, started growling and woke them up. They saw a huge black shape moving around in the room. It actually bumped into the bed and jarred it. The next morning, they asked dad if he’d been in the room, but, nope, he hadn’t.
There was another night where I was sleeping on the mattress, right next to the closet door. I woke up to horrible sounds coming from behind that door. It sounded like breathing, and I can’t remember all the other noises, but I was petrified in fear and couldn’t sleep the rest of the night. The next morning, it took all the nerve I could muster to open that accursed door. Of course, there wasn’t anything there. I told my mom about it and she said it was just the wind rattling the pipes. Really? Isn’t that what all parents tell their kids?
As we got older, my parents converted the attic into a bedroom for us three girls. Yep, that scary as hell attic. Prior to that, we’d actually held a séance up there. Of course, we had no clue we were going to eventually sleep up there. Heaven forbid. As for the séance? To this day I can’t remember what happened.
When dad converted the attic into our bedroom, he left one side as a long closet that had the doorway right next to the head of the steps. I hated that spot. I had nightmares for years about trying to get past that doorway.
Once we moved upstairs, we each had a twin bed. There were times when I was up there alone, and I’d feel someone sit on the side of my bed. I could even see where the mattress indented from some type of weight.
As a side note, once we moved upstairs, our dog, Rex, barely went up there. Anyone with dogs should know what that means. He sensed something unpleasant he didn’t like.
Over the years, as all this crap was happening either to or around me, I was the only one that even acknowledged what was going on. Everyone in my family just rolled their eyes at me whenever I tried talking about it, so I quit trying.
Until one night, they couldn’t.
It was Easter weekend and the same neighbor that experienced the dark figure moving around in our room, spent the night again. Our three beds were placed against a different wall in the room. One under a window that faced to the west. I was sleeping on the bed against the south wall.
While my sisters and the neighbor were praying, one of them looked up and on the wall, right over my bed, was a shadow of three crosses on a hill, with the middle one the highest and biggest. Of course, my sisters and neighbor freaked out. Me, being the practical one, got up and moved the see-through curtains over the window. The moon was very bright that night and I thought it, plus the curtains, were causing the shadow effect. But, nope, that imprint of the three crosses never moved. Eventually, it just faded away.
The next morning my mom got an earful about what happened. We were told never to tell our grandmother, as she was overly religious, and might take it as a bad omen. My paternal grandmother was a bit fey as she had prophetic dreams she thought the devil gave her. Dreams about her children dying, and they did. So, mum was the word and never spoken about again.
I’ve never forgotten that incident, but strangely, my sisters did. It wasn’t until years later that I brought it up at a family gathering and they were like, Oh, I totally forgot about it. How could they? It was amazing and scary at the same time.
